The only thing you can tell for sure by looking at a fat person is the degree of your own bias against fat people. - Marilyn Wann
I'm not fat. "Fat" is a more common term for "adipose tissue". If you call me fat, you're reducing all my features, choices, personality, identity, to a single thing: the amount of adipose tissue I have.
Problem: how to explain this if I'm putting all my effort into restraining myself from screaming at your face when you comment something like "oh, but you do eat well", or "since you're bigger I thought you could finish this food for me". Better yet, "you became fatter since the last time I saw you". Being a Portuguese girl from the countryside (Portuguese people will understand), the only people that actually appreciate my body as it is and make compliments about it, aside from my lover, are my grand-aunts - and still, I didn't request for them to do so.
But the problem is exactly that, isn't it? The comments I didn't ask for. I've never been skinny, but I'm pretty sure that thin people can relate to this. The comments we are forced to hear, wether we want to hear them or not, are what perpetuate body-shaming in general. And because I know thin people also suffer from this, I need to make a point here: there's a difference between fat-shaming and thin-shaming because these aren't nearly in the same degree of severity.
Using an aware thin person's words: thin people don’t count calories; you can spend entire days without thinking about your body sizes, and while you may feel like shit about how you look, you certainly aren’t told that it’s all your fault (because you eat too much, don't exercise, are lazy and don't even try to be healthy):
It’s unthinkable to act, consciously and publicly, as if those who are born different should be treated with malice, but it is still totally okay to treat the larger members of our country with constant disdain, and disrespect. The reason for this is the same reason you’d almost never hear somebody say “I’m fine with Mexicans so long as they’re not all up in my face with it,” but the same is said about gays on a fairly regular basis:
Choice.
Fatness, like sexuality, is seen by many as a matter of choice. And worse yet, while a gay man can’t make himself straight, nor should he, a fat person can make themselves thin, so that must mean thin is better, right? That fat means unhealthy, right? That every fat person is just lazy, right? They should be thin and healthy like us! Go health! Dog-whistles!
I eat like shit, never exercise, and spend all day sitting. My wife eats well, controls portions, exercises, and spends all day on her feet. I’m thin, she’s not. I’m considered height-weight proportionate. She’s not. Oh, and I’m at risk of heart disease. She’s not.
Thin people have a widely varied representativeness. You have the thin supermodel. You have the thin superhero. You have the thin black character. You have the thin female character. You have the thin trans* character. You have the thin genderqueer character. You have the thin bissexual character. You have the comic-relief fat character. Your plus size model is someone within the so-stupid "average weight" category. Thin people as a social group aren't oppressed.
When a gay man says, “fuck straight people,” he is not oppressing, because he is not in power, culturally-speaking. He is not in the position to oppress. When a black man says, “fuck white people,” he is not oppressing white men, because his group is not the dominant group. When a woman says, “fuck men,” she is not oppressing men, because to oppress, your social group must be on top. That’s what oppression is.
But when a fat person talks smack about the “rail thin,” or the “anorexic models,” or even something so naked as “those fucking thin people,” they are treated, just as their oppressed contemporaries are when they retaliate, as oppressors.
They’re not, dude. They’re way not.
They’re just being assholes.
It’s a very important distinction to make.
Being skinny actually has a much bigger acceptance than being fatter. You can even use the expression "thin privilege". Try to put the words "fat" and "privilege" together without bursting into laughter - I dare you.
Even doctors take part in the fat-shaming culture - yes, "fat-shaming culture" is a thing. Incredible, huh? Well so is this: there's a letal dose or overdose for almost every medication you can get, but there isn't a minimum effective dose for categories of body mass over your average adult body mass.
Now, I'm 1,68m (more or less). My weight is 73kg. You know what this means? It means that according to the BMI, I'm overweight. I was always within the "ideal weight" category, a bit closer to the "overweight" category - because I have a slow metabolism. And I became overweight over the last year. You know why?
Because I have a sedentary job that consumes 11 hours of my day, everyday, with ever changing crazy schedules. Because I'm having trouble with sleeping patterns and that makes a huge difference in my weight. Because I don't have time to cook healthy (or cook at all, for that matter). Because I spend the whole day sitting on a chair, listening to customers treating me like shit - if you don't think that's tiring, you really have no idea - I get to the end of day dreaming of quick comfort food and curling up in my bed. But you know what? I don't do that as often as I did when I wasn't overweight (how ironic) - not even near. I don't even have dinner every day. And I usually only eat a soup at lunch time. Because I feel guilty for my own apetite. How fucked up is that? And when I have dinner (which is 90% of the days, btw), I eat a pretty normal dinner. As "normal" as I can get with stopping on my way home to get a sandwich or pasta or another soup, that is. And you know what? I feel that a normal dinner is making me fat. I feel that the correct amount I'm supposed to eat is the cause of the problem, evn though I know it isn't. Yes, it's pretty fucked up.
And while I recognize that I'm not shockingly fat, that I fall in the overweight class, there are people who have worse problems than I do, for the same reason; and they have more social problems than me because... they weigh more than me! It's almost a reason to laugh. And this isn't the full extent of the problem. When I was younger, about 14 years old, I was chubby-average, with big hips. Yet, I had very small breasts. So I was mocked for having small breasts, even though I had a "huge ass". I remember very clearly a boy in my neighbourhood saying "in a scale from 1 to 5, I'd give you a 4, just because you have such a nice ass". Oh wow, who wouldn't want to hear that and feel like an object? Even more, deduct from that kind of "evaluation" that my breast size was not ok? That there's a specific size and shape for your breasts so they can be adequate? I could place the hashtag #curvygirlproblems here, if we were on Twitter. The point: It's not even just a matter of the amount of fat; you must also have the correct body shape. Even curvy shapes are shamed over non-curvy ones, because those look thinner right away. My hips are too large for that, so yeah, I can forget the representativeness on most clothing stores, for instance. I'm not even kidding when I say half of my wardrobe is custom made.
I'm constantly fighting for my capacity of accepting my own body without hating myself or feeling guilty. Some days it works. Most days it doesn't. It's just that it's really hard to be a non-thin person: because you don't get to see your body type represented anywhere - on the contrary, it's constantly invisibilized, shamed, banished; because you don't feel supported by those you love (except for a couple of very close friends); because your parents and peers can be your most aggressive bullies and you grow up thinking that's how it's supposed to work; because you're led to believe it's your fault and you should be ashamed of yourself, even if you have the most healthy eating habits of your social circle; because everyone feels attacked when you write this big rant, instead of recognising their own internalised prejudice.
You know when I said above that I'm restraining myself from screaming at your face? I lied. I'm not. I'm actually just fighting back my tears. Just because you said that "I'm bigger".
So please do me a favour: I don't care about your intentions, just shut the fuck up.
And maybe improve your own awareness by reading this.
Thanks.
