It’s been a bit busy at Chez Rotund but I have many, many personal and fat things to talk about!
Right now, though – and man, does it feel early in the morning right now, I have this link to my most recent piece for Comment Is Free.
They recently received a comment wondering if… wait for if… fat people know they are fat.
*facepalm*
Fat is a humanist issue
The “eat less and exercise more” comments are making quite the showing, as are the “it’s your own fault for being fat” comments. But there’s some good discussion that is cropping up, too. I’m always surprised by how that goes.
Also, for the visitors wondering about the tagline – that’s a direct response to an accusation by a radio caller that I could justify my existence however I want; fat people don’t need to justify their existence!
53 Comments
Um…I hope you don’t get mad at me for pointing this out…but I read through “Fat is a humanist issue” and I’m wondering if the commenter you were quoting confused the word “obese” with “overweight.” They may have been talking about how people on the low end of the BMI classification of overweight may not realize they qualify as overweight.
Elizebeth, that is totally one interpretation! I’ve only got their words to go on, though, you know? I read the discussion when I was commissioned to write the article, and my article was where I wound up afterwards.
And no, why would I get mad? *grin*
I think the “doesn’t he/she know he/she’s FAT?!?” can quite easily apply to those of us who are more blatantly fat, shall we say. Hell, it’s all over the place in the press currently because of Gabby Sidibe and “Precious”. Living a life in a public and enjoyable fashion if you’re fat is a mindblowing concept to a lot of people because it’s been hammered into everyone’s heads over and over again that if you’re fat, you’re miserable, life is a horrorshow, and you must do everything you can to get rid of that fat so you can experience what “true happiness” is.
I find it weird that so many people are complaining about you writing the article. What, do they think you write for pure pleasure and force the CiF folks to publish your stuff?
Also, did you know that 3500 calories = one pound? Didja? Huh, fatty, didja?
eyeroll sprain
I don’t think you have to be obese to get hassled for fatness.
I am tall, with a very broad build. At my thinnest, I was still over 200 pounds and wearing a size 14 (that’s at 5′9″. I have size 12 feet, to give some impression of my build– I’m a big person). In spite of the fact that at this lowest weight I was eating nothing but tuna and oatmeal and logging 12+ hours a week in the gym, and you could see my ribs, I still got shit from strangers for my supposed fatness. Moreso than I do now at a size 18, actually. Maybe jerks can smell low self-esteem? :p (Disclaimer: I don’t think any of the above was good or healthy.)
So anybody (I’d wager women specifically) who is not willowy and petite probably hears about how fat they are.
I certainly did. Not only that, I heard it before I was actually fat! I heard it in the television ads and my mother’s diet obsessions and my aunt’s putting my 11 year old cousin on Weight Watchers — and all this while I was officially willowy: 5′9″ and 140 lbs. I hit 147 that summer and started dieting, because I wasn’t wearing 8s anymore, so I must have been a fatty fat fatty.
Strangely enough, a decade and more than 100 lbs. later, I’m generally happy with my body, and I keep the same size by Not Dieting (totally because of FA bloggers like, you, Marianne).
My mother used to “worry” about my weight at me, but then I just started talking about all the things I could do, and how great my blood pressure and cholesterol is, and how much fun it is to walk around the city all day, and somehow she gets the idea that maybe I don’t want to talk about my weight.
Now, if she can just believe that I’m healthy long enough that I can *show* her how much butter I put in my cooking; then, I think we’ll have gotten somewhere.
It always makes me a little confused, sad and annoyed to see that people treat the statement that “obesity costs the NHS £ X billion a year!!!eleventyone” as if it were gospel, as if the Archangel Gabriel had handed them a tablet of gold to that effect.
There’s simply heaps of methodology behind a headline statement like that. It’s worth critically evaluating it, or at least being open to the idea that it can be critically evaluated. But no, people prefer the tablet of gold approach.
An anti-science current in society and a feeling that society needs a scapegoat – it never ends well, does it? It’s nice that there are commenters in that thread who are exploring the ideas of “manners” and “live and let live” and “using statistics properly,” but oh, there are so few of them.
