You know what? I hear talk from a lot of smaller women, even VERY SMALL women, about how they feel fat and how horrible it all is, and you know what?

I may be way fatter, I may envy their bodies, but absolutely the only thing that matters to me is that THESE WOMEN ARE FEELING PAIN.

The same fucked-up bullshit-packed asstastic culture that has browbeaten me into feeling lower than snake vomit because I weigh 200+ pounds is causing these women to hate themselves at much smaller sizes.

I would love to tell them, hey, look, you have it easier, you have it better, I would be happy to be you, but you know what?

I am bipolar.

The way this manifests for me is that I suffer almost constantly from a feeling of unhappiness, even when things are going well. Sometimes things are going great, and I am in horrible emotional pain, because that is what being bipolar is like for me.

Also, I grew up with a mother who, if I complained about physical or emotional pain, would only remind me of how much worse SHE had it. Her sympathy was impossible to gain. Frigging impossible. Unless what happened to me was worse than what happened to her by pretty much every measure known to humankind — not likely, because she did have a rough life — I was not shown sympathy. None.

So I know ALL ABOUT people saying “you have it so easy,” and conveniently forgetting that shit STILL HURTS ME. I know ALL ABOUT not being able to cope the way people think I should be coping, and how I should be grateful for what I have because other people want it. I know ALL ABOUT people giving me the stinkeye because I had a bad day and am now nonfunctional with nothing that actually EVEN HAPPENED to blame it on, when they just had some catastrophically horrible thing happen to THEM, and they remain functional.

So now I don’t judge. Pain is pain. Respect other people’s experiences. That’s all I ask, and that’s at the heart of what I try to do.

We can acknowledge differences and similarities without creating a hierarchy of pain.

A lot of people do not understand this, but that implies that there is a level of pain below which you don’t get compassion shown to you, and above which you no longer have to show compassion to anyone else. And that isn’t true. We ALL share the only trait necessary for us to be worthy of compassion when we are in pain: we are human beings.

At base, if the whole FA message is that it does not matter if you are fat or not, that we are all entitled to be treated as human, equally, why should it matter how fat we are when it comes to accepting one anothers’ experiences of body hate in our culture? The very fact that there are very fat folks who love their bodies and very thin people who are miserable about theirs shows that body size is not really any insulation against this culture’s slings and arrows.

I hope that made sense, and I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I am having kind of a shitty day all of a sudden, and may not be at my articulate best.

Thanks for this clear and well-written post.

The way that I can relate to this issue the best is to imagine all of my past (younger) selves lined up in front of a mirror. There’s the teenage me- at what seems now a ridiculously low weight- standing in front of the mirror in her bathing suit grimacing at her reflection, hating herself to the core, and trying to pull sections of her thighs or butt to the side to see what she “should” look like. There’s the college student frowning at her hips that won’t let her fit into jeans. There’s the young woman realizing she doesn’t fit any of her older interview clothes and freaking out that she’ll never be hired looking so sloppy. There’s the newly married bride who can’t stand her wedding photos- seeing only loose arms and back rolls. All those girls and women suffered- hideously- for failing to meet some inwardly adopted version of society’s weight standard. Most of those women aren’t sizes that I would call fat now, but they thought they were and they hurt. I wish I go back and tell myself to be kinder to myself… That won’t happen, but I can empathize with anyone, of any size, who projects society’s hate onto herself.

Very well written and very true.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a while back. I was complaining about how it felt unfair that I’m “too fat” to be on the regular Bachelor, but “too thin” to be on More to Love. It felt as though I was being told that I’m too fat to be on regular tv, but too small to be a “real woman.” My friend was saying that she totally understands. She’s a size 2/4 and I’m a 10/12. Honestly, a size 2 or 4 doesn’t resonate with me. That’s thinner than I’ll ever be and thinner than I can ever imagine being.

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t entitled to have issues with her body.

Oh, dear.
I think I’m glad I missed the fight, wherever it was.

@Ashley

Now at a size 12/14 or so I feel great in my body, and frankly I’m damn pissed that people think I’m fat.

If fat is a neutral word/descriptor, why are you pissed that people think you are fat? Are you perhaps saying you are angry about fat discrimination, not about being fat?

I don’t even want to know how much worse larger fats have it. But thank you for acknowledging that us smaller fats still get treated as if we were fat.

I find it probematic that you don’t want to acknowledge/learn more about the experience of larger fat, but are happy when your smaller fat experience is acknowledged.

I think listening to the experiences of a wide variety of fat people is crucial for fat acceptance. Listenign and acknowledging the diversity of experience helps us learn empathy and understanding. It strengthens us.

But Meems, doesn’t that speak to some of the difficulty of this topic? Sure, as a 10/12 myself I totally get where you’re coming from–I’m around “average” sizewise, I think, but I am well into the “overweight” range and that opens me up to all the usual criticism leveled at the “overweight and obese.” My weight–around 180 lbs.–is not a number that pretty much any woman who has been immersed in popular culture for the last 50 years would consider desirable. People who weigh as much as me are in magazine articles and diet ads all the time blathering about how they’re afraid they won’t live to see their kids grow up (as ridiculous as that is). If you took a photo of me in a bathing suit and put it online, my cellulite and loose skin and big thighs would be the object of ridicule and disgust and diagnoses of “morbid obesity” to the very ends of the internet.

