Myth #24 If you’re fat, there’s something wrong with your character
In Laos, they talk about being fat. A lot.
In the office I worked in, there were two women that had ‘Toui’ as their nickname. It translates to fat, maybe more correctly pudgy or plump. It wasn’t completely derogatory, just a little pointed. They would be jocular about it, laugh it off. Being a third world country, their idea of fat was different to mine. These women – and it was always women – had a bit of fat on them, but most wouldn’t qualify as fat in Western countries.
These women, curiously, didn’t seem to care though. They would make some vague statement about how they should lose weight, but would then continue eating their lunch, unabashed.
I tried to imagine that being my nickname. Quelle horreur!
‘Toui, no?’ One of my masseuses would comment to the other, massaging my friend and I, not thinking that I, a white falang (foreigner), would understand. I would try and defend us, saying in our countries that we actually were just a normal size. They would chuckle in disbelief. Those deluded falang.
“You’re quite fat, hey?” One of my colleagues commented at the annual staff retreat.
“Uh, I guess so”
“Why do you look sad?”
“In my country, if you say that to a woman, it’s considered very offensive.”
The poor boy had the deer in the headlights look, “In Laos, if you say that, it means you are lucky to be so wealthy, that you can afford so much extra food – and you must be healthy and strong. It’s like a compliment.” I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting me or being genuine.
He went on to explain that in Laos, they say you’re fat as a statement of fact, like you have brown hair or you’re tall. It’s just an observation.
I could have concluded that my observation was that he was an arsehole. But when I took a moment to try and understand what he was saying, I realised something important. He genuinely did not mean to offend me, and he was horrified that he had.
Why was it in Laos that being fat was somehow an honour, but in Western countries it was so offensive?
It is because of what we’ve collectively made being fat mean.
In Western cultures, we’ve made fat mean so much more than just physically carrying a few extra pounds.
Being fat is a moral failing.
If looking good is a public service, being fat is a criminal offense.
It is often assumed that a fat person is also any or all of the following: undisciplined, lazy, indulgent, gluttonous, indolent, apathetic, stupid, unhealthy, and inconsiderate – other people have to look at you, after all.
Certainly, fat people can be those things. But so can people of any size. Observing that someone is fat doesn’t show you their character, their habits, or their health.
In the same way that being poor simply means you do not have the resources you need to live, and that poverty is not some moral indictment on your character, being fat is simply…being fat.
The stigma attached to being fat is huge though.
“Obesity, we are told, is a personal failing that strains our health care system, shrinks our GDP and saps our military strength. It is also an excuse to bully fat people in one sentence and then inform them in the next that you are doing it for their own good. That’s why the fear of becoming fat, or staying that way, drives Americans to spend more on dieting every year than we spend on video games or movies.” Ref
“Yet, consider this: stigmatizing and imposing shame on bodies, whether individually or as a group of people, is hurtful both to the vilified fat people and to the thinner people who are taught size prejudice and instilled with a fear of becoming fat. (“Fat” is used here as a descriptive term stripped of pejorative connotations, reclaimed by a growing fat acceptance movement.)” Ref
Our culture – our collective thoughts, words and actions – has chosen to value restriction over indulgence, a particular body type and size over all others, and a ‘good’ person is one who can conform their habits and body into those parameters, and a ‘bad’, ‘unworthy’, ‘less than’ person is one who can’t.
What if I told you the ‘Obesity Pandemic’ was about optics, and not actually about health?
“Years from now, we will look back in horror at the counterproductive ways we addressed the obesity epidemic and the barbaric ways we treated fat people—long after we knew there was a better path.” Ref
“For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.” Ref
“The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. Habits, no matter your size, are what really matter. Dozens of indicators, from vegetable consumption to regular exercise to grip strength, provide a better snapshot of someone’s health than looking at her from across a room.” Ref
“It is true that many diseases are more commonly found in heavier people. However, that doesn’t mean that weight itself causes disease. Blaming fatness for heart disease is similar to blaming yellow teeth for lung cancer, rather than considering that smoking might play a role in both. And telling people they need to lose weight is a lot like telling someone with a cold to stop sneezing so much—it may not be possible and won’t make the cold go away.” Ref
If culture is composed merely of our collective thoughts, words and actions, then it is our thoughts, words, and actions that change culture.
