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On Being A Thin Ally To Fat People
Oct. 27th, 2010 10:01 am What do you do when your self-image as a ugly fat person clashes with the image other people have of you as a moderately, if not Aishwarya Rai -level, beautiful and pleasantly voluptuous person? The conventional way of seeing this is as the burden of impossible beauty standards on women, as a common cause for women of all shapes to commiserate over. But lately I've been seeing this as another form of appropriating a genuinely oppressed class's pain. The spur for this post was a post someone linked to in Trinker's LJ about the 30 Rock character Liz Lemon. For five minutes I was snarking at the upper-class beautiful white woman whining that she's not Scarlett Johanssen, taking especially vituperous pleasure in delineating the similarities between her and That Guy's current U-Chicago grad student girlfriend - and then I thought, "You know, Sajia, you're not all that different from Liz Lemon." In the sense that although I do have a lot of disadvantages in terms of poor social skills, belonging to a hated minority and poverty, in terms of actual physical appearance I'm quite attractive, it's just that I find life so overwhelming that taking care of my looks is the first thing to go.
One of the most important insights I ever had as a leftist was reading the Michael Berube essay where he talks about how disability has been historically neglected as a social issue even though people had a much greater chance of becoming disabled than to change their ethnic or gender identity. Similarly, fatness is a social underclass status that can affect just about anyone - it's just that it affects people in two separate ways, how they see themselves and how others see them. Most fat people see themselves as fat, but a large proportion of relatively thin people also see themselves as fat, even if other people see them as thin or average. A big reason, if not the only reason for this, is that eating disorders, from full-on bulimia to milder forms, affect people of all sizes - but people only sympathize with sufferers of eating disorders if they're already a socially acceptable weight : "Oh, you're skinny enough, you don't need to worry about your weight!" .
As a woman of acceptable curves I have benefited from fat activism. When I moved to North America eight years ago I gained a lot of weight because of emotional eating and going on bipolar meds. I started reading The Fat Nutritionist blog six months ago, and by encouraging me to trust in my own appetite it did what my vegetarian friends and French Women Don't Get Fat could not - it got me to eat more vegetables and a healthier array of foods. I still have food security issues due to my low income, but I've learnt not to panic that I'll become FAT if I don't eat healthy enough at a particular time. I've also taken up bellydancing in the last three years, and reading fat activist blogs has had me look at dance and exercise as things to do for the fun of it and not to get a certain figure. And guess what? I've slimmed down.
And that's the problem. The biggest beneficiaries of fat activism are slightly overweight women who use the insights of fat activists to heal their eating disorders and body image disorders - and become more attractive as a result. Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte, and Naomi Wolf before them, are conventionally beautiful feminists who have appropriated the body image issues of less fortunate women to gain power that comes less easily to actual fat activists like Kate Harding and Maia of Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty. Complaining about how fat you are is only endearing if you're below a size 8. Average sized girls have a hard time getting clothes as well, but they're more likely to get compliments wearing them.
As Bellatrys once said, true empathy comes not from emphasizing false similarity in misfortunes but in recognizing one's own actual privilege. Which is why I have decided to renounce my identity as a fat person and embrace my identity as a beautiful woman who sadly will never be below a size 8. I'm not sure what I can do as a thin ally to stop the pain caused to fat people - other than things I already do such as not discriminate against them or suggest that they do more to lose weight than they want to do -but I know the biggest step I can take is not to claim that I am fat and fish for compliments all the time, ala Liz Lemon.
One of the most important insights I ever had as a leftist was reading the Michael Berube essay where he talks about how disability has been historically neglected as a social issue even though people had a much greater chance of becoming disabled than to change their ethnic or gender identity. Similarly, fatness is a social underclass status that can affect just about anyone - it's just that it affects people in two separate ways, how they see themselves and how others see them. Most fat people see themselves as fat, but a large proportion of relatively thin people also see themselves as fat, even if other people see them as thin or average. A big reason, if not the only reason for this, is that eating disorders, from full-on bulimia to milder forms, affect people of all sizes - but people only sympathize with sufferers of eating disorders if they're already a socially acceptable weight : "Oh, you're skinny enough, you don't need to worry about your weight!" .
As a woman of acceptable curves I have benefited from fat activism. When I moved to North America eight years ago I gained a lot of weight because of emotional eating and going on bipolar meds. I started reading The Fat Nutritionist blog six months ago, and by encouraging me to trust in my own appetite it did what my vegetarian friends and French Women Don't Get Fat could not - it got me to eat more vegetables and a healthier array of foods. I still have food security issues due to my low income, but I've learnt not to panic that I'll become FAT if I don't eat healthy enough at a particular time. I've also taken up bellydancing in the last three years, and reading fat activist blogs has had me look at dance and exercise as things to do for the fun of it and not to get a certain figure. And guess what? I've slimmed down.
And that's the problem. The biggest beneficiaries of fat activism are slightly overweight women who use the insights of fat activists to heal their eating disorders and body image disorders - and become more attractive as a result. Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte, and Naomi Wolf before them, are conventionally beautiful feminists who have appropriated the body image issues of less fortunate women to gain power that comes less easily to actual fat activists like Kate Harding and Maia of Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty. Complaining about how fat you are is only endearing if you're below a size 8. Average sized girls have a hard time getting clothes as well, but they're more likely to get compliments wearing them.
As Bellatrys once said, true empathy comes not from emphasizing false similarity in misfortunes but in recognizing one's own actual privilege. Which is why I have decided to renounce my identity as a fat person and embrace my identity as a beautiful woman who sadly will never be below a size 8. I'm not sure what I can do as a thin ally to stop the pain caused to fat people - other than things I already do such as not discriminate against them or suggest that they do more to lose weight than they want to do -but I know the biggest step I can take is not to claim that I am fat and fish for compliments all the time, ala Liz Lemon.
