Fat Acceptance: What it means to me.
Since starting my work in the area of obesity, the Fat Acceptance movement has come to hold a very dear place in my heart. People within this movement have supported me, mentored me, and some have become amazing friends. I am not part of the Fat Acceptance movement. But I am a very strong supporter of it.
So I thought as an outsider to this movement, I would give you my take on why I support it.
For me the Fat Acceptance movement is a consumer advocacy movement. Others might not see it that way, but that’s how I think of it. Movements, like Fat Acceptance, have been vital in improving the health and rights of highly stigmatized groups throughout recent times. Let me give you a few examples of groups that were highly stigmatized and shunned before consumer groups emerged:
- People with mental health problems
- Women with breast cancer
- People living with HIV/AIDS
- Children with Haemophilia
Each of these movements were created to give people a voice, to allow them to have their say, and to advocate for the improved care and treatment of individuals in health and social settings.
For me, the Fat Acceptance movement is no different. It is a space where people can discuss, debate, support, advocate and have a voice about what it is like to be Fat. Actual formal organizations for Fat rights are few and far between, particularly outside of the USA. And so the blog space has become an incredible place for people to write about their take on the way ‘fat’ or ‘obesity’ is approached in society. Others are doing amazing work outside of the blog space – engaging with the media, writing books, and critical dialogue pieces. Now given that they are at the centre of the obesity debate, I would say that is not just reasonable, but undeniably important. Because the general community, academics, health professionals, policy makers etc are pretty disconnected from the fat community. There is an Us vrs Them mentality.
There are almost NO spaces for Fat people to have their say about what happens to them, they are not engaged in any debate or dialogue, and they are targeted pretty much daily in blogs, newspaper reports, academic articles and so on. And when they do have a say they are criticised, ridiculed and laughed at (unless they are losing weight, when everyone is totally loved up with them – until the weight goes back on!).
Just like other movements, there are many different types of people within the Fat Acceptance community. Some are more radical than others. That’s necessary and important. I don’t agree with everything I read in the Fat Acceptance space, but hey I sure respect peoples rights to say what they are thinking or feeling. Just as I’m sure they would disagree with some of the things I write/say from time to time (or maybe most of the time!!!) but I’m sure they also support my right to have a say.
But lets make a few things clear about the Fat Acceptance movement right away:
1) Fat Acceptance does not exist to promote obesity. Rather it exists to promote the mental and physical health and wellbeing of people no matter what their size.
2) Fat people have the right to dispute and debate statistics linking obesity with poor health outcomes, and to offer alternative evidence. Given the conflicts of interest that occur in obesity research these days I’m surprised more people aren’t doing it.
3) They also have the right to challenge people, organizations or groups that they think have misrepresented them or treated them badly.
4) Finally fat people have the right to speak out about their experiences. For some reason people find that a difficult concept to grasp.
So I will continue to support the Fat Acceptance movement. Because they are advocating for the rights of all of us – no matter what our size.
I will continue to consider myself a Fat Advocate – FOR the rights of people who are fat.
I will continue to listen to and learn from the fat community.
I will continue to engage in discussion with people who are fat so that we can make a change in the way we approach ‘fat’ and ‘obesity’ in our communities.
And most importantly I will continue to stand up and applaud them for the brave and inspirational work that they do.
So in the spirit of discussion, positively or negatively, what does FA mean to you and why?
Oooh and my new twitter account is @TheDiscourse
Themocracy
“What does FA mean to you and why?”
Well… you summed this up so well it’s hard to add much. Really, this is a wonderful piece.
I have a few personal anecdotes.
When I first read some FA I thought (way in the back of my mind, where I’d hidden away I was kind of a not-nice person) it was basically a bunch of lazy fat people who wanted to make excuses for themselves being fat; who wanted to deny they had poor eating habits, etc. etc., and who wanted to complalin.
As I read more and more I realized how wrong I was.
The benefits to reading materials, blogs, etc from the FA community have affected me more than I can say. I have stopped “sizing up” other people (especially women) and guessing this-or-that about their lifestyle or food habits. I’ve stopped second-guessing myself or thinking my entire existence is only worthwhile if I can do all the work I do during the day AND be ‘attractive’ to (essentially) straight dudes.
I’ve spoken up against the nasty worlds hurled at fat women AND at thin women. I’ve come to see how large the double-standard is for men and women’s “attractiveness” factors; I’ve started to see the racism and ableism and ageism in the world and I’ve started speaking out against it.
