Fat Stigma: We know it exists, but what do we do about it?
Today we embarked on a very interesting discussion on Twitter. It was about Fat Discrimination and Stigma – and what to do about it.
It’s a no brainer that fat discrimination exists. There have now been a whole bunch of studies done, predominantly in the USA and Australia, about the prevalence of fat hate (sometimes called weight bias), people’s experiences of it, and how it impacts on their lives. Here are a few things you should know about fat stigma:
It is in our schools: Where teachers spend more time with thin children than fat children, and where fat kids are teased and bullied more than any other group).
It is on public transport: Where fat people are often berated from fellow passengers for ‘taking up too much room’, or are charged double for the space they take up on planes.
It is in employment: Where if you are fat, you are less likely to be hired for a job, or promoted
It is in our health care systems: Where studies show that health professionals (including doctors, nurses and dieticians) hold extremely negative opinions towards their fat patients; and where fat adults routinely avoid going to the doctor for essential medical services (like pap smears and breast exams) because of the stigma they experience.
It is in our homes: Where studies consistently show that some of the most stigmatizing groups towards fat individuals are their own family members and friends.
And whilst many people who experience fat stigma experience it overtly (people screaming abuse out of cars, people being ridiculed, called names etc), a lot of the stigma and discrimination that is experienced is much more subtle. Today, Jessica was telling me about how her friends and family members often remark on their own fatness, as a way of commenting on hers. She also said that she consciously puts the fruit and vegetables in the most prominent place in her supermarket trolley so as not to be judged by her fellow shoppers about what might be considered to be less ‘responsible’ food choices. She has written a beautiful blog about her experiences here, and I would encourage you to read it.
What is less clear is what we can do to stop fat discrimination. A whole bunch of ideas have been bandied about – from a stronger voice for fat adults in consultations about obesity; increased advocacy from body image and fat acceptance organizations; programs which might help fat adults be more resilient in the face of fat hatred; education programs for doctors and health professionals; legislation; changes in media reporting; and public anti-stigma campaigns.
Personally, I think it might be a combination of all of these things. But I am really interested in what you think? For me there is no easy solution. Fat hatred and prejudice is deeply engrained in society. It is going to take a MASSIVE cultural shift to end it. Part of this is because I think the more subtle types of fat stigma – which I think are also far more damaging – are much more difficult to respond to (as compared to the more overt types of discrimination, like being fired from a job because you are fat).
As a starting point, I think we need to get our voice, ideas and opinions out there. So I open it up to you all.
What do you think needs to be done to tackle fat stigma?
Themocracy
Thank you for linking my blog!!!
I see the merit in legislative action in theory but I don’t think there’s benefit in practice. I think the only way to protect people from weight bias is to change the way people see fat. Neutralize at the root of the issue. We won’t have to protect people from something if it doesn’t exist. Sure, it will probably take a long time before everyone’s happy but when I think of what the Fat Acceptance community looked like when I first got involved versus today I just smile
We’ve come so far and we’re gaining such momentum!
I try to make a point to not comment on bodies or isolate a group of people but the fact that you don’t identify as fat and yet have made it your mission to advocate fat acceptance is massive!!! Pun only partially intended
Great post!!! xoxoxoxo
Aww thanks! Thats really nice of you to say that. But honestly I get much more out of working with you all for change. Its an amazing global community with amazing people!
Great topic for discussion Samantha and great comments Jessica.
Once I realised I could not make another person like me period it stopped being about my weight or looks or the right clothes/makeup etc. I stopped beating myself if I didn’t conform to what I percieved the way I needed to in order to be acceptable. I started deciding who I wanted to be as a person, how did I want to show up in the world and how could I effect change?
I found these questions far more useful and began getting better results.
Once I let go of the need to be acceptable I actually found more acceptance. I had now accepted myself, I liked who I was and what I stood for. Not to say that discrimination is about us not liking ourselves. Through reading many people’s blog’s and comments around fat acceptance it shows me they do accept themselves and you are all inspirational. This is just my own experience I am commenting on.
