very awkward when people are like "omg you're so thin and small and tiny how do you do it" and the answer is an eating disorder/stimulant prescription since i was like, 11, that i am desperately trying to correct to this day

My Thoughts on Body Positivity; The War Between Two Extremes

As a heavier set/plus size/fat woman, I’ve lived the vast majority of my life tipping scales from slightly to over my recommended weight. And as many people like myself I’ve experienced bullying because of this. Even before the internet was as huge as it was, and a hateful person could take your picture without your consent and turning it into  a nasty meme that ruins your life and any potential for yourself in the future due to the internet being an IV to us at this point, people are still cruel. They’ll still cut you to the quick and actively hunt for blood and tears and won’t stop until you’re nothing.  And then, the Body Positivity movement began.  At first I admit, I was on board with it. At least in the beginning. Larger people have always been the butt of the joke, made to feel like monsters, caught in a constant struggle within ourselves. The movement told us something we’ve never heard of before; that we’re human. We don’t deserve to be treated the way we are.  Now if the movement just kept to this, a means of encouraging larger people and easing a possible other worldview into the bullies who grew up into more vocal bullies then that would have been fine. But alas, as every movement on an internet platform, they drank from the SJW cool-aid. It turned from learning how to not be cruel to one’s self despite your weight into feeling superior because of it. Skinny Shaming, which was a rare phenomenon back in the day, came back into fashion. Encouraging unhealthy behaviors and ideas replaced the intent of self acceptance. And, perhaps most disturbing of all, the witch hunt that bled into a children’s program *coughSTEVENUNIVERSEcough* that, upon the notion of a teenage girl dared to draw a canonically larger character as skinny be placed upon a pier and baited into a suicide attempt.  So, who’s right? The extreme ‘Right’ who insist that all people who range from barely touching the somewhat arbitrary Obesity side of the scale to the genuinely concerning portion are right? Or is it the extreme ‘Left’ who insist that they are righteous? That it is acceptable to harass others due to their being thin and live in the delusion that nothing a heavier person does to themselves has health ramifications?  As with the age of extremes, the Middle Ground are suffocated and laughed at for ‘not being strongly convicted enough’(when in reality the Middle Ground is a perfectly legitimate stance to take). And this is where I have found myself after years of perpetual self hatred, instilled in me by the Right bullies as well as the Left bullies.  And so, I would like to present some questions and answers either side have about the matter that will hopefully help someone. Why don’t fat people just try to loose weight?  A: I present to you this counter question; what makes you think we haven’t tried? Most of us know we’re heavy, we know we’re fat, and that there are risks associated with that. Changing one’s eating habits/lifestyle is far more difficult than people give credit. Can’t they just stop eating? A: If you stop eating then your body would go into survival mode and completely ruin your metabolism, a key in weight loss. So no, we as human beings despite us being heavier NEED food to survive. Just. Like. You. I’m concerned for their well being. A: Be honest with yourself. Unless you are this person’s doctor or close family NO YOU ARE NOT. You may tell yourself you are, but this ‘I’m just so worried about your health’ is a loaded statement and a way to insert yourself and more than likely your insults into a person’s life without warranting.  I’m encouraging them by not coddling them. It gives them motivation. A:  No, it is in fact far more discouraging to have a person who is already in relative shape laughing and mocking a person who is actively trying to fix the problem. A heavier set person already has to deal with a possible addiction to food, health concerns, and undergoing the task of trying to do something about it. You screaming ‘fatty!’ at them is only pushing them towards a more comforting and just as harmful ideology.  This being said, if you’re the same person who openly mocks a heavier set person at the gym for waddling on the treadmill then you have, and pardon my language, no right to bitch. You are part of the problem. Why do fat people need representation?  