Hello readers, I want to explain a bit about how this post came to be. I just finished a class at Ohio State called Sex and Violence. For one assignment, students were to choose a topic of interest to them and write a semi-personal, semi-research based paper. I struggled hard with this assignment. I knew that I wanted to write about fatness in the context of the heteronormative society we live in, but there is so much information, experiences, and stories and to look into that it was hard to narrow it down into what would ultimately become the essay in this post. I submitted it (late, might I add) and I didn't think much of it. When I got my grade, I received such positive feedback from my professor. She encouraged me to publish it somewhere online, and this being my tiny corner of the world wide web was just the place to do it. So, this is not a normal post from me. This was a paper a wrote for class, complete with APA style references and 12pt Times New Roman Font. If you read to the end, I hope you enjoy.
Alison
I didn’t know I was fat until I was fourteen. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a big person since I was a toddler, but until my freshmen year of high school I didn’t really know I was fat. I can remember so vividly the moment I made the earth-shattering realization. Standing in the fluorescent dressing room of the overpriced department store, I looked at myself squeezed into a size 16 dress. My five-foot-nothing, size 4 best friend stood behind me, yanking the zipper with all her might. My stomach was sucked in as far as it could go, and after a few minutes of tugging and rustling, my friend threw in the towel. “I think you need a bigger size,” she said. What she didn’t know was that that was the biggest size that store carried. I let the dress slip onto the floor, and I looked at my underwear-clad reflection. Silently, I compared our bodies in the mirror. My five-foot-seven frame towered over my friend’s petite body. My belly jiggled, and I didn’t understand why my thighs were so dimply compared to hers. She had tried on about 12 dresses already and they all seemingly fit her perfectly, but I couldn’t find one that zipped up all the way without feeling like the zipper was going to pop off at mach-speed. Ever-reassuring, and vigilant, my friend noticed my discomfort. I held back tears as she suggested we go to a different store. “This store’s sizing is just stupid,” she reassured me. With that, I put my clothes back on and followed her out of the dressing room.
I was never really bullied for being fat, but that didn’t mean I was always comfortable. Society has this weird way of making fat people feel like they are the same as everyone else, while simultaneously telling them that they are not good enough for whatever they’re enjoying. This is a process called fat shaming. Sometimes fat shaming can look a lot like bullying. For example, there are people who will say “Hey fatass, put down the fork!” A lot of the time, however, it’s much more covert than that. Most frequently, fat shaming operates under the guise of well-meaning health concerns by a close (or not-so-close) friend. It exists unashamedly in the media. Tabloids line the checkout line with covers littered with pictures of Kim Kardashian’s latest fat roll claiming, “You won’t believe how big she is!” With the recent emergence of the “Fat Acceptance Movement” and other body-positive ideologies, fat shaming has also moved into the limelight. Good citizens have been trying to eradicate fat bodies for awhile because fat bodies go against the heteronorm of society.
In an article titled “Six Things I Don’t Understand About the Fat Acceptance Movement,” self-proclaimed average sized blogger, Carolyn Hall expresses her disapproval of the movement. One of her main points are that “America is extremely accepting of fat” (Hall, 2014). She then goes on to say that “though there may be negative stereotypes, staring, bullying, or crude comments”, American culture promotes a lifestyle of convenience with fast-food places at every corner and huge portion sizes for every meal (Hall, 2014). Another of her points is that “health at every size seems impossible” (Hall, 2014). Here she talks about how people who are anorexic are seen as unhealthy, whereas the morbidly obese can live a healthy lifestyle and still be seen as healthy (Hall, 2014). Continuing on the health trend, Hall says that body positivity should include positive and proactive health (Hall, 2014). She disagrees with the Fat Acceptance Movement’s idea that a person should be happy with their body if they are overweight because that person is not healthy (Hall, 2014). This article is important to look at because it is a glimpse of what the average person understands about the Fat Acceptance Movement.
Hall’s point that American society is extremely accepting of fat people can seem like it is true at first glance. However, when looking at the statistics, fat people are paid less than their average weight counterparts for doing the same job. Overweight white women suffer indisputably as “a difference in weight of two standard deviations (roughly 64 pounds) is associated with a difference in wages of 9 percent. This difference in wages is equivalent in absolute value to the wage effect of roughly 1.5 years of education or three years of work experience” (Cawley, 2004, p. 470). From an average-sized person’s point of view, it’s easy to believe that America caters to the fat population, but they do not see the underlying prejudice. Hall also talks a lot about health in her piece. She does not expressly say that she believes all fat people are unhealthy, but she sure alludes to it. This is a dangerous way of thinking. Health is a complex issue and a person’s health cannot be determine by glancing at them. Marathon channel swimmer and sociologist Dr. Sharon Throsby notes this flawed way of thinking stating, “Bodies are complicated things to manage, the pressures are very real” (Throsby, 2013). Contradictory to most sports, in channel swimming, swimmers have to maintain some body fat. Throsby goes onto say that “After all, what greater challenge to the equation of fat with ill-health and laziness could there be than Channel swimming?” (Throsby, 2013). These athletes are not unfit by any means, but just by looking at their bodies one might think that they are. She includes this in her piece to show that health cannot be determined by looking at someone.