Your article was nicely put. I started to read the comments, however, and closed the page. Such ugliness people show under the guise of anonymity.
I even missed most of the first comments, but I could tell they were doozies. Some people have some real reading comprehension failures when it comes to fat acceptance.
All that bullying you mentioned, and there it is in the comments again.
I am aware of my fatness as well.
One thing I find fascinating though is that I was aware of my fatness back when I was a teen as well – and was certainly made aware of it by teachers, doctors, members of my peer group, etc. Yet, looking at old photos of myself, I wasn’t anything like as fat as I thought I was – indeed I find it difficult even recognising the person in the picture.
Maybe – just maybe – if people weren’t so obsessed with labelling people as “fat”, “obese” etc. we’d have a lot more people around who are both happier and healthier. Regardless of their body type.
i have said this exact thing as I develop my foundation in the FA movement. I am 43 years old 390. When I look at photos of myself I see a cute kid that has a few extra pounds. As a child I was taught that I was inappropriately fat and teased as TR described. forget school, and kids, just from my parents alone, who took my fat as their failure, I was bribed, weight watchered, diet doctored, fat camped, punished and have one particular painful memory of my father dragging a 11 year old me out of bed at 6am to force me to do jumping jacks and because my effort wasn’t enthusiastic enough, he viciously called me a fat horse, walked away and didn’t speak to me for 2 days.
Today I wonder, (and hope for todays fat kids) that if I was nurtured to be the best, healthiest, me I could be as a boy if I would weigh less than I do today.
Even if it would not have made a difference in my body, I sure would have loved to take a pass on the three decades of self hate and sense of unworthiness that was my inner life until I found the FA/HAES community.
I’m so sorry these things happened to you, and even sorrier that your experiences are not unusual.
“and even sorrier that your experiences are not unusual”
sniper, when i first got here i was like, wow these FA activist are an angry bunch, but now I feel compelled to contribute & to do what I can to help bring on the change that will make experiences like these unusual. I know I am still a zygot in the FA world, but this is the world I am moving to… it beats the crap out of the world I grew up in.
Awww, crap, Ivan, I’m sorry. I’ll tell you, FA is good for me now – but more importantly, I don’t want to participate in a world that continues to do that sort of harm to kids.
“I don’t want to participate in a world that continues to do that sort of harm to kids.”
Arwen, I think that although painful, participation in the world that does this sort of harm to kids in necessary if I am going to effect any change in that world.
It is difficult to consider participating (let alone moving around easily) in that world as a 390 lb man, however, if I believe that our culture’s hatred of fat people is wrong, I need to stand up against it even if it hurts my knees to stand up for a long time.
Exactly! Me, too! At 140 pounds at 5′4″, everyone had me convinced I was morbidly obese and that this was a bad thing.
Thanks to the pediatrician I had when I was 10 (smaller that what I cite above; that was high school), I am now terrified of doctors, even nice ones who don’t tell me all of my problems are due to being fat.
It would be nice if we could at least let the children* get away with being overweight before people start telling them there is something profoundly wrong and it’s all their fault.
I’m much fatter now, but I’m actually starting to feel better about myself as a person. I feel that, regardless of my weight now or then, if I hadn’t been so put down for my weight as a child, I’d be a much more secure and better adjusted person now.
This was my starting place, as well. And other than pregnancy, the ONLY time I’ve not been weight stable (ie: have gained weight) is after a diet. I don’t really have a problem where I am now anymore, but if I am representative of the obesity epidemic, my heavier-thans are all due to restriction.
THIS.
Of course, there were OTHER times that I’ve mysteriously gained weight, not after purposeful dieting: after insufficient eating due to stress and/or depression.
But still, same concept. I don’t eat enough, my body corrects for that problem, and BAM! I have 10 more pounds stored for the next famine (self induced or otherwise).
Oh, does this sound familiar. I was a very similar size to LF (same weight, just a fraction taller). I wasn’t really teased at school, where my weight and size were very average; I just had my very thin mother telling me I was huge and disgusting all the time.
Earlier this year, I was sorting through some old photos at my brother’s and realized I wasn’t actually a bad looking kid at all. In fact, I remember getting compliments from people, but I was basically told that they were ‘not telling you the truth, only being polite’…so often that I stopped believing them. Don’t know if that made me any fatter – my guess is probably no more than I would have been – but it led to some real long-term problems with self-esteem.