I’ve started seeing the beauty in all people. I’ve talked to parents about their children. I’ve released some of my own anxieties about my children’s habits and I’ve stopped patting myself on the back for being the “virtuous” mom with thin children (give me a break!). I eat better and more joyfully and do not second-guess myself. I’ve fed many people. I try more foods. I wear better clothes. I ran a 5K. I bought big earrings and dyed my hair bright-green, the things I’d been waiting to do until I was pretty enough to do them.
And I’m not even fat, that is, I’m old I’m “not fat” and I’ve never had my weight used as a slur against me (to my knowledge anyway). I’m just a woman who, until I read FA, had the garden-variety self-loathing and second-guessing and beauty/attractiveness caste system locked in place. FA has been instrumental in beginning to break the programming. I am happier, healthier, and more joyful, in large part through exposure to and openness in reading FA.
Thanks for your post here.
Fat Acceptance is, to me, a two things:
1. A solitary challenge to the diet culture and its bought-and-paid-for-conflict-of-interest-orgy that is much of ‘obesity research.’ A rational voice in a din of irrational hatred. The only group with the courage to point out some very sticky, unfortunate truths about several sacred cows of the anti-obesity moral panic: the bad-at-best BMI indicator, the inverse J-curve relationship between BMI and all-cause mortality, the stunning failure rate of diets and more extreme surgical interventions, and the second-only-to-height hereditary nature of weight.
2. A community of social activists of many philosophical backgrounds who all agree on one thing in particular: that one should not be discriminated against or made to feel ‘less than’ because of the size of one’s body. That, in fact, size is not imbued with moral value. That is, fat people should not be impeded from garnering the social benefits available to thinner people. Read: UK disallowing certain fertility treatments and adoption by BMI, New Zealand disallowing immigration by BMI, parents being judged as abusive or at the very least neglectful based solely on the weight category of their children, and so forth.
3. A community of like-minded individuals with similar stories of traumas suffered who support each other, both in recovery from past abuses, and through what is to be a rocky road towards both self-acceptance but especially acceptance by the public at large.
For me, Fat Acceptance is about radical kindness. It’s about saying ‘hey, it’s not okay to throw slurs at people based on their appearance; it’s not okay to waste time and energy hating yourself instead of living your life’. It’s about asking people to accept me as I am. It’s about all the things that Kelly mentioned in her excellent comment.
As I wrote on my blog, FA is for every body http://mymilkspilt.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/for-every-body/
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Whoops, make that *three* things lol.
@BigLiberty “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
Wonderful post Samantha. For me FA gave me the words to articulate the thoughts I’d begun to have about how messed up the self-loathing that so many people feel is. Reading Kelly’s comment gives me great hope, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have that transformation happen for everyone!
This is such a good post, Sam. The fat community is lucky to have you!
For me, fat acceptance is about letting go (not to be confused, as it was on a certain blog, as ‘giving up’). It’s letting go of the idea that your body isn’t good enough. It’s letting go of what you ‘should’ be doing and working out what works best for you. It’s letting go of the competitiveness we have with other women and the strange need to rip them apart based on their appearances. Fat acceptance is quite freeing.
Thanks, Samanatha – you’ve pretty much said it all for me! For me, FA has three prongs:
1. Fighting to end discrimination (and abuse) against fat people
2. Questioning the orthodoxy of health reporting and information
3. Accepting one’s own body, flaws and all
Like Kelly, I have never experienced size-based discrimination. For that reason, I believe I’m an ally rather than a warrior. (However, I suspect that many people WOULD call me fat, I’m certainly not thin.) I guess I’m officially an inbetweeny.
Many people believe that if you’re not actively AGAINST fat, you are actively promoting it. The idea that someone could be positive about themselves without pushing it on others is too hard to understand.
Thank you for being an ally in this movement that is so important to all bodies, not just fat ones.
To me, Fat Acceptance means one thing. Freedom. It means that I, as a fat person, have the freedom to choose how to live my life, how to manage my health, how to dress and so much more. It means freedom from the oppression of fear, stigma and loathing based on the shape/size of my body alone. It means freedom from a lifetime of self loathing and self criticism. Fat Acceptance has set me free.
FA is to me a slow re-wiring of my brain. It’s the voice that reminds me that I should be choosing food and activity that makes me feel good, not that helps me delude myself that one day I might meet the mythical standards of beauty imposed by… pretty much everyone else.