Imagine a world where someone could say you were fat, and it didn’t matter. You didn’t make it mean anything. There was no connotation of moral inferiority, no implication that you were slightly less than. You didn’t feel the need to skip lunch and sign up to the nearest gym. You didn’t need to change your body. You didn’t get worked up. It just simply was what it was. “You’re a bit fat” they say. “Yup, I am.” The end.
That place exists already. Laos.
Obviously, those comments are largely pointed towards woman, and their idea of fat and ours are worlds apart, but the point stands. They’re not denied medical treatment, they’re not social pariahs, they’re not actively discriminated against in nearly every area of life just because of their size.
It could be a thing.
We could make it a thing.
If we challenged the moral panic we’ve collectively created over people’s size, we could make it just an observation too. We could decouple morality from size, and being fat could just be a fact.
It starts with challenging our own thoughts about our bodies, accepting them for all they are and all they are not.
When we can start accepting our bodies and ourselves as good, useful, beautiful, and miraculous regardless of the lumps, bumps, bulges and wrinkles, then we are one step closer to creating a world where such things don’t matter, and we can save our moral panic for things that do. (*ahem* climate change *ahem*)
In this series, I’ve argued to decouple weight and health, I’ve shown that fat people can be fit, that they can have equal to or better health outcomes than slimmer people. (Here, here and here.)
I’ve argued that it is possible to be overweight and healthy, that BMI is a faulty measuring tool, and that weight does not necessarily have as much of a bearing on health as we’ve been led to believe. (See articles previously linked: here, here and here.)
I would also like to now argue that the moral panic that we’ve created about being fat, and the stigma that fat people live their lives surrounded by is actually much more damaging to their mental and physical health than being overweight or obese is.
“When the culture and the medical world are constantly pushing the idea that “obesity” needs to be eliminated, it’s not the fat cells that are feeling that stigma—it’s the fat people.” Ref
The first part of that argument is that being fat, in and of itself, has little impact on one’s health. This is Paul Compos, author of a book called The Obesity Myth, discussing the subject:
“The correlations between higher weight and greater health risk are weak except at statistical extremes. The extent to which those correlations are causal is poorly established. There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there’s no evidence is that there’s no way to do it.” Ref
When we actually truly ask ourselves what the problem is with being fat, we’ll find it’s a problem of aesthetics more than any other single aspect.
Again: your health is not dependent on your size. Your health is dependent on your lifestyle – eating fruit and veg, whether you smoke or not, whether you exercise or not, whether you drink or not, stress levels and sleep amount. You can be fat, and have a healthy lifestyle.
The people of Laos offer casual observations and slightly derogatory nicknames if someone is a little bigger than others.
In the West, the subject is taboo, we do not discuss it openly at all, but we do actively ostracise obese people from jobs, dating, social contexts, and most perniciously – effective medical intervention.
“We can no longer pretend that being less likely to be hired or get promotions, being paid less, receiving biased medical treatment, being socially excluded and bullied are attempts to help people “be healthier.” These are the direct consequences of living in a culture that vilifies and fears fat bodies and that treats the people living in them as morally lesser beings.” Ref
“Fat activism isn’t about making people feel better about themselves,” Pausé says. “It’s about not being denied your civil rights and not dying because a doctor misdiagnoses you.” Ref
All this serves to sanction fat people for being fat because our collective belief, based on some sketchy science, is fat people are lazy, indulgent, uncontrolled, or just a bit yucky to look at.
So really we have two completely separate issues here – one of health, and one of aesthetics, or weight as we call it.
“For those who feel the stigma of a fat body or fear of a fat body, we want you to know this isn’t your personal failing, it’s our culture that is failing you. It’s not easy to appreciate your body in a culture where your body is vilified. Oppression, by removing us from belonging, is writ large upon our bodies and literally killing us.” Ref
We live in a society where all bodies are created equal, but some bodies are more equal than others.
All bodies, whatever shape or size, are human bodies, and add to the landscape of human diversity and life. There is not a right or wrong body size or shape.
How do you view your body?
How do you view the bodies of others?
Further reading:
Being fat is not a moral failing – Bright Spark mag
How criticising someone’s weight makes it less likely that they’ll lose weight – Guardian
Everything you think you know about obesity is wrong – Very compelling article from Huffpost
Fat is not the problem – the stigma is
From body stigma to body confidence – how my fat body is a gift
Atlantic article, an interview with Paul Compos, author of the Obesity Myth – America’s moral panic over obesity
Fat ethics – article about how socially constructed the debate is about obesity