One of the things that bothered me during the Nightline taping was that I got referred to as the leader of the fat acceptance movement. I planned to address it but then MeMe Roth started talking and, well, you know.
So I’m addressing it here, after a week or so of thinking about it. Here’s what I think:
FA doesn’t really have a central leadership body. There’s NAAFA, but NAAFA doesn’t work for everyone, you know? And they do some great work and I’m proud to know the members that I know but….
It isn’t a body to which I look for leadership.
There’s a bunch of us bloggers. But we’re, as much as I love the internet and the powerful community that we build here, still such a new force in the history of FA.
So who are our leaders?
You are.
Every individual.
FA is deeply, inescapably personal. The thing that, I believe, MeMe Roth and people like her fundamentally do not grasp is that when they talk about obesity as a concept, they are talking about MY BODY, YOUR BODY, and you don’t get much more personal than that. Even if you aren’t fat, the things that anti-fat body-shaming crusaders tout as perfectly reasonable are damaging. They teach us to hate our bodies for the things we cannot control through force of will, teach us that we – and our bodies – are failures.
Half of the battle for FA has to be fought in our own heads – rejecting the message that we are grotesque or lazy or stupid or any other number of adjectives. It’s a constant struggle – not because we aren’t good at rejecting the message but because the message is constant and sometimes overwhelming and because a lifetime of habit can be seriously hard to break.
The other half is the outside battle – it’s walking down the street past the group of snickering teens; it’s standing up for yourself with doctors; it’s insisting on equal treatment from sales clerks.
Which is such a damn ridiculous issue on which to have to take a stand, am I right?
FA intersects with other oppressions, too. There’s nothing simple about it, as much as we might wish there were some days. FA in the context of poverty, of race, of sexual orientation and/or identification, of illness and invisible illness – and sometimes all at once – means that we aren’t even all fighting the same battles.
That’s why you as an individual, you as a person with unique context and experience, are a leader in the Fat Acceptance community. This is personal stuff, y’all. We look to each other for inspiration, strength, reminders of our failings when it comes to remembering intersectionality or just different communication styles. Hell, I turn to the fat blogs for fashion discussion and sales notifications!
FA is not one voice. It is hundreds of voices, thousands of voices – hopefully one day hundreds of thousands of voices – all loudly saying, “This is my body.”
23 Comments
What struck me after watching you on Nightline is that the only anti-fat acceptance people on the show (and who are willing to speak out in the media for their side in general) have huge emotional investments in not being fat themselves and come across as irrational (from the fear in the author’s eyes that you wanted to take away her nutrition labels to MeMe’s crazyness). Yet we are all surrounded by people who agree with them: people who judge everyone else on their size, but don’t say anything about it, the concern trolls, the shamers, the dirty lookers, the people who refuse to even make small talk with fat strangers, etc.
Yet these people don’t stop and think, “hey, these people who agree with me are kinda crazy. Maybe I should rethink my views here.”
Also? I am having post-traumatic MeMe flashbacks and keep imagining what I’d say to her if given the chance, which, of course, gets me all whipped up into a frenzy of anger. Time will heal, but I also bought a bag of potato chips this week in a Take That MeMe gesture. But I still kept to eating my usual amount at a time instead of eating the whole bag. Apparently MeMe can make me hate shop, but not hate eat. She has no power over me, bwah, ha ha!
Ha, through total coincidence, I happened to be nibbling at a piece of chocolate cake when I decided I was able to watch the Nightline ep. And as is typical for me and sweets, I had a few small bites and then put the rest away for another (many other) time(s). Where it sits in my fridge, in plastic wrap, untouched, days later.
I took great pleasure in thinking to myself “MeMe Roth is terrified of this cake because she doesn’t believe herself – or by extension, anyone else – to be capable of having just a few bites and stopping.”
I am getting, more and more, the impression that the fervent anti-obesity campaigners have such fucked up relationships with food that they cannot imagine anyone – much less fat people – having any other sort of relationship with it.
