Keep All Your Misery...

i-am-the-lighthouse:

“Curvy” is a device created to make you more acceptable to people who don’t want to accept you, to soften the blow of “fat”. That action of trying to make us acceptable is insulting. Screw that. We reclaim fat for what it is: a physical descriptor, that ought carry no connotations. And you know what? We only get mocked more for using euphemisms. So sell it to them straight.

- Pluseyes, in this great post.

It takes a lot to challenge the attitudes of society. It takes a lot to realise that fat shame is just another way that society attempts to control people, to set standards of attractiveness, to be anything but ‘fat’. I’ve grown up being taught that the last thing to be in the whole world is to be above your ‘ideal weight’. Women all over the Western world diet constantly to fight this disease, this virus, this shameful abomination.

It’s time to think about it differently. As hard as it seems, we must realise that our perception of thin being good and fat being bad is entirely socially constructed. 

Don’t ever challenge Pluseyes about the questionable nature of the common wisdom. The Body Mass Index (BMI), for instance, was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet as an interesting way to correlate height and weight. It was never intended to be the sole indicator of health, nor is it currently based on sound science. According to the BMI, athletes are often overweight, and thin people are undoubtedly of supreme health to fat people.

A programme by Channel 4’s Jamie Oliver, now largely forgotten, saw a comparison between the health of a bulky male rugby player and a thin female trainee nurse. Of course the thin person wasn’t healthier. Her thinness didn’t indicate health after all. The rugby player, for all his apparent fat content, had better cardiovascular fitness and significantly less fat around his organs (known as ‘visceral’ fat). The trainee nurse, on the other hand, had a dangerous level of visceral fat, and as a result of poor diet, probably more dangerous cholesterol levels as well.

The importance of this programme has not stuck in our minds:

Fat content is not the sole indicator of health. 

Now that we’ve established that fat is not necessarily unhealthy, it’s important to disconnect health from our respect for people. Even if fatness was always unhealthy (it isn’t), health should not guide our opinions.

“I don’t like fat people because they’re unhealthy,” one might say.

Really? Do you hate tall people because they’re more prone to back problems?

That’s right, natural body shape is as uncontrollable and unique as height.

Surely we can say that another person’s state of health, whether or not fatness has a negative impact, is none of our business. Our propensity to think otherwise results from terribly judgemental behaviour, an unthinking endorsement of society’s standards, leading to abuse that encourages eating disorders and shame.

BODY SHAPES CAN BE DIFFERENT FROM THE NORM.

IN THE END, FAT IS NOT THE WORST THING A PERSON CAN BE.

As J.K Rowling says:

“Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’?”

“Not to me.”

Click here for more Lighthouse Feminism.

Note that I frame this as a feminist issue as 75% of people with eating disorders are women, and a majority of people with body acceptance issues are women.

Fat shame is a huge problem for men as well, but by striving for gender equality we can eliminate these issues regardless of gender.

Click here for more Lighthouse Body Image.