A; Well, why do we? Perhaps if there is a character in media that shows people that heavier set people are human beings with thoughts and feelings, then maybe, just maybe, someone out there will see past the cellulite and learn to put their own feelings of disgust and superiority aside and treat them fairly.  Why do fat people follow this Body Positivity crap? A: Most heavier set people go into the Body Positivity movement for very much the same reason I did. I hated myself and to an extent still do. Someone told me that I shouldn’t and that there was something beautiful in me. And I followed them. If you’ve been told your entire life you’re an ugly monster who deserves every single scrap of harassment and cruelty dished out to you, be honest. You’d follow that ideology in a heart beat. It doesn’t matter if the movement now is filled with extremists. If they’re being told by someone that they worth, they’ll follow after them. The key here is, if you’re one of the small fraction of people who actually worry about others, is to evaluate your own attitudes towards larger set people and ask yourself if you’ve given them a reason to fall prey to following a potentially harmful ideology.  Fatness isn’t genetic. A: This is both true and false. Fat itself is not genetic. However, just as some people can be genetically predispositioned for certain health concerns such as mental health disorders and certain physical health concerns, larger set people may have a family history of being more prone to factors that increase the chance of weight gain. Low metabolism, glandular issues, depression/anxiety, and other factors are genetic. However, this isn’t the only reason certain people gain weight. It is something, however, to keep in mind.  And on the other end of the spectrum... A fat person can be just as healthy as a skinny person. A: This is a difficult topic to cover. For some the added weight can put a person more at risk for dangerous diseases like heart disease and diabetes. These are genuine concerns. Extra weight can put pressure on joints and strain certain parts of the body. To ignore these is to deny reality. However, depending on how overweight and active a larger person is, weight could be their only concern. Some heavier set people who exercise have the same blood pressure and such as an average person. It is important to not disregard valid health concerns pertaining weight in leu of feeling good about one’s self.  Fat is beautiful! Everyone should feel that way! A: Beauty, my friend, is in the eye of the beholder. There is beauty in everyone. This is a fact of nature. However, if a person does not find a heavier set person attractive that is no license to harass and belittle those who don’t find themselves attracted to that type of person. If you bully a skinny person then you’re no better than the bullies you hate. And ask yourself this; would you date a person if they were your size? If they had a trait some didn’t care for? If the answer is no congratulations. You’ve put yourself into another’s shoes. If a writer/artist doesn’t make fat characters then they are a fat shamer! A: No, they are not. First of all drawing/writing for a heavier set person is actually a daunting task even for someone of a larger size. Everyone’s life experience with weight is different. Do you truly expect a person, particularly one of average weight, to fully grasp that? Drawing a larger body type accurately is difficult for any stage of artist as well. And, as I’ve said many times before, artists and writers don’t owe you anything. They create to create. If you’ve an issue with that, create something yourself.  So, is Body Positivity inherently bad? In my opinion it wasn’t intended to be. However, as with most movements on social media, it has become perverse and potentially harmful to others with its messages. Yes, we should encourage heavier set people. We should also keep in mind our own health and happiness. However, no matter what side of the body shaming coin you fall on remember this: FAT PEOPLE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. No more, no less.  If you are a heavier person reading this, please understand that I am not attacking you. I don’t speak for everyone’s experience and don’t claim to do so. However, it is important that I say this much: Your weight does not define you. It is not what makes you ugly nor is it what makes you beautiful. Your personality, your soul, that is what you are. That is what makes you beautiful. Please, please remember that going forward.  I realize no one is going to actually read this, but I figured I’d get this off my chest. 