I have never like or responded well to people telling me how to think, what to do or who I should be. So while it can be painful that people make judgements and comments particularly about my weight and looks, is telling them they are wrong likely going to bring them gushing all over me with warm and fuzzy comments. And if they did would I even trust them? In fact I suspect it will perhaps make them more determined to fight to prove just how right they are. This is the part that hurts more. I have had many comments from well meaning friends and family that I have no right going into wellness as a career until I lose weight because I will have no credibility. Mmm interesting!
My take is by legislating it stops the dialogue, it doesn’t stop people thinking what they think or doing what they do. I honestly believe it just makes the problem more covert and difficult to address. Because people do discriminate (yes all of us, just think politics and how extreme people’s comments are about the opposition of whichever party they support…) and if they feel they can make comments they will. Often these comments are wellmeaning and they think we don’t know we are fat or dress funny or have crazy hair or whatever. I have come to respect others rights to their opinions even if I might think they are idiots for having them!! (Mmm note to self, must look at why I call people idiots if they don’t agree.) Despite the initial hurt, well meaning comments (I’m ever the optimist) have enabled me to understand the beliefs and view of others. I have been able to feel that pain and use it to find better answers for myself. In doing that I can now easily enter discussions with these well meaning friends and family. No arguing or right and wrong thinking and I can articulate an expanded way of thinking or reframe or challenge their ideas which often is recieved well. It has been so powerful in improving my confidence and realising I can now have difficult discussions without ending up in tears, which trust me was where most of my discussions would end up.
I love that we are coming together in a community, we are connecting and sharing thoughts, experiences, ideas and getting the discussions happening. This challenges me also and I love it. We are giving permission to talk about this to ourselves and others and I honestly believe this is where the solution lies. For when we focus on a problem it becomes bigger, we give it more energy and therefore more life. Instead if we look beyond the problem into the not problem therein lies the solution. In a nutshell what things aren’t the problem and focus on those…eg respect, sharing, tolerance these are all things that start within us.
I’m with Jessica on this one – it’s like any form of discrimination really. We need to be changing the societal perception of fat people. From the self-haters who feel guilty if they eat anything other than a salad, to the fat haters who feel it’s their right to comment on other people’s bodies. If we can normalise fat to be just another body type that is no better or worse than any other, I think it would make life less painful for a lot of people.
I think the way we do this is to keep being vocal about the discrimination, and quietly educating people. Nobody wants to be lectured or be told they’re a bigot, but telling someone you respectfully disagree and discussing why is a catalyst for change. Educating people about the cause without forcing it on them, I guess. I want to help change perceptions by photographing a range of body types, and showing the beauty in everyone. I am inspired by projects like this: http://www.thenuproject.com
It’s great to see this being discussed; provoking thought instead of criticisms is a great way for the fat acceptance movement to grow. (hehe, grow, geddit?)
Ahhh you witty thing you. ;P
Oooh I forgot to say my favourite suggestion for reducing fat stigma is to make fat people thin. Which is what the Weight Loss industry spruiks all the time.
SO WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS!
I agree with Jessica wholeheartedly in that the way I think we bring about real cultural change with fat discrimination is to change the way people see fat – neutralise it. Currently as we all too clearly know, it is seen by so many as such a bad, evil, gross, horrifying (etc ad nauseum blah blah) thing that they feel the discrimination and hatred they dish out is somewhat justified. It’s not.
I feel hopeful that things are changing for the better. I certainly feel as if the FA community in Australia is growing in strength and volume which can only mean that shift we need is slowly beginning to happen. There’s a long way to go though as the stigma still clearly exists in spades. Some large scale and prominent support will surely help and that’s where people such as yourself Samantha are doing a great job talking to key people and getting the word out there.