It’s the voice that interrupts the almost constant internal monologue that says “If I could just lose 10kg” (which carries on regardless of my current weight) with more reasonable suggestions that I should think harder about finding exercise that I enjoy and is convenient, and that maybe I need a wider variety of foods.
It’s the voice that screams in my ear that I’m bigoted and stupid if I make assumptions about someone else based on their weight.
It’s the voice that reminds me that if there’s one thing I need to strive for above all else, it’s to stop the legacy here. To not pass on my broken relationship with food and my body to my children.
And it’s all the things you said it is, because this is a fabulous post.
Another great read…
So what does this mean to me? A lot.
I came across fat acceptance movement through discovering the Health at Every Size movement which came from me looking for information on insulin resistance and the metabolic sydrome which I focused during my undergrad. HAES, it just makes sense. No rocket science degree required. When we feel better we do better. So simple. Yet my euphoria was shortlived as I discovered the THEM side hold onto their weightloss talk, their ineffective diets, their obsessive exercise routines…and worst of all their blatant and open criticism of people who don’t possess the body beautiful. The criticism and shame that is heaped upon people who are outside the narrow band of acceptable. The last straw was realising how young children were being affected and exactly how young they were.
Personally, I am not obese, a little overweight yes. HAES has changed my values which in turn changes my behaviours and my language. I feel so much more connected to who I am. I am no longer numb to life waiting for the weight to go so I could have a life. Life is now and I am enjoying every moment. It has allowed me to discover how incredibly amazing my body is and to truly value the important things such as being able to wake up each day, to see, hear, feel, think and move. I am far more in-tune to how what I am eating affects how I am feeling. I feel so much more in control of my life and choices. I love food and have mostly eaten pretty well and I know when I don’t it’s because I am being lazy. I love good, fresh food and always feel my healthiest when making that choice.
I have discovered my passion, I want to share it, share the things I have learned. Show others it is possible to move past the negative talk, the condemnation and guilt into a happier place, one where they begin to accept themselves and others and rejoice in the differences and the uniqueness that is them.
I don’t have anything to add to everyone else’s great comments, and yours, but I want to say how much we love having you as a supporter! You rock!
Eloquent as always : )
But what does it mean to you Ms Fat Acceptance
The thing I’m learning from your responses is that each of you takes something different out of FA. And each of you has had a different journey to FA. The comments have been very moving for me to read.
Can’t wait to read some more.
Hon, you are totes part of the Fat Acceptance movement. You don’t gotta be fat to be one of us (“one of us! one of us!”).
The FA is something to me that is helping me take my blinkers off.
As a ‘health professional’ I’ve been a part of the problem, but getting to know FA is helping me to challenge my own views and the views of other health professionals. Today I tried to take the blinkers off a bunch of health professionals studying health sociology by talking about the dominance of the thin ideal, the impacts of measures of weight ‘normality’ such as BMI, and the challenges that FA movement is offering up to the dominant weight discourse. I’m not certain how successful I was but I hope I planted a seed or 2 of questioning in their minds, which might lead to some more critical discussion and/or understandings (arrogant presumption on my behalf perhaps???)
Personally, FA helps me accept me for who I am, and to get over which of my clothes fit and what size I used to be and what size society tells me I should be. It helps me accept others, regardless of their size, thin or fat. And to confront that there are other major agendas at work serving the interests of the private sector, profiting from people’s unhappiness and insecurities.
Another great post Samantha. I am not feeling very eloquent right now but I think that you have defined what FA is all about. This helps me as I am fairly new to this concept. I liked Kerri’s post and as someone else said if this is an indication of what educating yourself does, bring it on.
I enjoy reading all the posts here.
Thankyou very much
Thanks Jan! Its always great to hear from you
! Please keep contributing! Lots of love! Sam
Why CAN’T you be part of the fat acceptance movement? Surely there is some subsection of society that thinks you’re too fat, even if it’s only Hollywood.
I support fat acceptance because I think that anyone who could only like or love me if I were perpetually starving or had my guts surgically ripped out is a contemptible douchebag.
And because I’m basically lazy and see no reason to bother hating myself when there are so many other people around who are willing to do it for free. Hopefully, if enough of us stand up to the hate, we can spare future generations from it.
