On thing that needs to be said, over and over again, especially when people who may be new to fat acceptance join our conversation, is that “fat” represents a wide (*gigglefit*) continuum of sizes.
That means that Kate, who as a size 16 falls into that often-grey area known as in-between, may deal with fat hatred expressed in different ways than I, as a size 28/30 who falls into that beyond-the-specialty-stores size range known as “super size”, deal with fat hatred, but we both deal with it. We are both fat.
A commenter in my personal journal yesterday said she hates that a size 16 is considered fat. She PERSONALLY doesn’t consider it fat, she considers it beautiful.
But, her personal preferences aside, a size 16 is STILL FAT. Having an appreciation for a size doesn’t make it not fat – it means you find a fat person attractive and that? Is totally okay.
This kind of statement is also problematic because it reinforces the idea of acceptable and unacceptable fat. There is no such thing as acceptable and unacceptable fat. So many people seem to say that it is okay to be fat to a certain point but after that, ooooh, THEN it’s a problem. But that “okay to be fat” point is just as arbitrary as the BMI. It’s a judgment based on personal aesthetics. And personal aesthetics, while they are what they are, should not be the basis for, you know, who receives adequate health care.
In this blog, where I moderate the comments, there is no such thing as a person who is too fat for fat acceptance. There is no such thing as a person who is too thin for fat acceptance. We don’t talk about diets, we are anti-weight loss surgery, and we don’t pick on skinny women. We know that people on the smaller end of fat face unique challenges and that people on the larger end of fat face unique challenges but that we can gain strength by sharing resources, stories, and confidence in our basic human dignity and worth. We do not base our value on how much we can devalue others.
29 Comments
No fair, you just made me sniffle at work.
Excellent post.
Until I became size 14/16 I never in my wildest dreams would have considered such a size to be “fat,” for crying out loud, isn’t everyone around me over age 21 that size? I consider everyone *starting* at my size to have a womanly figure, frankly, instead of a teen’s body, but that’s just my own kooky head I guess, since I can’t shop at any of adult women’s stores I could when I was younger, I get openly mocked by Victoria’s Secret employees when I ask for a size 42 band, and I am somehow considered an out-group by fashion mavens everywhere!
Great post
Yeah, I had a similar conversation with a male friend recently. I said something about being fat, and he replied with: “But you’re not fat!” I explained that I wear plus sizes and have an obese BMI, and am indeed fat. He answered: “Well, I don’t think you’re fat. I think you’re hot.” I told him that I appreciate the compliment, but it is possible to be simultaneously hot and fat. (I think I blew his mind a little with that one, heh).
I think the disconnect comes because people are trained to see “fat” as a horrific descriptor. It’s still a word that, when someone hears it (that is, someone who hasn’t hopped onboard the fat acceptance train), it’s immediately an insult, something awful. In my dealings with the non-FA world, I’m always working to un-demonize it because shit, I get really tired of seeing “OMG I am SO FAT!!!!” with all the horror and “:: gasp ::” that inevitably goes along with it.
Did you just call me fat?!?
(No, I will NEVER get tired of that joke, thanks for asking.)
Jane, you’re absolutely right on. And comments like “You’re not fat — you’re hot” really drive that home. As I’ve written before, “You’re not fat,” more often than not, really means, “You’re not disgusting, ugly, smelly, lazy, ignorant, or anything else fat people are supposed to be.”
No, I’m not. Neither are the vast majority of fat people, from in-betweenie to supersize. That doesn’t make any of us us not fat — it makes us not stereotypes.
AMEN, sister. That’s all I can think to say.
well said! i completely agree.
i have this conversation with many of my girlfriends. we run the gamut on the “plus size scale” but to each of us, we all have our body struggle towards acceptance. it’s really quite personal.
i could say more but i’d just be reiterating you.
Exactly. People must think we are so desperate for acceptance that we’ll just jump at the chance to join them in hating. Puhleez! It’s not a war.
Where does the small end of fat begin? I just don’t know where I fit in … at size 10/12, am I average, barely fat, what?