puritanical pleasures and body-shaming: the problem with clean eating

I’ve mentioned in my first post on this blog that there is to anorexia a distinct sense of puritanism. Pleasure – especially pleasure that’s related to food – becomes inherently suspect within the confines of the illness. This is, of course, where and when all the weight of society’s narrow-mindedness comes down hard upon those of us who experience body dysmorphia or appearance-related anxiety.

In my case, having been overweight in the past, and having felt deep distress about it, that anxiety draws its source from that old pain: I don’t remember a time when I didn’t hate my body in some measure or other.

Nor can I remember a time, from adolescence onwards, when my appearance wasn’t judged, by myself or other, with respect to how fat or how thin I was. Society values thinness with such fervor that it projects unto twelve-year-olds unreasonable expectations of what they ought to look like, and then shames them when they inevitably fail to meet these standards – as nobody can meet them one hundred percent, least of all kids whose bodies are changing every day.

Teenagers! It makes me furious. We should be protecting them. We should be teaching them to love their bodies, to value themselves, to treat others with respect, and to never, ever grow to hate any part of themselves.

Instead we shame them – we shame bodies routinely, and they pick up on our cues, they model our seemingly innocent remarks, they study the magazines touting beach-ready bodies and new year resolutions, full of endlessly reworked ads; they absorb the beauty standards that demean those body shapes that don’t happen to be young, or slim, or white, or stacked, or photoshopped beyond recognition and humanity. Children and teenagers will absorb everything. I remember being fifteen and complaining about being fat. I was fifteen. I had better shit to worry about.

We shame bodies, and we shame food. Not satisfied with just enforcing unrealistic body/beauty standards, and dictating every aspect of our bodies from our eyebrows to our butts, society cheerfully enforces nutrition standards by introducing guilt into the bargain. You won’t see a five-year-old feel instinctively guilty for eating a cookie, any more than they will feel virtuous for eating lettuce. All the eight-year-old cares about is a) whether it tastes good, and b) whether they’re hungry. There are no moral judgements in their approach to food. Those are imposed from the outside in, not the other way around.

Despite such vague, often-repeated dictums as eat a balanced diet featuring all food groups or eat everything in moderation, society cheerfully decrees what we may or may not feel good about eating. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard statements like ‘I know I shouldn’t’ … ‘I know it’s bad for me’ … ‘I know it’s naughty’ … inevitably followed by ‘but I just can’t help wanting to eat [insert food here]’. Naughty! As though we were misbehaving schoolchildren! Those comments are infantilizing, condescending, and – worst of all – they create a relationship to food that’s steeped in guilt, shame, and fear. As though the atoms contained within the flour, sugar, and butter of a slice of cake were magically, inherently more unhealthy than those in an apple …

We learn so very early to hate ourselves. And, thanks to uncontested statements like calorie in, calorie out or you are what you eat, we also learn that we are synonymous with our food. As though our bodies and our brains, and what happens to both when we ingest food, were not infinitely more complex than those paltry platitudes and empty truths can suggest!

Instead of truly interesting ourselves in how food functions once it’s inside us – from our tastebuds to our stomachs – we use words like ‘glutton’ and ‘gorge’, like ‘stuffing ourselves’ or ‘slipping up’; we call ourselves ‘sinful’ or ‘wicked’ when we eat something ‘wrong’. We insist upon ‘willpower’ and ‘self-discipline’. We make our food choices into a stage for moral standoffs and power differences. We praise starving girls with sainthoods.

How dare we have bodies that require nourishment? How dare we have needs and desires? How dare we enjoy ourselves? How dare we eat anything at all?

No wonder, then, that so many of us turn in desperation to those special diets, those miraculous lifestyles, that so eloquently claim to solve all of our troubles. See paleo, see the Mediterranean diet, see the keto diet, see the Atkins diet, see low-carb or low-fat options, see Hygge and Lagom, see the demonization of gluten and dairy, see veganism as moral judgment. See ‘clean eating’, which neatly encapsulates the problem in one simple phrase: if you are eating clean – a term synonymous with a vague, undefined sense of purity, of shining, natural; raw, organic realness – you cannot feel guilty; you escape, just for a moment, the weight of shame associated with food. It becomes lesser, lighter. You are enlightened; you have inside knowledge; you are one of the good ones. You can breathe.

Except, of course, the guilt soon returns, but more insidiously. It functions with opposites: eat anything outside of the proscribed regimen, and suddenly you are unclean – dirty, contaminated, unnatural.

Take a look at the nutrition philosophies of people like Deliciously Ella, Tess Ward, or the Hemsley Sisters. You will see that, after they cheerfully reassure you that yes, you will still be able to eat all the things you feel so guilty about eating (cake. ice cream. pasta.), they then proceed just as cheerfully to dictate principles and commandments that eliminate entire swathes of food from what they generously allow you.

Eating only ‘raw, real, natural’ food conveniently means avoiding sugar at all costs, even though regular ol’ white sugar comes from beets, and spokespeople of clean eating sure love putting beets in their smoothies. (Deliciously Ella calls it the dreaded ‘sugar monster’ – and isn’t that an infantilizing phrase.) Likewise, avoid all fats, except a small proportion of them, such as, for some reason, coconut oil. Avoid dairy: some people are lactose-intolerant, which means there must be something secretly wrong with it. Avoid gluten: some people have celiac disease, so there must be something wrong with that, too. Soon, they promise, you won’t even want those naughty foods anymore; you will be perfectly satisfied with a bunch of crudités. You won’t feel restriction as restriction. You will be free – free from all that food that you secretly crave, but that, in a vague uncertain way, is bad.