The idea of reducing the abusive behavior that is forced upon the obese is a very important one. I have been the victim of that behavior for years. It causes depression self hatred and so many more problems. I now have joined a support group. I can tell you that when we unite together against anything we can make changes. The average morbidly obese person is often thought to be lazy,slovenly,revolting,and not worth anyone’s time or attention. I have seen this in doctors offices, the work environment,as well as the public sector. I applaud the author, who has made my evening worth putting up with screaming kids just so I could read this article.
Thanks Patti. I have edited your comment to take out the name of the support group (I cant advertise anything on this blog) but I think your point is a really important one. Thank you so much for coming and reading and sharing.
Samantha
Brilliantly insightful post Samantha, I feel somewhat that I can relate to the outsider perspective too.
For me its quite a complicated issue, as I am not directly affected, but find myself drawn to the FA movement from different facets:
1. Logical justice: My main personality trait is my knowledge and analysis of how things work, and reading a large tome all about the human body whilst a young child has given me an insight to the macroscopic function of all the bodies systems, and my understanding has only deepened over the years. Several tenets of anti-fat include the BMI and waist measurement standard, both of which irritate me purely in the fact of their blind use as indicators of overall health. Its like phrenology all over again.
2. Social justice: Nobody should be outcast, rejected, or feel persecuted for something which has nothing to do them as a person. We already have terms like sexism, racism, ageism, etc. yet sizeism is not considered valid in the mainstream. How someone can survive the negative connotations and huge stigma without breaking down is awe inspiring.
3. Aesthetic justice: Beauty really does come in all shapes and sizes, anyone with an independent appreciative perspective can see that. Unfortunately I’m unable to describe this very accurately as its hard for me to equate imagery with words, but the folks at the Judgment of Paris (http://www.judgmentofparis.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=15) do a remarkable job and demonstrate so amicably the principles to which I am relating.
I only hope that I can help advance the movement forward in any way that I can
First and foremost, Fat Acceptance is about accepting that I am fat and that is okay. It’s about accepting that my fat is not something to be ashamed of, it is as much a part of me as the things I most value, such as my intellect, my voice, my personality or my hair. It is about understanding that I have as much worth as a human being as any person who is not fat. It’s about no longer shaming myself and my eating habits and my exercise habits and understanding that who I am in this moment is who I am, and that’s okay.
Secondly, Fat Acceptance is about educating the world about all of those things I need to learn for myself. It’s about advocating equal rights for fatties in all things be it job interviews to seats on aeroplanes.
FA has allowed me to reconnect with my own body. I’ve found that the world at once assumes that fat people aren’t in touch with our own bodies (because the assumption is that if one is fat, one must eat more than one needs, which is not particularly true) *and* that the world encourages us to ignore our bodies (in encouraging us to diet, or to move in ways that are punishing, all in the pursuit of someone else’s ideal of what our bodies should look like). FA lets me be the expert about my own body, lets me learn from my body and celebrate and enjoy it. A much, much more joyful existence.
I wanted to add this. Your post above compares fat to four diseases. A more apt comparison, in my mind, would be to look at how the American Psychological Association has viewed homosexuality throughout the years. At first, by treating it as a disease, early psychologists (100+ years ago, through the seventies, or so) thought that they were being kind, actually: gay men had always been treated as sinners, so psychologists who now viewed those men as mentally ill thought that they were much more progressive and compassionate than anyone else, in their treatment of gay men. This wasn’t sinful, went their confused thinking, this was illness. And so they treated gay patients as sick patients for decades. Finally, a few psychologists began to protest this, realizing that this was cruel: being gay is not a mental illness, but just a natural way of being. One of the things that they discovered was that *all* of the psychological studies on homosexuality had been conducted exclusively with prisoners and with those gay men (I don’t know what role lesbians played in this history: I believe the focus was largely on men) who had sought out psychological help. In other words, no happy and thriving gay men were ever included in these studies. So the studies were deeply skewed.
Similarly, I would be interested in seeing good, strong research conducted on men and women who are fat and healthy and thriving. We’ve had so much of the other sort: what about this sort of research? There are a couple of very small studies, I think: I’m eager to see more.
This analogy is very different than the ones you’ve drawn, of course: is fatness most analogous to disease, or to the historical medical treatment of gay men? It’s an important distinction.
The radio show “This American Life” has an hour long episode on the story of how the APA decided in 1973 that being gay was no longer a mental illness: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/204/81-Words
Thanks very much for your blog.
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