The problem with talking about your fat as pathology

    Recently, Jezebel, published this article Titled "I Ate So Men Wouldn’t Pay Attention To Me" which garnered the typical mish-mash of "Fat is so unhealthy, glad you are getting thin!” "Don't fat shame", and "jeez, it is so easy to lose weight people just eat less, duh!" commentary. Perhaps most striking is how little discussion there was about street harassment in an article that at its core was about street harassment.  The discussion, such that is was (and general fat-is-so-bad-eat-some-celery nonsense aside), split along two camps:  Individuals concerned about the way that this woman's story enforced certain stereotypes about fat ladies and contributed to fat-shaming, and camps who wanted to honor the person's individual experience and a general right to her own narrative.  The thing is, both camps are right, and also a little bit wrong.  Most importantly this article illustrated how hard it is to talk about disordered eating and personal trauma in a fat positive framework.

            I have seen this sort of conflict come up before within fat acceptance circles.  On one message board I frequent a new member posted the question “Why are you fat?” along with an in depth evaluation of her perception of the psychological torments that she believed had driven her to eat.  What followed were a series of comments ranging from other tales of pain, to flippant comments about bacon consumption, to angry retorts about genetic predisposition and general uncertainty about why anyone is the size and shape they are.  It was a hornet’s nest, and the girl who had started it all had no idea why there was so much emotion floating around – and I can hardly blame her.  The notion that fat is a sign of emotional distress is a pretty common perception.

           

            I once took a graduate level Cultural Psychology class with a very passionate, well-intentioned, progressive teacher.  She spent the semester trying to convey to her students the reality of racism and sexism and how important policies that mitigated institutional racism were.  She wanted us all to be aware of bias and prejudice, to work against it.  And then one day she told us all – in a very matter of fact way – that no fat person can ever be happy in the United States. Ever. Fat people are just sad, depressed, damaged people.  And she didn’t just mean that institutionally we won’t allow for the concept of happy fat people, she meant that ALL FAT PEOPLE ARE DEPRESSED.  She was utterly baffled when I tried to explain how biased and hurtful this statement was.  I learned so much from that instructor and I am forever in her debt for the ways she was able to influence my ideas and approaches, but part of my still feels the sting when I remember her comment, and all those eyes swiveling toward myself and the other noticeably fat girl in the room.

            This is a refrain many fat people are familiar with; our fat represents pain.  Overwhelmingly, there is a perception that fat people cannot possibly be happy. We can’t be happy with our bodies, and we can’t be happy with our lives.  This is an idea that floats around, both in general society and in psychological communities.   Watch some TV talk shows or pick up a women’s magazine talking about fat, in particular women’s fat, and you will likely see a lot of talk about emotional eating, stuffing our feelings, and how releasing of emotional baggage is necessary (and leads to) the release of our physical “baggage” as well.  I have read articles claiming that fatness is related to hoarding, that my cluttered house is making me fat, that sexualized youth leads to fatness, that all over-eating is emotional eating.  Fat is a sign of depression, or anxiety.  Flip on Dr. Phil and hear all about how each pound of fat is a physical representation of the overwhelming sadness of the fat person.  The lesson seems to be, “Don’t scorn fat people, pity them instead”  -- of course this sort of attempt to humanize fat through pathology just results in what Eve Sedgwick would call an “Open Secret” about our fat.  Which is that even if people buy into the idea of fat being the result of pathology, it will always come back to a matter of willpower in their minds.  We all know that even when we talk about addiction or emotional pathology, in the last instance it is a matter of choice – to smoke the cigarette, eat the donut or suck the dick.  We open our mouths and commit the act. (which of course presumes a direct link between how one looks and what one consumes or other behaviors, but that has to be a subject for another day) So not only have we taken on the mantle of pathology, we are still stuck with the label of weak willed.  We end up both pathologized (a problem in and of itself) but scorned too.  Sick and weak willed.

            You can easily see this trend in the comments of the Jezebel article.  Respondents who see the author’s position as merely justifying her actions, who still impeach the author’s credibility by seeing this retrospective explanation as unlikely or suspicious.  Even those who embrace the idea that fat can come from fear and pain still admonish the author to lose the weight and get healthy – in this instance not only is physical health conflated with body size, but mental health as well.

            Now, you might be thinking, “That is all well and good Julia, but some people do have disordered eating and pain.”  And to that I would say, “You, betcha! And that is the catch, that is the double bind in the way we have to construct ourselves as fat activists in order to gain power, gain favor and gain rights.”  We have to fight against stereotypes, we want the world to know that fat bodies aren't necessarily sick bodies, and fat people can be happy, healthy people. But that makes it hard to find a place in our community – better yet outside of it – to talk about disordered eating, or painful experiences that might be linked to our bodies.  And we need to talk about it, because identities and bodies are complicated, and our experiences of our bodies are complicated too.  But, in order to access rights, we have to counter the open secret, and so we end up committing rhetorical gymnastics.  Because there is a WHOLE LOT WRONG with the way this article in Jezebel was constructed and presented, but there is also a whole lot wrong with not having a place for voices that want to talk about what this article was about.