You make a REALLY excellent point. FA isn’t about making people have one body type; we don’t hate skinny people or think they need to be fat. But the anti-obesity crowd is very invested in making people conform to a single body ideal.
I need to think about this more!
I came across this post by another Tumblr-user a few days ago and reposted it for my own followers: http://donewiththisshit.tumblr.com/post/417765706/beautiful-bodies
I think it really speaks to what FA is all about.
@Jen,
wow, you sure have a way of trivializing mental illness.
Everything bad = crazy.
And you have post-traumatic MeMe flashbacks?
She may be truly irritating, but it’s not like she raped you, is it?
This is beautifully said.
A people united will never be defeated!
Thank you.
I like this a lot: “This is my body!”
I think I will say it in my head all day today.
THIS IS MY BODY!
I feel like we probably don’t tell ourselves this enough.
This is beautiful.
Thank you very much.
Yet these people don’t stop and think, “hey, these people who agree with me are kinda crazy. Maybe I should rethink my views here.”
So right.
I thought you and Crystal were fab. Blondes were not having more fun that day.
I did laugh a couple of times over how it was sort of the blondes versus the brunettes! I doubt it was intentional but it gave me a good lol.
Wonderful, wonderful post! When she called you the leader, a question mark went up in my head for a second, because fat acceptance has actually existed for a lot longer than this circle of blog and even before blogging became big thing. There is no one leader. Thanks for clearing this up!
You bet.
And, really, because we all come to fat acceptance from different places, I think that influences who we look toward as well. For example, it wasn’t the concept of body acceptance itself that got me into FA – it was Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight and the idea of bodily control as being a way to control women.
This post reminded me of this great Tim Minchin song (link here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6cX5jh7p6I)
The relevant portion:
This is my body
And I live in it
It’s 31
And 6 months old
It’s changed a lot since it was new
It’s done stuff it wasn’t built to do
I often try to fill it up with wine
And the weirdest thing about it is
I spend so much time hating it
But it never says a bad word about me
This is my body
And it’s fine
It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time
It’s not perfect
But it’s mine
It makes me a little misty frankly.
I like that a LOT.
Sadly not all of his stuff is fatty friendly. But I like to think that is only because he is ignorant of the science.
This is such a great post! this especially struck a chord with me:
The thing that, I believe, MeMe Roth and people like her fundamentally do not grasp is that when they talk about obesity as a concept, they are talking about MY BODY, YOUR BODY, and you don’t get much more personal than that
It’s so simple, but it still gave me a minor epiphany. Next time anyone brings up obesity, I’m going to say outright “I’d prefer if you didn’t talk about me that way.” I think some people ened it brought home that they are talking about people, not a boogey monster.
I was actually complimented for the way I carry myself. Several times in fact and once by a Porn producer. Ok granted I said “thanks” and kept on walking but still it was quite flattering. I’m the thinnest I’ve been since I about age 10 and I feel that I’ve become somehow less confident in some ways. My live in BF actually called me out on how mean I am to myself. And for what really? I’ve got some mean curves – tig ol’ bitties – and an ass that is nicer than most seat cushions. And what is everyone’s obsession about food? Is it TOO available here? Do we need a famine? What happened to the days when the vaftig (that’s cubby in yiddish) women were considered sexy and fertile and beautiful. Since when did starvation become the fashion? Gd forbid an actress should have some meat on her bones! Who is sexy- Christina Hendrick is sexy and she could stand to eat a little something.
I somehow failed to put 2+2 together and didn’t realize that the cool writer behind The Rotund and the punk-haired hottie on Nightline were one and the same. So, way late: You were awesome.
Also, around the time that MeMe started shrieking about people wearing their unhealthy habits on their bodies (or whatever the hell that was), my husband and I — who are thin courtesy of genetics but probably substantially less healthy than most of the people who read here — looked at each other over our respective dinners from McDonalds and were like, “Is she f**king kidding?”
Well said Anna. The thing I loved about the Nightline piece was all the reaction shots of fellow fats ready to kill Meme Roth. And I thought you were awesome Rotund.
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