However, there have been times when I have seen discussions in the fatosphere where people are astonished that a size 10 would consider herself anywhere near the ballpark of fat. (I mean, I’m more of a 12, but I do own some 10s.) I think some people in that situation would consider smaller in-betweenies like ourselves to have more in common (in terms of the type of crap we face or don’t face in everyday life) with your 2/4 friend than we do with, say, a size 26/28 woman. And I can see that side of the argument too. It’s just kind of complicated. Maybe we don’t disagree… I’m mostly just rambling.

I don’t believe in dichotomies imposed on us by outsiders (usually with nefarious purpose) either, but I can sort of see why there are whole different sets of issues associated with 2 or 3 loosely delineated groups of sizes, as Marianne posted. I too missed whatever the kerfuffle was, but I guess my take is that it’s best to put yourself in others’ shoes and be aware of and sensitive to any issues that might affect their size range disproportionately, and to keep in mind that even though we all face crap and sometimes discrimination, it usually does seem to get worse the fatter you are.

I am sort of guilty of this, having a hard time thinking of a woman who wears sizes in the 12/14 range as fat, but in my defense, I’m kinda old, in my early 40s. And when I was growing up, a size 14 was a hell of a lot smaller than it is now, due to vanity sizing. So I get this weird disconnect when I am, say, reading a post at Fatshionista, and the poster is wearing a size 14, and I look at them, and think, wait, she looks to be more like a size 18 to me. My perception is all messed up in this area; I can SEE why the poster is identifying as fat (especially given how savagely society judges where women in particular fall on the thin/fat spectrum) but my brain is still stuck back in my teenage fat girl trauma years, where a 14 was running on the high end of “acceptable,” and I have trouble squaring what I think I know about that number with what is standing right in front of me. I do wonder sometimes if others in my age range experience the same weird disconnect.

Oh. I hadn’t realised I was an in-betweenie (I’m from the UK, so sizings are different, but I’m a UK 14 these days). Thankyou
x

Just to clarify, I have no idea what the conflict was that sparked the post. But I’ve been pondering some of these thoughts just on a personal “what does it mean to say I’m fat” level (at about 200 lbs and size 18, I’m probably on the high end of being an in-betweeny?) and it’s fantastic to read such a sane take on the whole thing.

My experience at 210 *now* is a whole lot better than my experience at 210 in high school.

Yes. I do think age has quite a bit to do with it. I was about a size 14/16 in my late teens and early twenties, and I’m a 16/18 now in my early thirties. When I was younger, my experience was quite different than it is now. Honestly, while I would objectively describe myself as “fat,” I don’t feel fat very often at this point. I’m kind of average-sized for most of my friends and neighbors. I may just be lucky, or it might be because I’m on an SSRI and am in good health and have a child, but I haven’t had a doctor make an issue of my weight in at least six or seven years. At the places where I shop, I tend to fit into both the higher end of the straight sizes and the lower end of the plus sizes, so l don’t have any problem finding clothing. I’m happily married and my husband loves me and my body, so I don’t really feel any pressure to measure up to some external image.

But, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, it was different. I was, at a 14/16, too big for a lot of junior’s clothing but too small for most plus clothing (plus, it just wasn’t stuff I wanted to wear). I got far more comments about my weight, from relatives (luckily, not my parents!) and doctors. I often felt like I was the fattest person in whatever setting I was in, and everybody else seemed to be dieting all the time and hating their body, even though they were thinner than me. It never bothered me all that much, but it was definitely more difficult then than it is now, and I’m sure age has a lot to do with it. Being an “in-betweenie” is, at least in my experience, harder when you are younger than when you are older. I’ve found that, as I get older, most of the people I know have gotten larger (as people normally do with age, as women normally do after having babies, and as happens to most people after years of yo-yo dieting), and I’ve become more “average.”

So even for me, I tend to hear people who are my size or smaller complaining about their experiences, and at times I find myself thinking, “What are they talking about?! It’s not hard! Do they have any idea what larger people go through?” But, so much is the context you are in, both mentally and physically, and, as Marianne points out, there is a big difference between noting privilege (which I do think those of us who have more “socially-acceptable” fat bodies have) and dismissing another person’s lived experience.

I’ve been reading an article about stigma and coping among teh “obese” (I hate that that word is thrown around…even knowning that if I decide to write a paper for an academic journal, I’ll probably be forced to use it). One of the interesting that has been found in studies is the way in which stigmatized populations distance themselves from people who are more noticeably apart of the stigmatized group, by using arbitrary standards. (i.e. I am thinner than she…I am lighter skinned…I speak the language…whatever the signifier might be).

However, this kind of thing feels a bit like “divide and conquer.” How can I as a fat woman benefit from thin privilege in a way that my heavier compatriot cannot. We need to remember that such “privilege” is very brittle and easily lost when I am the only standard of fat in any given room.

Thanks for the thought provoking post.

My all-time favourite Shapely Prose blog was about this (http://kateharding.net/2008/05/06/how-it-works/ )

Everytime someone tells me that I’m not that fat I quote in my head “but they’re not there when…”

You know, living400lbs, I think we need to start our own TV show, ala “I Want To Save Your Life.” We could call it “I Want You To Know That Us Super Obese Gals Are Not Bedridden Welfare Queens.” We can stalk people while the cameras roll and show them our paystubs from work, and invite them into our homes and demonstrate how we can get out of bed in the morning.