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| [Image description: Watercolour and pen drawing across a journal spread, of myself with my eyes closed to the right, shoulders-up. Overlayed across both pages it reads: I HAVE LIVED IN THIS BODY TOO LONG FOR YOU TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH IT OR WHAT TO PUT INTO IT."] |
Article and art by Amelia A. J. Foy
Happy “New Year, New Me!” season, where everyone signs up for a gym and posts about how bad carbs are.
Now, let me clear one thing up: you do what you want with your body. Want to work out? Work out. Want to eat more veggies and down more protein shakes? Power to you. What I absolutely will NOT be dealing with in the year of our Lord 2019, however, is you backing up these actions with fatphobic, body-shaming attitudes, or achieving your goals through an unhealthy relationship with your body and food.
THE ISSUE: Fatphobia & Diet Culture
We have all grown up being told that being fat = being unhealthy. What comes along with that is the implication that fatness means laziness, means a lack of self-control, means you “let yourself go”. This is the basis of fatphobia: the hatred and oppression of fat people.
This is a term that a lot of people roll their eyes at - how can fat people be oppressed? Well, just the same as any other oppressed group: systemic marginalisation. Fat bodies aren’t visible in media unless they are there to be mocked or degraded (or fetishised - shout out liking thicc women only when they suck in their tummies!). Fat people aren’t catered for in our straight-size fashion industry (which ends around a UK size 8-12, with “plus-size” as 12-18, then a solid “lol, good luck” for everyone bigger). When a fat model makes it, such as Tess Holliday to go with an obvious example, we see a million and one think pieces on “BODY POSITIVITY PROMOTING OBESITY” and the comments of thousands of locals on the person’s social media talking about how “unhealthy” they are.
This whole discussion of “fat people aren’t healthy” is a key part of fatphobia. It disguises hatred and fear (fear of becoming fat, that is) as health concern. But none of these people are Tess Holliday’s doctors - they don’t know if she has x, y and z health conditions because of her weight, so every comment is an assumption, founded on fatphobia, fed to us by our culture. Just because diabetes is associated with being fatter doesn’t mean every fat person has diabetes - and doesn’t mean a skinny person can’t be diabetic. You would never look at a thin person and say, “you’re going to have a heart attack!” even though they could be genetically predisposed to it or eat a high-fat diet - and most importantly, you would never say they “brought it on themselves”.
Being fat doesn’t equal being lazy. Being fat as a result of overeating or not exercising doesn’t even equal being lazy. Our eating habits are much more than eating till we’re full - they’re formed by our upbringing, culture, financial circumstances, disabilities or mental health problems, the amount of spare time we can dedicate to working out, our jobs themselves, so on, so forth. Really, what I am trying to get across to you is that our eating habits are complicated, and how our food relates to our health and body mass is also complicated. Therefore: don’t be scared of being fat. It’s not a death sentence. It’s not a reflection of your work ethic. Fatphobia is an accumulation of stigma against gaining weight - but it’s literally just weight. (And makes for an excellent pillow.)
Yet here we are, with this pervasive, internalised belief that fatness is wrong. That we should hate ourselves for being fat. This is the work of diet culture, which I believe Christy Harrison sums up well on her website: diet culture “worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue”, promotes weight loss as a way to achieve a social status, demonises certain ways of eating, and oppresses people who don’t fit the “ideal body” - which, as Christy rightfully points out, disproprotionately hurts “women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities”. Thus, this isn’t just a weight issue - it’s a social justice one. It is an issue of oppression.
Around new year’s, diet culture really does the rounds, more so really than any other time of year. You see it in every “I got fat over Christmas!” meme, every “Gym day 1” facebook post on January 1st, every “no, I’m on a diet” when you eat with your friends. I just want everyone who’s resolution is to “lose weight” to ask themselves: why? Has your doctor told you to, or do you just hate what you see in the mirror? Are you actually overweight, and why do you care? Are you aware of the people around you when you say “I feel so fat!” and what thoughts you could be planting in their heads? Why are you so scared of your own body changing? Why are you so scared of looking like me and people much bigger than me?
And do you know that your diet isn’t actually going to work?
According to the vast amount of research, diets are not a sustainable way of losing weight. In fact, 95% of people put their weight back on within a few years. They also don’t actually teach you about “healthy eating” - it’s about restriction of fatty foods, which further leads to your diet lacking the nutrients you need. As for solutions like Flat Tummy Teas, they are literally laxatives - it’s not a diet, it’s your food passing right through you without your body absorbing the goodness it needs from it. Maybe it works for the Kardashians with their nutritionists on standby, but not for us regular scum. (Seriously, stop giving them money.)