I think that the medical establishment has to be central in this. So long as doctors and nurses and medical journals — who hold so much authority in our culture — are arguing vehemently that fat is deadly, the prejudice will be hard to counteract. This is why I’m so glad for the allies that we have in the community of those who treat eating disorders. They are important allies, because they can help to build a bridge between size acceptance and HAES and the medical establishment. I also hope that we can get better and better at speaking to the scientific community about the role that bias plays in their studies and their reporting, in showing that some of the messages around fat have become dogmatic, which is the opposite of what science out to be. “Replace judgment with curiosity,” Snarkysmachine once wrote on Shapely Prose; this should be at the heart of good science, right? And all of these fat people alerting them, “You’re getting it wrong about us!” ought to raise much scientific curiosity.
Arguing that medical experts disagree with your assements is not going to help your cause
I agree with Living The Questions. The medical establishment has to be central in this.
So much of the bias is stemming from (or at least is vastly inflated by) the obesity hysteridemic media campaign. People have a grossly exaggerated perception of risk around fatness because of the hyperbole being employed, and the medical bullying that is coming from it is really getting out of hand.
Yet when are these doctors ever hearing anything different? We must go to them when they are being trained and communicate with them about weight bias, stigma, more careful consideration of the research and how funding influences it, and what constitutes compassionate and effective care.
Another avenue that needs to be addressed is media images. We have to start seeing fat people as real people–not caricatures–in books, plays, TV, and movies. While there is a long way to go on this, I think we actually have started to see some progress on this recently.
But unlike media images, which has had SOME improvement, the medical stigma is only getting worse and has to be addressed at the source. Yet how do we best do that?
I go to conferences and speak to midwives and other birth professionals about the issue, and publish or review articles in birth-related publications. Marilyn Wann sometimes speaks to medical professionals. The ASDAH conference helps bring together fat-acceptance folk to share their findings and publications. The Fat Studies groups are another big step forward. But the outreach of these is relatively limited. We’re mostly preaching to the choir.
Social media is a major potential mode of delivery…..doctors and nurses read blogs and twitter etc. and like to waste time surfing like the rest of us. If we raise our profile enough, some of them will find us and challenge themselves by reading us. The First Do No Harm blog is an important step in documenting stories of bias, both subtle and overt. Blogs like the Fat Nutritionist that document research studies questioning the dominant paradigm are also helpful.
But I’d like to see more outreach directly to the medical schools and other health professional training. Hit ‘em before they get the worst of the bias inculcated into them, make them question and look critically at what they will hear, and show them how the money from the wt loss industry influences research as much as the pharmaceuticals industry does.
I think an aggressive outreach program to medical schools, nursing schools, midwifery schools, etc. is an important step in confronting and transforming fat stigma.
We need to reach out, especially to other fat people, some of whom can be the worst haters of fatness around. We have to stick our necks out. We are not going to avoid being teased and humiliated and maltreated, so we may as well get out there and confront it so future generations won’t have to suffer through it.
Can we do this perhaps in groups and teams? Can we stage publicity-garnering protests? Can we refuse to buy magazines that do not cater to the likes of us? Can we as a group invade fat-hating spaces on the Internet, where we can practice taunting the taunters?
People worry about sanity points a lot. I think the concept makes us want to retreat, when we should be going out there and attacking back. The more we retreat to safe havens, the smaller they will be.
Some people do go out there and fight back. We need an army of such people.
How to say this knowing that it will more than likely be ignored? Or not even published? I’m being anon with good reason. I’m a feminist. I am also about 15kgs overweight because I eat too much and don’t exercise enough – it’s that simple. I also have a disability (unrelated to weight issues).
Have you seriously thought about the way you are conflating fatness with disability? Have you thought about how suggestions that you require special seating on planes (for example) because of extra weight might be offensive to those in the disability rights movement?
I cannot be the only woman alive who has extra weight simply because I eat more than my body requires. Extra weight does not mean you get to shed your able-bodied privilege (or whiteness or class status) at the door.
Um, what? How is special seating for everyone who requires it offensive to those in the disability rights movement?
Anon, I don’t understand what you’re getting at. How is Sam conflating fatness with disability?