Can I just say parts of me are fat, others aren’t, and all of them are lovely?
I think this really gets to the heart of my struggle with how to identify the size of a stranger on the street. I hesitate to say, that person was fat or that person was skinny.
I stray from those definitions because I do not have an authority for what is fat and what is skinny.
But I think what I’m really doing is confusing my aesthetic definition of fatty/skinny/inbetweenie with some sort of ‘official’ definition that doesn’t exist.
wonderful. Thank you for spelling that out. again (i.e. I know it’s been said before, but seems to be one of those things that needs to keep geting repeated.)
When fat is truly just another descriptor and not an insult, it becomes just as absurd to tell someone they are not fat as it would be to declare that a person with naturally light colored hair is not really blond (ya know, because they’re not ditzy).
Jane, I think that is a really big part of it.
Kate, you are fat AND you have fluffy hair.
*laugh*
Julia, you can absolutely use those terms. *grin* It’s really odd, I’ve observed, at the small end of the fat scale – because it is a totally blurry line. And I don’t think any of us are ready to unblur it, you know?
eep. I just realized the first part of my comment from before might have come across as sarcastic. So not meant to be! I was just being lazy with punctuation, etc. So, yeah, just don’t want it to be taken the wrong way.
I totally agree, and thank you for posting this. I think trying to exclude people from the FA community based on size is the same as any other oppressed group trying to exlude someone because of differences within their experience based on how they look: e.g. among African Americans — being light skinned, or among queers — being transgendered. I think this is dangerous, divisive and pointless.
I think there are marked differences in how all of us experience how fat has shaped our lives based on what size we are. There was an interesting conversation at BFB on this recently. For instance, people who are at the larger end of the spectrum will experience the world differently than people at the smaller end of the spectrum; HOWEVER, all of us are still fat, and ALL of us still experiece the egenral discrimination of the diet/media/healthcare industries based on our visual presentation. And that is a problem I think we all can stand united behind.
Nice post. Got it in one.
“I know it’s been said before, but seems to be one of those things that needs to keep geting repeated”
It DOES need to be repeated. The only way to counter propaganda (’cause that’s what spoken and written fat-bashing are, really) is with counter-propaganda.
I have fluffy hair.
Is that, like, out this season?
Lovely really. Just lovely. Simple and perfect. Thanks for this.
When someone says to me, “oh you’re not fat.” I tell them yes, yes I am. They might follow up with “but you’re pretty-fat.” Like it’s a sub-category. I’m with what Kate said above, it’s like saying but you’re not ugly, smelly, lazy, grotesque like all those other fatties.
It leaves me cold. If you can see that one woman can be both fat and pretty then how can you continue to make gross generalizations? blech.
I am usually size 10 or so, and I don’t think I qualify as “fat” by any definition mostly because most of my bits don’t seem to have much fat on them. My butt is pretty fat, although I can’t tell how much of that is just hip structure and muscle and whatnot. But I have, for example, next to no fat on my legs and arms and upper body, so I feel like if I said I was smaller-end fat I would be lying.
So I think different size 10s may or may not count as smaller-end fat. I guess my personal definition depends on the actual amount of fat on a body. It’s really hard to put words around, though, isn’t it?
Also, my hair is only fluffy sometimes, depending on what it feels like doing on any given day.
littlem, “fluffy” is one of the dumber-ass euphemisms for “fat,” so TR just called both Kate AND her hair fat.
As for whether you can call a size 12 fat… I know y’all are not doing this right here and now, but I frequently hear this argument brought up as some kind of quibbly reductio ad absurdum on the idea of self-identifying as fat. I reject that approach in advance, and say instead: you can call yourself fat if you feel like it, as long as it’s said without judgment, but it would be more accurate to say something like “I’m a bit fat” or “i am not thin.” (I assume. I don’t know you.)
I’m a 26/28, which is to fat haters, one of the worst sizes you can be. Most of my fat is in my thighs. My hips aren’t wide, and my butt is flat. My mom used to be an 18/20 and is now a 14/16, and the bulk of her weight is also in her thighs. Many of the women in my family are built like this, and their sizes range anywhere from 14-28. And they are not what fat haters stereotype as fast-food junkies. They rarely eat out. So there goes that stupid assumption out the window.
