Fatphobia and Fat Positivity

[Tree]

Warning: this may be triggering to someone who has struggled a lot with food and body image issues. Discusses eating disorders and the like. Take care of yourself, please.

Thinking about fatphobia, the way that society and the media makes us hate ourselves, our bodies. Some highlights from here. My own thoughts follow.

The anti-fat hysteria that is currently manifesting in an all out "War on Obesity" is weighing heavily (no pun intended) on my mind.

[...]the gist is this: Fat isn't killing us in droves; cancer, heart disease, and the like are mostly the result of your genes. Dieting is damaging to the body. Diets don't actually work anyway, if you look at long-term studies (people gain the weight back plus some in five years or so; most studies don't go past the two year mark).

[...]

The message I am seeing is this: "If you get fat, it is because you cannot control your disgusting self, and you will be punished by horrible diseases and DEATH." Who needs religion when we've got the fat police to control our behavior? No need to threaten people with damnation; just convince them that they'll never die or get sick as long as they're thin. It's frighteningly powerful.

Basically, the gist is that fat is not the be-all end-all. Fat is something that is okay. Fat is something that some people are and sometimes there is no way around that. I self-identify as fat when I'm feeling better about my body. Interesting.

In terms of my queerness and gender-identity, though, things start to get interesting. The above blog post is very cis-woman-centric, because it addresses a lot of the societal pressure on cis-women and the development of eating disorders and the way we function in relation to food. Sometimes it can be really painful. As someone who was born "female" and is more-often-than-not read AS female (although not always), this all has affected me differently. I am pretty constantly in recovery from my own issues, and fatness has become part of my queerness. Fat is different for everybody. For me, some days, it contributes so much to my body dysphoria it's ridiculous. A lot of weight rests on my hips and thighs and I have a lot to speak of up top, too. Binding hurts my body, and I am going to get top surgery eventually. But the queer dysphoria aside, fat dysphoria crops up every so often (sometimes more often than not). I'm here, I guess, to open discussion about what this means to folks, and to show solidarity as someone who is (a)fat, (b)in recovery, and (c)usually unapologetic. I am not here to tell you to love yourself, your body... but I am here to hope that we can stop hating ourselves, at least sometimes. I'm making the same effort. Every day of my life. It is not your fault. Fat is not killing you. Society hates fatness because society is >-bleeped-<ed up, not because it is your fault and not because you are ugly.

...Maybe a dense(?) opening post, but it feels important.

[Fencesitter]

You make a good point here. Plus, there's more and less healthy ways of being thick, depending on what you eat.

I usually prefer chubby women to thin ones, and have started being into chubby men as well but only if they're also tall (before, I preferred all men to be thin or athletic). Chubby women I find to look more sensual and feminine than thin ones, chubby tall men seem to look both strong and gentle and a lot of body to hold and grab for me, don't know how to put it into better words. And with chubby people in general, there's just more to cuddle and hug and less hard bones getting in the way. To give you a clue what I mean, Queen Latifah looks very attractive for me but she's on the thin extreme of what I like.

Now there is this other side of fatphobia - some people think my preference is gross and pervert, and some people assume I can't possibly find thick people attractive, or that I just lack the self-confidence to hit on thin people. In this respect, thin vain trophy wives are the worst, as well as guys trying to impress me by boasting about their "beautiful thin wives". And beautiful thick people think I'm telling lies to be nice to them when I say they're attractive, or they just can't believe anyone may find them attractive. The saddest thing for me is when I see a very beautiful lady being self-conscious about her body and feeling so depressed about it and feeling like she's worth nothing.

I also find the societal pressure extreme, though of course I'm a bit biased here. Kate Winslet gained a couple of pounds a few years ago and I was like - wow she starts looking good and I started to find her attractive and thought, hm, maybe 20 to 50 pounds more and she'll look great. And you know how the media reacted, and she lost weight again and the media applauded that. Now of course it's none of my business how she looks, it's up to her, but it was kinda disappointing for me...

I prefer myself to be thin, though. I gained 40 pounds while being on testosterrone and have lost them again since off (1 year ago). I never had had so much weight before and always used to be thin. It was weird, testosterone decreased my gender dysphoria, but at the same time, gaining weight caused me a different body dysphoria. Since losing weight, I've also remarked people treat me better, or maybe it's because I feel better about my body now. I'll probably go back on t in a couple of months as I fear my body will turn too female over time otherwise. I hope I won't gain that much weight again. As I have pre-diabetes, I better remain thin anyway to avoid slipping into diabetes type 2. However, I wonder why I want myself to be thin if I prefer thick people. Maybe because I'm very small, and small chubby guys don't work for me, or because I have some unconscious, internalized fatphobia (which I don't hope, but you never know).

[jmaxley]

The message I am seeing is this: "If you get fat, it is because you cannot control your disgusting self, and you will be punished by horrible diseases and DEATH."

Eat right, exercise, die anyway.

[Double_Rainbow]

I would be willing to bet that STRESS is one of the bigger killers out there.  I'm no nutritionist, but wanting longevity persuades me its important to exercise some and eat balanced meals.   I don't stay away from the tasty sweets, I just don't eat them all the time! 

[SnailPace]

I agree that society is needlessly fat phobic, but I think your thoughts may be on the other extreme end.

I think that healthiness is much more important than overall body fat percentage, for sure.  Eating fairly healthy and exercising aren't totally pointless things.  Overall, these things are proven to make people feel happier.  And it isn't people looking into the mirror and saying "Gee I'm skinny now, so I'm happy!" Exercising and eating well actually improve your mood no matter your body fat percentage.

Also, while going onto "a diet" never works out in the long run, making changes to "your diet" is healthy and can stay put.  Overall, being obsessed with food either way (obsessed with eating it or not eating it) is an unhealthy mental state.

While I support that everyone should feel proud of their looks and themselves, I don't think people should think "Well, I am/will be fat anyways so I may as well just keep eating!"

Just listen to your bodies.  Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full.