You’re not the only woman alive who is fat due to lifestyle. How or why you are fat is not important – no one to be treated unfairly due to their weight.
Hi anon, I identify as fat and disabled and I recognise that sometimes there’s problematic stuff brought up in the fat acceptance movement. However, it’s important to note that fatness is not always a result of diet or exercise. It’s science! Even though those findings are not reported through the media.
Regardless of why a person is fat OR disabled, that person should be treated with respect and not demonised. For me, it’s important to explore how different issues intersect when it comes to social justice, and in my experience I have been discriminated against on the basis of both my fatness and disability.
I do not think that highlighting bigotry against fat people means that focus is taken away from disability. I think it’s part of a discussion that should focus on both these issues as well as class, race, gender and other things too.
I’m pretty offended by the assumption that I’m fat because I eat too much. It’s an assumption that people make about me every day. When I tell people I have diabetes (type 1) and when I use a walking cane!
Anon, I’m curious as to how you think Samantha’s thoughts here are in any way minimizing the experiences of those with disabilities.
Hi Anon,
Thanks so much for commenting here! Your comments are always welcome. I actually think the point you raised makes for a much more interesting discussion than the blog itself!!!
I didn’t really know how to respond to your post, so I asked some others to help out. And I think the points they make are really fantastic. However, I can see your side of the story too. I have read a few papers where people have actually advocated that fat is classed as a disability (mainly for anti-discrimination reasons). I personally haven’t been convinced by those arguments but I see where people are coming from. Im happy to share those links if you would like them?
I think there are many groups in society who are treated appallingly because of their bodies (both abled and disabled). And there are so many assumptions made about how those bodies got to be how they are.
I think discussions like this are so important. I don’t think I am particularly fat (and I do not have a disability), so I am really interested in learning about peoples experiences here at Discourse, and perhaps how we can work together to challenge all sorts of bias and prejudice!
One of my dear friends will actually be writing here about being a young woman with a physical disability (Rheumatoid Arthritis) very soon – so keep an eye out for that!
Thanks again!
Samantha
Blogging has been a huge part of advocacy AND self acceptance for me. I think discrimination against fat people works to make them invisible, so part of what I am passionate about is being visible. Making trouble! Posting photos of myself is also key in my fight for visibility, specifically when it comes to plus size fashion. I don’t have the most trendy clothes, largely because they simply aren’t made in my size, and high end plus size fashion is way wayyyy out of my price range. (Fat and class intersectionality ahoy!)
Reclaiming fat as a word, and as part of my body, in a public and natural way is powerful. It’s basically what I’m about! (Shit I have to remember that for my paper!)
I will remind you Nat!! I can hold up a card with it on if you want
!
I’m going to have a stab at how I see the interplay of fat acceptance and disability. I do not have a disability and am probably mostly an in-betweeny (although heading more for outright fat at the moment). So I speak with little authority on either, other than my reading. Feel free to disagree totally with me.
It seems to me that the underlying assumption in your assessment of the situation is that fat people have a choice, and could be thin if they wanted, but people with disabilities could not. Therefore, it is insulting to compare the way society judges fat people with the way it judges people with disabilities. If there is another reason why you think similarities between the two movements are insulting, please say so.
The evidence is ever increasing (no pun here, either) that people don’t have much choice about being fat, and in fact similar criticisms are thrown at some people with disabilities. “Just eat better and get more exercise” is thrown at people suffering from depression almost as often as it is at fat people. I see parallels, not competition here.
I don’t think that the effect of one movement on another can be ignored, but I don’t think anyone is trying to claim some kind of greater right to consideration here. At least I hope not.
The medical profession is trying very hard to make fatness a disability, and I think people here are fighting against that, not trying to conflate the two – despite parallels. Especially parallels involving the social role in defining disability – that a state of being becomes a disability when society makes it one.
A fat body is almost as “other” as a disabled one, and it seems to be a battle that needs to be fought on all fronts.