I did have a 14 year-old boy tell me that I was not fat. Coming from an age demographic where fat hating is key, it was a nice compliment. Oh yeah, and I don’t smell, don’t shove food in my mouth all day either, or be lazy on the couch. I rarely sit on a couch to begin with.
When I refer to myself as fat, I’ve had so many people tell me, “Oh, you’re not fat.” YES, I AM. God. Also, once, from a relative, “You’re big boned.” Again, only if those bones are made of fat.
Also, I shit you not, I got a comment on my online dating profile (in which I describe myself as “fat”) saying, “”i think u have beaty not fatty.” It inspired me to write a post about it, after I was done pissing my pants.
When you are a supporter of the gay community, but aren’t out as gay/bi/trans, they call you an ‘ally’ or ‘queer in spirit.’ So if your size falls in a range that would be called “normal” in a mainstream way, but you *get it*, then maybe you’re Fat in Spirit, if not in size.
I also admit I think that the whole upper limit on what’s ok weight-wise is ridiculous. We’re all in the same fat boat, might as well get along. Our adipose will keep us safely afloat.
“i am SERIOUSLY fat in spirit.”
thank you, sass. i’ve been trying to come up with something fat-pos to put on a t-shirt (that will fit me, a size small).. TR – maybe i could put a http://www.therotund.com on the back someplace….?
i think this will work nicely.
Well said. All fat is relative.
Thank you so much for doing this. I just started reading tonight, and basically every one of these posts made me nod and think “that’s happened to me, too”. I’ll be (like Dorothy Parker) a constant reader from now on.
This one is so weird and hard to pin down. The culture keeps coming up with new terms – fat, then obese, then morbidly obese and now super morbidly obese, etc. Then if you were thin(ner) as a child you might have said at 120 lbs “Well I’m fat but I’m not FAT fat.” You might say that again at 200 lbs. And again at 300. It’s all so relative. And then, my own perception of what is fat changes over time, which from what I hear is quite common. I see some of those pictures Kateharding linked to the other day, the topless NYC photos, and some of those women look truly skinny to me, who are told they have to lose 4″ of their waist to model and I can’t fathom it. 30 years ago she might have looked chubby to me. Hard to say.
Excellent post to chew on, thanks.
All this information is good to know, because I am the living stereotype of an obese person. I eat like a pig and I don’t exercise. Well, not my whole life, but there is a whole backstore that would take up five pages. I’ve done my fair share of dieting – you name it, I’ve done it. I’m now 315 pounds, and sick of being told to exercise and eat healthy. Just leave me the hell alone, OK? Dieting has been NOTHING but failure and unhappiness for me.
On the whole I think the what is fat and what isn’t fat is a grey area and as long as you are using it as a positive term and not get it mixed up with hatred then it’s fine Like Julia I’m sort of size 10/12 and I think a bit fat is the best descriptive of me but then I look at my bmi and it tells me I’m obese. It’s all a bit silly. People I know often assure me I’m not fat (to which my response is ‘I don’t really care’) whereas strangers or someone I’m arguing with will call me fat as an insult (and on the good days I don’t care). I think that because it is a negative word ‘fat’ is a term people tend to people they don’t know, it’s used as a judgement word, people will call someone they don’t know fat when they would never dream of applying it to someone they know of the same size because it is soooo terrible (though I think once you get to love someone you stop seeing what size they are a bit anyway).
This was a bit of a rambling way to say I agree…
Hey everyone! I am new here.
I luv yoo, ms. kirby.
Will comment later on more stuff. I am just finding you, I think I just found this stuff yesterday- and lemme tell ya. I needed some fat solidarity. Just got diagnosed with PCOS and so now every support group I find on the internet is all about how I’d be perfectly fine if I just wasn’t so damn fat.
:: shakes an angry fist at the sky ::
So anyways, gotta go now but like I said, I am definitely probably gonna go thru this site and comment like a mad woman.