On a related note, a body on its own is not inherently bad. People are taught by society what is normal is and what is not when it comes to bodies. A lot of the “fear” surrounding fat bodies, especially fat women’s bodies, was brought on by the media (Erdman Farell, 2011, p. 84). When women were first gaining the right to vote, fat women were often shown in anti-suffrage propaganda (Erdman Farell, 2011, p. 84). Men who did not want to grant women the right to vote would portray feminists as loud, fat, and manly as a way to sway people away from feminist ideologies at the time (Erdman Farell, 2011, p. 84). At its core, this technique is rooted in heteronormative beliefs. This propaganda attempted to show that the only women who want to vote are horrible. The heteronormative view at the time was that women should be dainty and stay in the home, and by mocking women opposite to that in their ads, they were conveying to the whole country that fat women are inherently bad. Fast forward in time to the present, and a recent study found that men’s greatest fear when using online dating sites is matching a woman who is fat (The Bert Show, 2014). This is opposed to women, whose greatest fear is that a match may be a serial killer (The Bert Show, 2014). This statistic alone, based on the most shallow form of modern communication, shows that the effects of the media from the early 20th century plays a role even now. Men are more afraid of dating a fat woman than having no connection with a person they meet.
So, if what the average person believes about the Fat Acceptance Movement, and fat people in general is proven to be a dysfunctional and inaccurate way of thinking, why do so many people hold to these ideologies? The answer lies within a deep-seeded desire to fit into the heteronorm. By nature, heteronormativity aims to fit people into a certain box. A quote by Susan Sontag from her book Illness is a Metaphor condenses the American idea of fatness into a sentence saying that being fat “‘means’ excess of desire, of bodily urges not controlled, of immoral, lazy and sinful habits” (Erdman Farell, 2011, p. 10). This illustration of what it means to be fat equates fatness to being uncontrollable; a person who is uncontrollable is a threat to the heteronorm.
The Fat Acceptance Movement is shaking the foundation of what it means to be normal. The people who are a part of the movement are saying, “I don’t care what society says about my body, I am loving and accepting it anyway.” For a long time, and even still today, the norms of society have been denoted by and for men. The Fat Acceptance Movement is sharing an empowering message, and for women it takes away men’s right to control their bodies. My thought is this: fat women, and women in general, learning to love their bodies is going to shake the foundation of the heteronorm. A woman who loves herself is a force of confidence that can dismantle preconceived notions of heteronormative values.
To conclude, fat bodies are shamed every day. Being shoved into a box of heteronormativity that I and many others (quite literally) don’t fit into is a struggle that does not seem to be ending any time soon. Susie Orbach, a feminist scholar, sums it up nicely by saying “people considered to be overweight are exposing the very thing the “normal” people want to control” (Orbach, 2015).The norms of society have pushed fat people around like they do not matter for a long time, and the Fat Acceptance Movement aims to ameliorate society’s push. Learning to love myself in a society that is hell-bent on keeping fat people down has been a hard process to go through, but loving myself is the ultimate goal. For many people, it’s a struggle that they may never overcome. I know this because I learned that I was fat when I was fourteen, and I have been unlearning what that means ever since.
References
The Bert Show. (2014). The Difference Between A Man And A Woman’s Worst Online
Dating Fears Will Shock You. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from
http://thebertshow.com/tinder-experiment-fat-suit-will-shock/
Cawley, J. (2004). The Impact of Obesity on Wages. The Journal of Human
Resources, 39(2), 451-474. Retrieved from http://www.ppge.ufrgs.br/
Giacomo/arquivos/eco02072/cawley-2004.pdf
Erdman Farell, A. (2011). Fat Shame. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/ books?id=XsHmeJqR4uAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=twopage &q&f=true
Hall, C. (2014, April 22). 6 things I don't understand about the fat acceptance
movement. Retrieved April 22, 2016, from http://thoughtcatalog.com/
carolyn-hall/2014/04/
6-things-i-dont-understand-about-the-fat-acceptance-movement/
Orbach, S. (2015, January 5). Why Fat Is A Feminist Issue. Retrieved April 22,
2016, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/05/
fat-feminist-issue_n_6414192.html
Throsby, K. (2013, February 3). Guest Article: Dr. Karen Throsby, on the
complicated issue of fat amongst Channel swimmers. Retrieved April 22,
2016, from https://loneswimmer.com/2013/02/05/
guest-article-dr-karen-throsby-on-the-complicated-issue-of-fat-amongst-channel-sw
immers/
