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Fat is a Personal Issue

1/5/2012

10 Comments

 
Picture
Image: D Sharon Pruitt
There’s something I need to say. I am sick of discussions about fatness that patronise, lie, insult or dissemble. This means I spend a lot of time pissed off, and I don’t want to hold my tongue any longer.

I’m fat. This is not an insult or a putdown; it is a statement of fact. I’ve never understood people who try to use it as an insult either against me (um, yes, I own a mirror AND I know what size clothes I buy, thanks), or against women who are demonstrably not fat at all. How do you insult someone with a physical trait they don’t even possess? It makes no sense! Well of course it doesn’t – it’s not designed to uncover an awkward truth, it’s designed to chip away at someone’s self-esteem and make them feel bad. I’d like to put my name down for the campaign to restore ‘fat’ to its status as an adjective.

I’m not going to discuss how screwed up our ideals of beauty are. It’s not as if they exclude fat people only.

I just want to talk about what it feels like to read and listen to what passes for discussion about health, fitness and beauty as a fat woman.

 I think we should prioritise health and fitness above some weird ideal of beauty – it’s what I try to do in my own life. I’d rather focus on how far I can run than on whether I’m wearing smaller jeans. But it’s a fact that once I get above a certain weight, my fitness suffers. This may not be the case for everyone but I have particular problems with my feet that get worse the more weight I put on them. The problem is, that’s a vicious circle – it’s harder to exercise when my feet are playing up, so I put on weight, so my feet get worse.

So while it’s great to have slim women telling people on my behalf that we should all be promoting body acceptance and ‘fit at any size’, I think it’s easier to say that when you don’t have any experience of what it’s like to be fat and fit, or fat and unfit. I understand the impulse to be supportive, but I don’t always find it helpful.

 But as much as I hate people telling me that I’m fine no matter how fat I get, I think I hate the flipside – the anti-fat brigade -  more.

I don’t mean people who hate fat because they’ve always been told that skinny is best and they haven’t got the imagination to see beyond that. Karl Lagerfeld’s jibes about Adele just confirm what’s obvious about the fashion world – they’re not interested in women being interesting human beings, they’re interested in clothes hangers. No, I mean the ‘fat is unhealthy so you should lose weight for your own good’ group, who are so apparently concerned with my welfare that they think it’s acceptable to dish out diet advice. Usually outside a pub, with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

It’s striking to me that my healthiest friends don’t talk to me about my weight when we have conversations about fitness – they ask if I’m exercising and how; what kind of things I eat to make sure I get a good balance of nutrients – but they don’t focus on my dress size. That comes from an entirely different group of people. People who think that fat is so reprehensible it is to be avoided at all costs.

I disagree. Apart from the fact that you can be fat and healthy, just as you can be slim and hideously unhealthy, if we’re going to provide a free healthcare system (and I think we should) then it makes no sense, ­moral or practical – to then put caveats on which people ‘deserve’ treatment or help. What if someone injures themselves saving people from a fire – definitely worthy, right? But then it turns out they’re a convicted tax-dodger, and the injuries they sustained in the fire were made worse by years of heavy smoking. What now?

It’s easy for examples like this to get into the realm of the ridiculous, but the point is a simple one – you can lower your risk factors for certain diseases and illnesses, but you can’t lower your risk factor for dying. We all have to do it, and living a certain way is not a guarantee of health. Life is unfair and some people are born conditions that will wreak havoc with their health, no matter what they do.

It makes sense to do what we can to keep ourselves healthy, but all of the factors are not in our control. I’m privileged to be able to afford to eat well – lots of fresh vegetables – and live somewhere where I can walk outside. My fatness is down to a love of several high-calorie foods, and avoidance of high-impact exercise. What it isn’t is an outward sign of laziness or an invitation to comment on my choices.

Squeamish Louise
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10 Comments
Rosalind
30/4/2012 05:55:14 pm

Oh my - you just hit the nail on the head with this one. Thank you so much.

"What it isn’t is an outward sign of laziness or an invitation to comment on my choices."

I just wish people would listen.

It does make me laugh though when people tell me I'm costing them money by being fat as they're a tax payer. Because all of MY taxes obviously go on subsidies for pie manufacture or something.

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Louise link
30/4/2012 09:26:51 pm

Rosalind, I'm so glad you liked this! It was difficult to write, because there's so much I want to say I could easily just go on about it for thousands of words. But I wanted to concentrate on the personal - without getting into my own particular weight or what I eat or what exercise I do - because I do feel patronised and insulted most of the time I read other discussions about weight!

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Rosalind
30/4/2012 09:38:49 pm

It's so hard isn't it because there's the awareness that nobody has the right to question an individual's health and food / exercise choices but I sometimes feel that I have to justify myself anyway and that's just falling into their trap. You did a great job of negotiating that.

