It’s not often that I really want to talk about fat issues and such like. I don’t waffle on about social construction all that much or give opinion on political stuff, not here anyway! But being laid up means I have lots of time to read. An article about the school campaign mentioned below started me thinking and this is what fell out of my brain. Hopefully it makes sense and I’d love to hear YOUR opinions.
There has been yet another study released lately which shows that obesity – or just being fat – is something which can affect prospects in every area of your life. The journal of Obesity recently determined that overweight women particularly, are likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs including receiving a lower starting salary. The study, which was undertaken by the University of Manchester and Monash University, Melbourne, says that there are many negative connotations associated with both slim bodies and large bodies but that larger bodies are more likely to receive negative attention.
I personally have been bullied in two workplaces, on both occasions my weight has been the butt of jokes made at my expense. It’s been used to humiliate me, belittle me and generally treat me as someone who deserves to be treated badly. I was raised to take people as people. Not to judge by appearance but by character. Apparently that doesn’t take much to judge my “fat person” character.
I think we forget when we say that we (society) are battling a war against obesity that we are actually fighting a war against people, obese people. People marked obese by a chart devised by a person. Just a person. There is a society wide moral panic, and it’s aimed at obese people and when government and health advisor’s combine and say we must fight obesity it’s hardly surprising that those who are obese become public targets.
“We really have declared war on obese people,” said Dr. Kimberly Redding, director of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Program at the Georgia Department of Public Health.
It’s really scary that as a society we regularly declare there is a war against some of the people that make up that society. Regardless of health, or explanation they are branded something we need to attack and attack we do. Fat is now a societal symbol of disease, indulgence, poverty, disregard for personal dignity and sloppiness, it’s also a judgement of lifestyle choices similarly made against gay men in the 1980′s. Most of all it’s presumed that weight is an indicator of health. There are numerous studies that disprove this, I feel to an extent I disprove this. I have perfect blood test results – lipids, blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar, everything is normal. I can run, I can carry out tasks of fitness that many slimmer people would struggle with, because fitness is earned, not all bodies are. I spotted this on Pinterest and thought it was interesting.
We do lap up celebrities who tell us that they eat burgers all the time, and still frown when people admit they are doing the right things and not losing weight. We are told that it’s calories in and calories out but it can be so much more complicated for some people. In the majority it’s not but it’s soul destroying when it is, either by physical or mental problems , losing weight and being healthy can be incredibly tough at times. What we forget when we hear celebs talk about their diets is that they are a brand and they live in a world of unparalleled privilege, very often they have come from privilege and continue to live in it. How often do we jump to the conclusion that a fat person is lying or deluded when they claim they are doing everything they can?
People claim to worry about the strain that fatties chose to put on the economy in the UK particularly where health care is free at the point of service. Papers re hash the figures about the “strain” on the NHS pretty much annually, I can only see one point of this. To shame the larger community in to “doing the right thing” and getting their weight down as if it will solve all financial issues that the NHS. Does shaming work?
In the USA strong for life have been heavily criticised for their shaming campaign featuring children.
At first view this poster seems to be shockingly honest. I know as the big kid at school I was miserable because of my peers reactions to me, but the truth is when I was dangerously thin, they still bullied me. Plus does shaming a person really work in respect to causing positive change? I know that the humiliations I suffered never made me think “I know I’ll have a salad for dinner”, I know that the “chats” my Gran had with me about losing some weight never encouraged me to do that, in fact that anything to do with shame or judgement left me piling on the lbs. Why would you nurture something that you are supposed to be ashamed of?
Then should we be considering the kids who are happy in their own skins? What about those who aren’t bullied? Who aren’t ashamed? Aren’t those the ones we should be celebrating rather than shaming? Is it really what we want as a society to propagate this opinion that fat = shameful? I personally don’t feel this helps young people have self esteem, or better health any more than the weigh and measure scheme in the UK educates parents and kids about what’s a healthy size. We attach so much meaning to a set of arbitrary numbers from the second our children are born, first it’s centile charts which tell us where on the “normal” scale our children were born on to adulthood when we measure our worth by the number on the scale or the inside of an item of clothing. Why do we put pressure on the individual response rather than the group one? Why target the victim of abuse rather than educating the abuser?
In opposition to the campaign the Health At Every Size group have released a number of posters which give their opinion on the childhood obesity campaign.
Even in the case of the word Obesity we are de personalising the people behind the label. A certain number puts some people in to a certain group. That group has had war waged on them based on nothing more than an individuals maths calculations and visual assessment. Why does society have such a problem with fat? Fiscal issues have long been debunked, a 2005 study led by Katherine Flegal of the Centres for Disease Control in the US found that people in the “overweight” category of 25-30 BMI (where Brad Pitt and George Clooney sit) demonstrate a lower death rate than their peers who are of “normal” weight. Many medical studies have shown thin isn’t good and fat isn’t bad. Stable weight, for example, causes far less stress to the heart than going up and down the scales in weight. Thin people with health issues don’t get demonised for their size. Thank goodness. But then neither should fat people.
I do think that consumerism is at the core of the movement against the fatties. We live in a consumer society, we are told to consume consume consume and that our economy depends on it. However doing this publicly, loudly, is seen as crass and undignified. What you carry on your body is pretty much as public as you can get, so we turn our noses up at largely branded clothing as it’s seen as overtly flaunting your wealth, fat tells people you consume and people presume that this shows a lack of restraint, similar to wearing a large branded logo all over your clothes. Society deems this unpleasant.
Susie Orbach (writer and psychotherapist) explains this part of my opinion much better than I can!
Of course fat doesn’t really say or imply such things, but surrounded by images of perfected bodies, invitingly displaying the hugely expensive and lavishly marketed goodies that we are roused to desire, fat becomes the vehicle on to which we project all the ugly aspects of our over-consumption and hunger for objects. Consumer society tantalises us. We then try within ourselves to control the needs that are being constantly stimulated. It’s not unlike other forms of discrimination. In this case, people who have nothing in common except for their size…Fat looks on the surface as though it is about a failure of restraint.
In my experience seeing other people ashamed of their body led me to become ashamed of my body as well. It led me to diet before I was 9 years old.
It’s only when I started to really care about myself and my body that I began to be able to treat it better and understand what is healthy for my body and mind. My weight has followed but has been more successful when I started to understand that the scale really isn’t the indicator of my health. It tells me how much my body weighs. That may sound simple but really the connections that society and those in the midst of becoming more healthy make with the scale go far beyond it being a measuring device of bones, skin and other body components.
I stand for the content of people’s character over the size of their jeans.
For those who follow my facebook/twitter/blog you will know I fractured my foot in a tumble down the stairs. I’m completely devastated as I’d planned to run the next day and on Sunday in the Great West Run. I did manage a 4k run on Wednesday before I did my foot in. It was in the woods in the giant heat (the weather here in the UK is mental at the moment, it’s hot then cold then pouring then droughts!?) which I actually enjoyed while I wasn’t in the mood when I started off. It wasn’t a fast run, it was a run / walk / run / walk situation but I finished and achieved what I wanted to. I also thought the route was flat but it’s not! I explained in my 