Dieting (and regular weight check-ins) also makes you x8 more likely to develop an eating disorder. The mental illness with the highest morbidity rate is anorexia. All in all, it really isn’t worth harming yourself and others around you because you ate a couple more roast potatoes than you thought you should in December. If you want to “get healthy”, do so healthily, not by calorie-counting, denying yourself food, constant self-criticism, and to combat ever-present fear of being fat.
SURVIVING THE ISSUE
1. WORK ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR BODY AND FOOD
Our eating is tied to our mood in more ways than how we feel looking at our bodies. It gives us energy, lets us grow and get in the essential nutrients our brain needs to function. We have been taught to view food as “bad” and “good”, usually based on calorie-content, which doesn’t reflect how food works, and doesn’t allow us to also eat for pleasure. Thus, eating becomes a source of stress. You feel guilt for craving “bad” food, which comes from depriving yourself of it in the first place, and denying yourself praise unless you eat only the “good” stuff.
When looking to dismantle these ideas, it is good to start at home: how we sit in our bodies and eating habits. We need to be aware of what our body needs each day (and accommodate any deficiencies or disabilities we may have) and realise that we don’t need to eat within strict confines constantly to nourish our bodies. We need to allow and respect space for our bodies to feel good about eating “bad”. Tasty food is one of life’s greatest gifts!
We also need to realise that we are all built differently, and the ideal body is unattainable for the masses. The images we are fed are edited and sculpted to “perfection”. The models on runways are cherry-picked as close to this ideal as possible. The bodies we see aren’t diverse and they aren’t you - and that is entirely okay. You don’t need to fit into a size 6. Size 6 isn’t even real. It’s a number that shifts between stores based on how accommodating they want to be of different body shapes.
But most importantly, prioritise your happiness. When you are happiest, your body will look exactly how it should.
2. CONSUME BODY POSITIVE MEDIA
Is all you see when you scroll flat tummy teas? Lucky you, I have some recommendations!
It can be so difficult to find ourselves in others in this diet-culture-saturated world. This is deliberate - it isolates us, makes us feel like everyone else is “perfect” and our bodies are somehow broken or faulty. Luckily, through social media, we can build ourselves a space of diversity and body positivity, and punch diet culture right in the face.
Source of education, joyfulness and jiggle, Megan is the perfect start to curating a body positive feed. She is always talking all kinds of truth on her feed and in her advice column (from diet culture to eating disorder recovery), whilst being aware of the intersectionality needed when discussing body positivity. I especially love how she platforms other marginalised bodies on her feed, thus uplifting their voices and not speaking for them. She also has a book! Buy Body Positive Power here - way more in depth than this article could ever be.
Bangladeshi-American beauty guru Nabela Noor makes me so happy. She radiates positivity, power and killer make-up skills. Follow her for posts about her body journey, combating fatphobic hate, and her experiences as a South Asian woman - and see her thrive!
Fashion model and designer La’Shaunae is entirely open with her struggles as a fat black woman breaking into the straight-sized, white, entirely too-narrow fashion world. Her outfits are killer and her words cannot be silenced - she speaks about the things that those in the industry are told not to, and knows what she is worth. I can’t wait to watch her thrive this year.
Trans creative Sugar is an artist and photographer bringing fat bodies to the forefront of their work. Their photographs feature all kinds of diverse fat bodies existing, especially queer ones, usually in nature, in all their beauty. It’s so rare to see this kind of content and my feed is so much better for it - I love all that this account produces and all the positive affirmations it gives us: our bodies are natural, are powerful, are entirely worthy of the space they occupy.
Michelle is a force of nature. She uses her platform to talk about all things body confidence and body positivity, on her social media, in her podcast and on her YouTube channel. Follow for daily truths and affirmations and buy her book, Am I Ugly? (available here) to read about all things wrong with diet culture and the ways society has conditioned us to look at ourselves - it’s been on my reading list for a while, I can’t wait to get it!
#FatQueerFemme icon Enam is everything we need in our lives. As a fat positive activist and model, she fills my feed with all the glamour and style that is so rarely afforded to fat people - it makes me so happy to see her out here thriving and smiling, showing fashion isn’t just a skinny person thing, and neither is happiness. Follow her for her lqqks and her invaluable voice and activism.
There are so many more accounts out there - this is just a few on Instagram, of some truly amazing people. Get following!
3. CUT. THE BODY SHAMERS. OUT.
This is easier said than done, I know that. And it doesn’t mean a harsh, “I will never speak to you again.” But if an individual in your life, or a celebrity you follow, is making you feel like your body is wrong, or your eating habits should be a source of shame, it’s in your best interests to make a more healthy space for yourself. This could be anything from unfollowing them on Instagram, to muting their stories, to not hanging out with the, or it could be having a real conversation with them about how their actions make you feel.
Until you’re ready, however, focus inward on your relationship with your body, food and appearance; try replacing/countering their fatphobia or body negativity with body positivity and anti-diet-culture education.