Clare
30/4/2012 09:51:22 pm

Louise, this is great!
I am pretty... solidly built, I guess you could say? I mean am a big woman to start with, just because of my frame. On top of that, I'm also a bit podge (I love the word podge). In this, I take after my Dad's side of the family. I also went through a period of being terribly badly co-ordinated, because I had a growth spurt when I was about 12, taking me to my adult height, and I just couldn't work out where my body ended for a long while. This, combined with a weird and painful knee condition that I didn't fully understand until I was about 25 and the fact that my year at school was particularly full of sporty girls, meant that I HATED exercise for a long time. My mum, by contrast, has pretty much always been thin (because of a thyroid problem) and good at sport. You can probably see where this is going.
For most of my life, my mum would tell me to exercise so I could lose weight, and I don't think she really understood that (a) my stubborn streak meant i didn't want to do as I was told and (b) that it was very hurtful to be constantly told by someone who loves me that the shape I am is not good enough.
I kind of lucked out by meeting Andrew, who is athletic and loves me and doesn't tell me I am fat. He made me a bike for my birthday about three and a half years ago, and we started cycling together. I discovered I love cycling because the right gear along the Brighton seafront feels like flying, and I don't associate it with losing weight. From this, I remembered that I love swimming and yoga, and I recently discovered I like boxercise, of all things. I also noticed that I felt much, much happier and cleverer when I exercised. That got me through the first few months of starting to be more active. Lately, I've realised I love exercise for its own sake - like you say, it's wonderful to find out what you can do with your body.
Initially, when I started exercising, Mum commented that I hadn't lost any weight (I still haven't; somewhat podge is just the size I am). It took me two years to be able to explain to her that that wasn't why I exercised, and that if I concentrated on losing weight while swimming or cycling, they no longer felt fun and I would no longer want to do them. Mum, bless her, has not mentioned my weight since. My aunt is another story, but one victory at a time, eh?

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Louise link
1/5/2012 09:37:37 pm

I like the word podge, it's fun to say!

Boxercise ROCKS - I think it's the fact you can get rid of your aggression - I used to picture people who'd annoyed me recently when doing the punching, even though I'd never hit someone in real life!

And just generally YES to everything in this comment :-)

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jacqui
1/5/2012 06:41:52 am

This says a lot to me being a porker myself.
Why is fat now the first thing people want to point out to you? I have been fat bullied all my life started by family members and carried on by the general public and really helpful doctors.
As a child i was called fat and that i could afford to miss meals on a daily basis also any fat people in the media i was given their name in hilarious jokes!
Looking back at photos of me as a child i wasnt even fat, i was a short, square, athletic child who ran and cycled everywhere. This impacted on me and made me a victim and a comfort eater piling on the weight in adolecence which gave rise to public displays of bullying from total strangers who would shout out their car windows at me...i was a size 14/16 at the time. My weight spiralled upwards as i became unable to leave the house due to fear and self loathing, it is now only in my late 30's and from a lot of self therapy and anti-depressant that i am starting to like myself i've lost weight and i'm cycling and going to the gym, i'm happy but still insecure but i'm getting there.
This is my story but my best friends story is completely different she has always been big had a loving family and has never ever had any fat bullies ever in her life...so the difference for us i suppose is obviously confidence, mine was stripped away as a child and hers was nurtured, she is healthy has a loving partner and has always been happy with herself.

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Louise link
1/5/2012 09:35:32 pm

It makes such a difference doesn't it? I had a lovely family but got bullied at school for being fat - and like you, I realise I wasn't really when I look at photos! I swam competitively and cycled everywhere so I must have been pretty fit, but I had (have!) terrible hand-eye coordination so I HATED PE at school.

I'm sorry to hear your story of being bullied - people can be such dicks. Glad to hear you are starting to like yourself. Isn't it ironic that when we dislike ourselves we often react by comfort eating and puttnig ourselves further into a position where we dislike ourselves?

I am totally out of the habit of exercise at the moment, having recently moved and changed jobs, but writing this and reading the great comments has inspired me to get back into it - I loved the feeling exerciose gave me. I've signed up for a pilates class tomorrow!

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jacqui
2/5/2012 12:12:16 am

Great to hear that we have all empowered each other and realised that fundementally ...we shouldnt have to justify ourselves for who we are!
I realise that i have the power now to stand up and be me and i think thats the biggest change...
so if anyone else reads these very personal stories from what all sound like amazing strong, intelligent women, and feels how i did when i was young and insecure...take heart we are all individual and unique whether we are round, square, top/bottom heavy or just plain podgers. And you are never as fat as you think...as Louise and i discovered in old photos you really are never as big as in your own head!

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Squeamish Kate link
2/5/2012 01:34:54 am

Very cool. You're clearly all awesome for coming and hanging out on SqueamishBikini.com and I'm glad you're getting something out of it!

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Sue (The educating variety)
2/5/2012 06:07:45 am

Well Louise you have certainly opened up a can of worms, which are probably calorie packed and not what fat people should eat as part of a calorie controlled diet! One of the great things about being at college is that people like me for what they see, my ample exterior gets me about quite nicely thankyou, though my knees are definately dodgy too. I know I can be greedy, but thats my choice. I stand in front of my peers with only a fleeting moments thought of how I look because I now have confidence and know they are interested in what I am saying. And if they are not, or I'm boring, its not because I'm fat, its because I'm boring! And like fellow commentors on your piece, I too look at photos of past fat moments and think I actually didnt look that bad. And I too dont need people (my mother) telling me I need to lose weight for my own good. I do need to lose weight for my own good, but its not someone else's place to tell me that yet somehow they (she) assume it is perfectly fine and not at all hurtful to say so. Fat is a very strange culture, thank you for uncovering it.

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