I think there needs to be some sort of scheme for mentors for fat kids. Not to get them thin, but to teach them how to love themselves and develop the confidence they need for their lives. But in this warped day and age, I suspect teaching fat kids that they’re lovable and worthy as they are would be construed as ‘abuse’.
Utterly frivolous comment:
Every time you write a CiF article, someone seems to mention that fat people eat too many kebabs.
WTF kebabs? Are kebabs the British version of doughnuts? I mean, I know kebabs are meat (and sometimes veggies) onna stick. But I’m not used to seeing meat onna stick vilified as the One True Source of Fatness. Weird little cultural difference, which (to get a bit less flippant) does in some ways point at how our narratives of the Cause of the Fat are culturally constructed.
now i want a baby kabob. and you know what i mean by that.
I have no idea what the particular CiF obsession with kebabs is, since “fat people eat too many kebabs” is not an opinion I’ve seen respresented with such interesting specificity anywhere else. (”Fat people eat too much junk food” is, of course, commonplace.)
I suppose it might come from the fact that kebabs tend to be what British people eat on the way back from a night out drinking, typically with chips or a pizza. So…alcohol + fatty foods = death fatty? I don’t really know, I’ve never eaten a kebab in my life and here I am at almost 200lbs, so who can say.
And what I failed to say there is that “drinks too much”, “eats junk food”, etc are all stereotypes of those horrible poor people, who we all know sit around all day on benefits stuffing their faces and stealing my tax money, etc. Kebabs are just the British version. Mmm, classism, health snobbery, unexmainged privilege and fatphobia. A heady mix.
*unexamined.
Done serial posting, I promise.
Ugg, do jerks know they are jerks? Just the generalizations of any group is apalling. I am sure there are some weighty people that go about life without being overly concerned about it (me, Hello!) but I certainly am aware of the judgements made at family get togethers and social gathering…even if no one says anything out loud.
zingerella – this is a US/UK confusion. They don’t mean shishkebab. They mean doner kebab.
Which, in England, is what you see when you walk by certain “low class” fast food places on the street, with what looks like an “elephant leg” in the window, a giant stack of meat slowly rotating.
It’s popular takeaway, and also popularly mocked for being horrible. I can’t tell you much more because I don’t eat it. It’s not actually eaten on a stick, though, just cooked on one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab#United_Kingdom
Ah. Okay. Thanks!
We have donairs here, only they’re mostly called donair sandwiches, or donairs, or gyros (in Greek neighbourhoods, like mine) as I understand it. There’s a lot of slowly roatating meat onna stake in my neighbourhood, too, but it doesn’t receive the same stigma, I don’t think.
I also don’t eat it, because it’s meat, but I do buy falafel sandwiches from the same shops, with reasonable frequency.
I think the class associations are interesting, and they seem to support my theory that kebabs are the U.K. version of doughnuts in the anti-fat discourse.
Also: “Kebab” in the UK can be shorthand for any of the other foods one might buy at a chippie. At least in my experience.
Mocked for being horrible, but they are mighty tasty. And covered with all kinds of salads and relish! It was the cheapest food I could find as a student that had actual fresh vegetables on.
How they got to have a reputation for being unhealthy as opposed to fish & chips, I’ll never know.
zingerella, I tend to think the UK equivalent of the doughnut is more often the pie. Possibly related to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Ate_All_the_Pies%3F
- but in recent years, spreading into general obesity-related discussions until it appears to be the one food fat people are most often urged to ‘put down’.
(I’m not hot on meat pies, and I speak as someone who lives next door to a chippy. Used to like a chicken doner, now and again, when we lived near a kebab shop; at least you could tell the chicken was chicken, whereas I was never sure about the thing in the window. Still never something I’d eat a lot of, though, and I understand why they’re steretyped as things you only eat when you’re drunk.)
Mmm pies.
I can’t believe how many comment the post has gotten so far! I am personally tired of having to register everywhere I would like to comment, so I will leave my comment here:
“Imogenblack
I wander has the definition of fat changed in the last fifteen – twenty years?