       Part of what this Jezebel article fails to address is that the ability to talk about your personal relationship with food, or your personal food and body related pathology, without the expectation that this anecdotal evidence reflects upon everyone in your size category, is a privilege.

            When someone who is of a normal, or "socially acceptable" body size talks about their personal struggles with food, body image and pathology, they are just talking about their own experience. There isn't an existing paradigm that says all "normal size" ladies (and gents) are screwed up about food, or psychologically damaged. However, there is an existing perception of fat bodies as already always representing pathology.  Big bodies represent out of control appetites, damaged psyches, and undesirable bodies.  Thus when a fat person talks about their disordered eating, it is often taken as a reinforcement of existing stereotypes - it is seen as representing all fat bodies. Skinny women have a similar stereotype floating over them - thin women often deal with accusations of eating disorders whether they have them or not.  When your body sits at either end of the poles and you talk about your body, you are also unfortunately representing all bodies at your end of the pole.  It isn't fair, but it is the truth.  And this renders public self exploration of psychological pain or disordered eating habits as personal expression a thin privilege.

            The Jezebel article also presumes a level of agency over body size and shape that is problematic for many within the Fat Acceptance community.  To compare weight to a “baggy shirt” implicitly incorporates the idea that weight can be put on and taken off at will – like an article of clothing.   This is a very common notion about weight and it is often represented in how we speak about the experience of fat, when we speak pejoratively.  Evoking the notion of a “fat suit with the zipper stuck” or a baggy shirt implies that the body is malleable, and will bow to our will if only our will is strong enough.  It also supports the notion that inside all fat people there is a thin body just trying to climb out.   For fat people who have struggled with the reality that bodies have agency, and we cannot always get them to do what we want them to, this is a particularly offensive and troublesome idea.

            Last, this article engages with the important topics of street harassment, sexuality, and by extension sexual assault and their relationship to weight in a non-reflexive fashion.   The author speaks of her perception that fat women were not sexualized (and by extension not sexual) beings without examining to what extent this perception is real.  Nor does the author consider the flip side of the bind that she finds herself in.  She wants to be free of harassment and thinks that adjusting her body to be “unattractive” will prevent this harassment.  However, the fat body is not necessarily unattractive – there are many men and women who find voluptuous fat bodies attractive, drop dead sexy even.  Indeed, fat women in particular face a strange set of perceptions when it comes to our sexuality.  We are branded as unattractive and thus ascribed a certain asexuality – we are at least expected to be celibate even if it is against our will – and often we are supposed to be all right with that asexuality if we want to be socially acceptable.  The jolly fat lady who has put her days of sexuality behind her, but has lots of hard candy to pass out so it’s alright love.  *Wink*    The flip of this is the hypersexual fat woman.  She refuses to take on the mantle of asexuality and so her desires are constructed as monstrous, excessive and even dangerous.  This is the large woman we see in situation comedies who seems to think she is sexy, even though we all know she isn’t! As a community we laugh at her desperate attempts to mimic sexuality.  In either case the fat woman’s sexuality is always impotent, and unreciprocated.  

            Thus, the author’s failure to acknowledge that her perceptions were just that, perceptions and internalized stereotypes, ends up committing a kind of violence against fat women and their sexuality.  It is an unintentional and unreflexive violence, but violence none-the-less.  And it is a damn shame, because delving into this topic could have been both productive for the community and potentially healing for the author.   

The perception that fat women are asexual, (and therefore subject to potential violence for violating the implicit contract with make hetero-normativity to be available for consumption) and conventionally attractive women are sexual, and always available for consumption are two sides of the same problem.  Wouldn’t it have been amazing if we could have gotten to that conversation instead of being stuck on the open secret of will power, fatness, and pathological bodies?
We need to have these conversations people.  We as the Fat Acceptance Community need to be able to talk frankly about the threat of pathology and how it keeps some silent about the violence and pain associated with their bodies.  And we as a feminist community need to have a frank conversation about bodies, fatness, and sexuality – because it is important to combating street harassment and rape.  This was the perfect storm, we each community, derailed the other.  It is the perfect example of why feminism needs fat acceptance and why fat acceptance needs feminism – so we can talk about these things without reciting some thin-privileged, patriarchy affirming script. 

This article is influenced by Eve Sokofski Sedgwick's Chapter on "Epidemics of the Will" from her book Tendencies