People have the right to be whatever they desire and to not be assualted in any manner for it. However there is far more, and more powerful evidence that most, note I said most, obesity is from caloric intake and lack of exercise. Take a look at pictures of crowds from the 1940′s and start looking for morbidly obese people. You won’t find more than one or two in large crowds. This is because the percentage of the obese is increasing, which should not happen if this is natural, the numbers should have stayed in lock step with the increase in population.
Pretending we don’t know my MOST people are overweight detracts from the fact that it’s their lives to control how they live.
At a very simplistic level, yes, clearly it is something about lifestyle that makes people fat. However, there are three complications, one is that once someone gets fat, regardless of how it happens, it’s virtually impossible to get thin again and stay that way. Also, there is increasing evidence that the most effective way to get fat is to diet – and the same period you are quoting has also seen the rise of the diet industry. The same industry that funds most of the weight related research.
The third complication is that there are plenty of people with diet and exercise regimes basically equivalent to those of fat people who are utterly ignored by both health professionals and the media. When the diet and exercise situation is not so good, it has a tendency to lead to poor health, irrespective of weight. When it is good, there are better health outcomes, also regardless of weight.
So yeah, I’d say diet and exercise matter a lot, but you certainly can’t tell from looking at someone whether or not they have a healthy diet and do enough exercise.
(Sorry, this is drifting OT – if that’s a problem, don’t approve it)
Happy to approve everything from you Ariane! Great comments!
Awww, shucks.
I don’t really see how Samantha is “conflating fatness with disability”, although I do think there are certain areas in which the fat acceptance movement and disability rights movement overlap. While you may be “15kgs overweight” because you “eat too much and don’t exercise enough”, that is far from true for all fat people, including myself. You seem to be implying that fat people don’t deserve equal rights, because their fatness is under their control and can be “fixed”, but once again this is not true for all fat people.
I personally believe that both movements can benefit from each other. However, I myself can only speak from experience about fat acceptance.
I think we continue to do what we are doing, fighting the good fight. There will always be people who don’t agree with us and who hate on fatties. Just like there will always be racist people and homophobic people. It doesn’t means those positions are ‘right’, just that they will always exist. If we continue to inform, enlighten and educate the general public about Fat Acceptance and HAES then there will be a flow on effect. We can see that happening in Australia. Things here have come along monumentally since I began my blog in 2007. Yes it takes a long time but Rome wasn’t built in a day. We need to pace ourselves and be in it for the long haul. I use ‘education, enlightenment and experience’ as my mantra when it comes to FA and sharing the message. I don’t want to be evangelising people but I find that most people have no idea about the size discrimination and stigma that fat people deal with so I try to educate them (if there is a suitable and appropriate opportunity) and hope that my personal experience as a fat person can enlighten people to the experience of living fat.
Going back to the original question, I think the power of showing a representative group of women on TV can’t be underestimated. Watching Gok’s 100 women in their underwear on “How to Look Good Naked” was always amazingly powerful to me. (Although I note that no visibly disabled women were included in the group, so it wasn’t truly representative.) I think if you show women what other women actually look like on a regular basis, you start to undermine the self-hatred that allows people to accept the fat hatred out there.
I love anything that shows the diversity that exists and expands the ideas around normal. Normal as compared to what? I’m shooting for unique and healthy
I do agree that removing the shame from the word and state of being “fat” is one of the most powerful ways forward – as with any time that we shine a light on anything that ‘everyone knows’. I get that homophobia and racism will always exist. I’m not sure we can say the same for fatism. With the scientifically proven work around the causes of the ‘disease’ of fat mostly coming up with the answer “it’s complicated”, that gives us room to challenge the old calories-in calories-out beliefs – not with emotion and pleas for understanding, but with solid facts. Yes, people will always have their opinions and beliefs, but education, particularly when it’s driven by the grassroots, can change almost anything – I’m an eternal optimist
Sadly, there will be work for therapists like me for several decades after we get real balance in this debate. Anyway, I’m loving this discussion, really insightful comments.