I don’t think so, but many more Brits are becoming obese. In the USA it seems that obesity has almost become accepted as the norm in this expanding consumer society simply because more people are moving in this direction.”
Wow. This dude, “Bluecloud”, really didn’t get what the article was about. In other words: Hello! It is not acceptable to be fat! Otherwise, how would we know we are fat, and why would people feel the need to point it out? Did he even read the article? Sheesh! And people thinking that an American shouldn’t be writing at a British newssource. Hello? When they say we can’t relate to how fat people cost the NHS more- what do they think we are doing in America right now with the healthcare bill? Argh matey. Some people just don’t get it.
I just had a sudden brain lightning storm– If being fat is my own damn problem, why the hell are other people always so concerned about fixing me?
Are they, maybe, trying to focus on someone else so they don’t have to fix their own damn problems?
I read your Guardian article and was gobsmacked by the number of nasty responses. Fat truly is the new whipping boy.
many obese people do not see themselves as fat, whereas those of us who put on a few pounds do recognise the fact,
You must be joking, it’s the other way around, most people don’t realise they count as ‘overweight’ and some think they are slim-because that’s their identity- and don’t realise they are like, 5 pounds away from being obese.
And notice how that doesn’t give them pause at all, they want something else, what are you going to do about it? etc,
As ridiculous as this sounds, I’m curious what the other person meant by the words “know” and “fat.”
For example, I know that that capital of New York is Albany, but I don’t normally think about it or talk about it.
I also know that I’m female, and I think about that more often (most immediate example I could think of, just came back from a public bathroom!)
I know that I should be doing work right now, and if I someone were to call me on the phone I’d be most likely to talk about work. I’d be very unlikely to discuss the capital of NY or being female because neither of those are newsworthy or at all relevant in the moment.
I think for a lot of us in FA, being fat is knowledge that’s in the background and we don’t feel the need to announce it or talk about it all the time. For someone who just gained weight, it is something new that would be put into a conversation.
Now, the word “fat.”
A lot of people may realize that they are fat, but not the BMI degree of fatness. Generally people mean looking or not looking fat when they describe someone as being fat. So if someone is a smaller clothing size or “looks” thin, it comes as more of a surprise if medically they’re overweight. There’s also a certain perception of what “obese” looks like, when really it starts at smaller than people realize. So someone may know they’re generically/socially overweight fat, but not know that they’re obese fat.
Someone who’s gained weight and is concerned by it may be more likely to pull out a scale and a weight or BMI chart and discover what classification of fat they really are. So the one who gained 10 lbs may know now that he or she is “fat” (overweight) while the heavier person knows they’re fat, but doesn’t know they’re obese.
Finally, knowing and caring are two very different things.
My theory; what the real question this dingus is asking is “How can fat people possibly know they’re fat without being too ashamed to leave their houses? How do so many fat people stand the horrible shame of their horrible fatness??”
Somewhere inside, he’s bought the idea that fat people can be shamed into thinness. And yet, here are all these fat people, walking around like regular humans, not dying of shame! His mind just can’t handle it. They must just *not know* they’re fat…otherwise, they’d never be out and about, but home in their basements, starving their way to acceptibility.
thought you might enjoy THIS.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/passiveaggressive/4083844807/
i can barely wrap my (big fat) brain around the notion of handing someone that note.
There are some other winners in that photostream, like this one.
Spoken as one who has been accused of being, from time to time, rather more “confrontational”. Which all Westerners know is, for a lady, the sin of sins.
No wonder the West is full of eating disorders, addictions, disorders, afflictions. You keep cr*p like this inside you, it’s going to corrode your insides one way or another.
(As I’ve seen all too frequently among family and friends, thus being dubbed the “confrontational” one.)
I was angry at the venom against the 300 pound vegetarian that bikes everywhere. My man is a 300 pound vegetarian and he doesn’t eat any ‘junk food’ and eats less than me his 150 pound significant other. I’m the one that eats ‘junk food’.
Why can’t people believe that metabolism varies from person to person and a heavy person can be eating and exercising and still not be losing any weight? If it was as easy as eating less and exercising more, we would all be doing it.