Well you should be. Otherwise, after all, you might risk becoming (whisper, whisper) fat.

Despite their claims that they are not truly diets (because dieting itself is, in an exquisitely sadistic paradox, something shameful – it means you were not born perfect, sprung fully-formed and sublime from the foam, without flaws, or any of those nasty side effects of growing up), that is what hides beneath the clean eating philosophies. Sure, they pretend to be different – unlike the straightforward, calorie-counting, Weight Watchers-style diets, which at least don’t allege themselves to be anything else – and to prioritize health and fitness, a better, truer life, an improved approach to food; but underneath lurk claims as blunt as ‘lose a stone by following these ten simple rules’. Clean eating means you can avoid the deep-seated guilt of wanting to be other, fitter, slimmer. You are no longer ashamed: after all, you are not trying to lose weight. Rather, you are looking to enhance your well-being.

Moreover, you can occupy the privileged position of being in the know, and coincidentally of looking down upon those who have not followed in your enlightened footsteps. They are unclean, dirty, morally reprehensible: watch them consume with every apparent sign of enjoyment food that everyone knows is bad for you! Watch them give in to their baser desires! You are better than this: you exercise willpower; you are strong, powerful, healthy. You occupy a space of mental sainthood.

You’re in a cult. Call your dad.

The clean eating lifestyle gives you permission in the same breath that it takes it back. You will be able to eat as much as you like! But only these foods, and only within these specific parameters. You will learn to enjoy veggies! And little else, so you won’t have much of a choice. Don’t feel guilty if you eat out, or with friends, or if you, erm, slip up once or twice! You can always make it up later by eating nothing but stewed carrots or roasted pumpkin for a week.

Enjoy life, but watch yourself. Don’t deprive yourself, but don’t indulge. Don’t just exist – glow. Be nourished – but god forbid you eat.

And this is all before you even factor in eating disorders. To the non-disordered mind, this all sounds very attractive; to the disordered brain, it’s a hell of a drug. Of course, clean eating lifestyles and their ilk nurse an eating disorder of their very own: orthorexia, which promotes eating nothing but foods deemed healthy, organic, pure, raw, green. But to anyone suffering from anorexia or bulimia, such food philosophies can only reinforce the awful dichotomy of self-hatred and shame, the dislocated relationship we entertain with eating and not-eating.

No wonder that we find it so very difficult to get out of the hole created by malnutrition. No wonder the disorder becomes so easily leaden with puritanical judgments, armed with a vocabulary of guilt, shame, or sin – and conversely of strength, lightness, and purity. No wonder that we find it so difficult to gain weight, and struggle with dysmorphia and self-hatred, when the prevailing social narrative puts such an onus on fatness (or, indeed, anything bigger than very skinny indeed) as shameful, unhealthy, unclean, and morally wrong.

(You won’t often, if ever, see proponents of clean eating promote health at every size, or champion beauty in body shapes of all kinds. Lifestyle gurus are always slim women and athletic-looking men. Funny how that works.)

Clean eating diets are proselytizing, plain and simple – with an inflexibility and an intolerance that are disturbingly puritanical. There’s only right or wrong: virtuous or naughty, clean or unclean, inherently good for you or intrinsically unhealthy, natural or heavily processed, skinny or fat. There is no room in that system for any vision of food that truly embraces it in all its wondrous diversity, nor for the nuance and the complexity of the many ways our bodies work .

Here’s a thought: instead of limiting ourselves to eating variations on coconut protein bars and avocado pesto (a necessary note: I am not knocking coconut or avocado. They are delicious. I just wouldn’t eat nothing but them for the rest of my life), what about trying eat everything in moderation truly out for size? Let’s challenge ourselves. Let’s eat out of our comfort zones. Let’s embrace how wonderful and pleasurable food can be – without looking for truth, or wellness, or a dubious, problematic purity.

And let’s embrace our bodies, too -- our flawed, strange, perplexing, byzantine bodies.