Thanks Natalie for your thoughtful response. Our situations are different obviously. I understand why you would feel offended by assumptions about your weight. What I find curious in these forums is that people like me, people fat because of lifestyle are usually loathe to admit it. As a person with a disability (that I had no choice about) I find that offensive. Hence my conclusion that I must be the only woman on the planet who is fat due to eating too much and not enough exercise.
Yes, regardless of how a person becomes fat they should be treated with respect, every person is deserving of dignity and respect…but for someone like me think through the logic…should I gain another 30kgs and start demanding upgrades to business on planes for free? Should I do this and behave as if this is something that just happened and pretend to be baffled by how? Is this the kind of dishonesty required of women by fat acceptance? How would this be explained to sisters in the Global South who are starving? Of course body size is not under every single person’s control (as illustrated by comments here from Natalie and Jen D) but what about those of us who do have a choice?
Yes, Ariane. I worry that there is a ‘claim some kind of greater right to consideration here’. I worry about groups of relatively privileged (often) white women who seem desperate to claim a specialised oppressed identity. I wonder if our overwhelming guilt at living as well as we do in the first world drives us to claim oppression in such grandiose terms, so that we can more easily bear the knowledge of the luxury of our first world context.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but fat acceptance to me has nothing to do with claiming any kind of oppressed identity, it’s about changing a toxic and factually incorrect attitude that drives women (and increasingly men too) of many races, classes and identities in an ever increasing proportion of the world to hate their own bodies and engage in the one lifestyle that has been shown over and over to be dangerous: dieting.
Probably the force most likely to correct stigmatization of fat people will be national obesity trends. Currently, two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. The discriminated-against outnumber the discriminators two to one, which suggests that the balance of social power is shifting. The minority of American society currently oppressing the overweight majority is obviously using some complex mechanisms, but as present trends continue and their numbers dwindle, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain control.
Oh I wish that were true. I think the power afforded to those trying to sell us ‘thin’ doesn’t diminish if thin becomes rarer (if in fact that is what is happening… the fact that obesity rates have more or less levelled off now suggests that it is not). Rather, the ‘aspirational’ aspect of the diet industry and the beauty industry becomes even more powerful. Social currency afforded to thin people becomes even more valuable. But I think if enough ‘fatties’ start to embrace fat acceptance and reject diet culture and all that goes along with it (and I don’t mean ‘everyone must reject any kind of intentional weight loss or eating plan’, just reject the stranglehold that the diet industry has over people), then we will see the tide turning. It’s not about the number of fat people, it’s about the volume of our voices, how visible we are, and how committed people of all sizes are to standing alongside us and condemning size-based prejudice.
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Anon – it seems to me, as an interested observer, that the last thing FA activists want is special treatment for fat people. They want the same rights as everyone else, that’s the point. The reasons why a person is overweight are completely irrelevant.
Hey all
I have been thinking a lot of how to tackle fat stigma lately. I am a nurse, so my perspective lies within the healthcare context. Some of the comments here are really interesting.
In regards to the points Samantha raised, I also tend to agree that it needs to be a multifaceted approach. I am finishing some research about fat women as healthcare consumers, and in relation to managing fat stigma within institutions/structures such as healthcare, i keep thinking about what emerged from my research. The women I interviewed were torn by the dichotomy of being a fat patient. They wanted to been seen as ‘more than a weight issue’ and be treated like what they imagined thin patients were treated like (ie weight not blamed for the source of every ailment). HOWEVER, they also wanted consideration that weight had been a defining part of their lives, and something which was often painful and sensitive to talk about. I know this doesn’t answer the question, but has raises some interesting points for me as I have been writing recommendations about where to next (in terms of tackling fat stigma).
I am passionately plotting ways in which to create a module or program aimed at undergraduate medical and health professionals which addresses weight and stigma, and which reveals stigma as a very real factor in medical consultations. I think its so important, given the power that medical professionals – in particular- still hold, that they are challenged from a young professional age to challenge and questions their own beliefs and how these infiltrate their clinical practice. I am fairly certain that this does not happen at present, and I think that it will become a critical part of addressing/reducing the stigma attached to fat.