I lost some weight from taking up exercising a couple of years. I had to exercise more and more just to keep the weight off. It got to the point that I needed to work out four hours a day just not to gain weight. I didn’t want to do it any longer and I gained back the weight that I lost when I started exercising in less than a month. It took over a year of exercising to lose 30 pounds and in a month it was back.
I’m annoyed that I have those 30 pounds back; no one wants to think weight loss is temporary. I’m trying to get back to exercising, but I’m only walking and doing housework now. I can’t get myself back to do more strenuous stuff; I’m burned out.
I’m sorry, but those comments about eating less and exercising more get my goat.
I am the 300 pound vegetarian – and actually, I don’t think the reactions to what I said were surprising at all. These days, I try to stay away from discussions like the one at CiF (if you can call it a discussion if one side accuses the other constantly of either lying or being delusional while at the same time ignoring the main point of the article). However, I think it is also important to get our experiences and views out there from time to time (even if they are ignored by most people).
I was suprised, though, by the degree to which people were willing to assume that I must be lying/ must be delusional. I mean, honestly – to hint that someone is so delusional, they don’t know they eat meat? I also find it interesting that in discussions like this it is constantly ignored that there is evidence that quite a number of people gain back more weight than they have lost after a diet and end up at a weight higher than the one they would have if they never had dieted in the first place. Plus, even if all fat people would conform 100% to the fatty stereotype* how does that make it okay to publicly harass us? I would to some degree understand how this would justify public health campaigns targeting fat people or even higher health care premiums for fat people, but how does “overeating and being lazy” justify things like public name calling or the refusal to offer stylish (and often professional) clothing in larger sizes?
*I yet have to meet a single person to conforms to that stereotype 100%. I myself conform to it to some degree – namely that I have a really problematic relationship with food. Ironically enough, though, it is likely that the experience of being fat in a fatphobic society contributed to that relationship.
Awesome article!!
(but yes, avoid them comments…sheesh)
I have been fat since age 6 (almost like my body knew school was about to start so I better get on it to receive maximum teasing). I identify a lot with what you wrote….a lot.
I just taught an article on fat rights to my students and their honest befuddlement and perhaps less honest derision was really striking to me. I didn’t ‘come out’ and take a position on it, but um, I am the fattest person in the room. I wonder if they wondered if I knew I was fat?
I left a comment there. It goes like this:
It seems like a lot of these comments are totally missing the boat.
What the fuck is wrong with being nice to all people, regardless of size or anything else? My body and/or health are not something you have any right to comment on. You have no idea why I am fat, just like I have no idea why your body is however it is. Maybe I eat too much, maybe I don’t. It’s not something you need to be concerned with. My body is my own and I’ll take care of it how I see fit, thanks.
And the thing is… and this is what really chaps my ass… I am not fat for lack of dieting or trying to be thin. In fact, if dieting worked most women would be thin. Most of us have dieted at some point in our lives. This is not and issue of “put down the muffin, fatty.” I don’t eat any more than my thin friends and I don’t exercise any less. I am not lazy, unmotivated, or undisciplined. I am just fat. And even if I can starve my body down for a short period of time, even eating very well, I don’t stay thin. It’s just not how my body works. I think it’s partially genetic– I come from a very long line of fatties.
So stop making this an issue about morality. Don’t tell me to be less fat and I won’t have to tell you to be less of an asshole.
I come from a family where everyone is overweight and more than a few are obese. When we get together at family functions, yes, we like to eat, but the majority of the time, we are all pretty healthy in our food choices. It truly is genetic in my family. My mom always says that the only acceptable prejudice anymore is that against the overweight. One interesting thing that I have noticed in my family (and myself) is that when one of us does manage to take some weight off, we never can see it in the mirror. We are so used to being told how fat we are, looking at anorexic models, and feeling guilt about the fact that we opted for a doughnut instead of bran cereal that morning that we can’t take any delight in our new figures. But yes, we all know we are fat. Every one of us.
I can’t even begin to understand how someone could believe that in this society, fat people might not be aware of the fact that they’re fat. It’s not like we’re not constantly told by everyone.