Anyway, just some thoughts!
Dan
That sounds totally brilliant. Educating health professionals about weight stigma would be a huge step forward.
I agree that there is sometimes a tension between wanting to honour how the experience of being fat in this culture is unique, whilst not wanting to be singled out as somehow different or disordered because high weight. I think perhaps some health professionals really struggle to tackle issues surrounding weight with their patients because they themselves find it embarrassing and awkward. I like doctors to be matter-of-fact: many of them use euphemisms or skirt around the issue because they fear offending. Too many others go the opposite way and are outright rude. Striking a balance is what’s needed: i think more dialogue about fat and the FA movement in the public sphere can only serve to help everyone, including health professionals, find that balance.
You make such an interesting point about not wanting every ailment to be blamed on being fat but knowing that being fat has had a huge influence on a patient’s life. I have had the extreme of doctors, from on doctor who didn’t want to treat me for sleep apnea because I “obviously didn’t care enough about myself to take care of myself, so why should she?” to doctors who won’t even mention the fat. There has to be a balance because my fat is part of my life, but I don’t want to be exclusively defined by it by my doctors.
I think there are problems with treating fat as a disability or as an illness just generally. I think that there are closer parallels between fat acceptance and the gay rights movement than disability advocacy. There is a tendency to medicalise fat in the same way that homosexuality was once medicalised and treated as if it were a disease.
I had one of those ‘A-HA’ (as Oprah describes them!) moments today, and even though I am not sure this is the appropriate place to share it, I really want to. Lately, I have been writing a lot about the strategies that fat women use when they interact with health professionals in order to protect themselves from fat attack – bias, unnecessary commentary and the like. Subsequently I have been thinking about myself and how I don’t seem to use any of these strategies.
Now, as I know that I haven’t yet achieved F.E (Fat enlightenment!) I wondered whether I had just been lucky. And then it dawned on me. My coping/defence mechanism has been announcing myself as an ‘obesity researcher’. Somehow early in the consults I always manage to slip in that I am a researcher looking at ‘obesity management in general practice’ (how I always describe it when talking to doctors). Whilst this makes me extra visible as a fatty, it also makes me visible as a professional who is researching this – it somehow also gives me legitimacy and strips away some of their ability to say whatever they like to me or blame everything on my weight. This probably sounds quite obvious, but I hadn’t realised. And I don’t know whether I am selling out, or playing the game, or just doing what I have to do?? I remain unclear on this.
In saying this, however, it doesn’t always work. I remember seeing a new GP and he asked me what I did. I performed my spiel, and he said (whilst giving a shit eating grin), “Oh well you would know all about that then’. I said ‘what do you mean? Sorry, I don’t get it’ and he said ‘come now, you know what I mean’ and I said ‘no, sorry I don’t’ and left it there. I was like a smiling fat assassin, and whilst he then became very huffy I actually became very happy!!!!!!
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Great post Sam.
I firmly believe that the quality of life of fat people is not at all lowered by them being fat, but by the stigmatisation they are subjected to by the greater community. If fat people were treated with respect, fairness and dignity, there would be considerably fewer unhappy fat people.
I think the answer lies in long term cultural reprogramming, of making people aware of their role in this stigmatisation and education as to the realities of fatness, rather than the myths and fearmongering that is presented mostly today.
Because not hating or judging people based on their weight seems to be such a revolutionary idea, I feel I have to ease people into it. Over the past year, I’ve been noticing my friends noticing weight bias in society, and knowing that I am schooled in these things encourages them to discuss it with me, therefore bringing more attention to it.
A friend mentioned that he noticed how news reports on obesity showed the “headless fatty” and he thought it was insulting. My partner mentioned he was noticing how much pressure women were under to look a certain way, even though he didn’t know anyone who actually looked like that.
Calling people out on their fat stigma as well I think makes a different. The “Hey, those fat people you’re talking about? You’re talking about me too, and I don’t appreciate it.”