I also tend to agree with emjaybee about the question behind this being how fat people can be fat, know it, and not do anything to change it as quickly as possible.
My theory; what the real question this dingus is asking is “How can fat people possibly know they’re fat without being too ashamed to leave their houses? How do so many fat people stand the horrible shame of their horrible fatness??”
Bingo.
DRST
My mom always says that the only acceptable prejudice anymore is that against the overweight.
Have the other prejudices been outlawed? Nobody told me!
Yeah, any statement involving “X is the last acceptable prejudice” kinda chaps my hide. It’s not like no one is racist, sexist, homophobic, cissexist, etc. anymore and has funneled all of their energy into hating fatties. People still hold any number of prejudices, and not all of them are widely considered “unacceptable”.
Heh. Didn’t you get your memo?
I also tend to agree with emjaybee about the question behind this being how fat people can be fat, know it, and not do anything to change it as quickly as possible.
Yes. This.
It’s interesting how many people on there seem to admit that, OK, ‘good’ fatties who are trying to lose weight may not deserve the vitriol that ‘bad’ fatties do…but when I asked how they tell the difference, they were strangely silent.
The truth is, I don’t think they really care – as witness their responses to the many fat people who are eating healthily and exercising: they simply don’t believe it. Or don’t believe it if it isn’t focused on, or doesn’t result in, weight loss.
This, I think, is why it’s all the more important to press for all fat people to be treated decently, regardless of health behaviors – actual or assumed. Promoting health is a great thing, sure, but respect should come as standard with being human. No conditions attached.
they simply don’t believe it
Absolutely. I thought about that a lot during the last few months, and the only conclusion I came to is that people just don’t believe fat people could do anything like eating healthy or exercising – simply because they’re seeing fat people through the “stereotypical fattie” lens. There’s this preconceived notion of the fat, lazy slob glutting herself with junk food and never getting up from the couch, and it’s almost impossible to get it out of people’s heads.
What’s interesting in this context is that if an average or even very thin person does that, people will usually see her as “lucky” because she can afford it without getting fat, while a fat person doing the same is disgusting.
Or don’t believe it if it isn’t focused on, or doesn’t result in, weight loss.
Yes, because certainly, if fat people really did it, then they should lose weight and wouldn’t be fat any more.
Even if the non-weight-loss results in size loss, I’d wager. I’m a size or two smaller than I was this time last year (I was four months postpartum at the time), but guess what? I still weigh the same. I must have been stuffing my face, not building muscle as I pushed a stroller around the city and walked everywhere I went. Now that I have a 30-lb toddler to toss in the air, I’m obviously not gaining any upper body strength either. *facepalm*
Oh, and my pediatrician reassured me that my baby wasn’t in fact Teh Deth Fatz (TM) without my even having to ask, wasn’t that sweet? *headdesk* It’s not like the 99th percentile for height and head circumference was at all related to hir being almost 90th percentile for weight!
Ok, I’m rambling now. I’ll stop.
Meh. This “fat people don’t know they’re fat” business is getting so stupid. I assume it’s all based on that YouGov/SlimmingWorld study showing *obese* people don’t know they’re *obese*. Which is understandable, since people usually assume “obese” means someone larger than the BMI charts label as such, and most obese people don’t look all *that* fat, to themselves or others (my evidence: illustrated BMI categories and BMI project). They look “chubby”, “overweight”, “plump”, “could lose a few pounds”, “heavyset”, but not what most people picture when they hear “obese”. (And, in fact, until the categories were changed, *weren’t* considered even officially “obese”).
I admit – I’m obese according to BMI and wouldn’t identify with that term if I hadn’t calculated it. Do I know I’m outrageously fat according to Ralph Lauren? Hell yeah, and I couldn’t care less. Do I know that I’m fat to obnoxious frat boys? Yes, and I also don’t care. According to the typical observer, I’m probably on the “chubby” side of average, in proportion to my height (which is tall) and I’m fine with that. To me, I’m the very definition of normal (how else could it be?). To my much taller (but thin) husband, I’m “little” and “cute”. And it’s all good.
It’s all relative. If more people would give up the idea of objective reality “out there” it would put an end to all this nonsense…