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therealieblog · 2 years

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I’ve started reading Lindy West’s book ‘Shrill’, and I am loving it. She’s hilarious and sharp and fierce.��

In the book she talks about working as a journalist for The Stranger, Dan Savage’s paper. She talks about how Dan was a good boss, but abrupt and not big on praise, and how she loved working for the paper.

Unfortunately, Dan, at that time in the early to mid aughts, was extremely fatphobic. He regularly wrote columns condemning fat people for being lazy, unhealthy and a drain on public resources. Lindy began striking back at him (mostly respectfully) in answering columns, and the one that I’ve transcribed below was incredible. He eventually changed his tune, and she says nowadays he’s far more positive about fat people. I like to think Lindy’s words helped open his eyes.

In the passage below, she responds to a column he published about being at a water park in the mid west, and how “unsightly” people’s fat rolls were in their swimsuits. It’s not a nice column, so I won’t quote more of it than that, but this is Lindy’s response. I did my very best to transpose her words directly from the audio book I have, but the italicizing and bolding are mine.

“Hello, I am fat.”

This is my body. Over there. See it. I lived in my body my whole life. I have wanted to change this body my whole life. I have never wanted anything as much as I have wanted a new body. I am aware every day that other people find my body disgusting. I always thought that some day, when I finally stopped failing, I will become smaller, and when I become smaller, literally everything will get better. I’ve heard it gets better… My life can begin. I’ll get the clothes that I want. The job that I want. The love that I want. It’ll be great! Think how great it’ll be to buy some pants or whatever. At J. Crew. Aw man. Pants! Instead, my body stays the same.

There is not a fat person on earth who hasn’t lived this way. Clearly, this is a terrible way to exist. Also, strangely enough, it did not cause me to become thin. So I do not believe any of it anymore, because fuck it, very much.

This is my body, it is MINE. I’m not ashamed of it in any way. In fact, I love everything about it. Men find it attractive. Clothes look awesome on it. My brain rides around in it all day and comes up with funny jokes. Also, I don’t have to justify its awesomeness, attractiveness, healthiness or usefulness to anyone, because it is MINE. NOT YOURS.

*Footnote: I’ve noticed that a lot of people have trouble with the basic definition of fat acceptance. They wanna argue and nitpick about calories and cardio and insurance and health and on and on and on, and if you are one of those people, wallowing in confusion, fret no more. I can sum it up for you in one easy to remember phrase. GET THE FUCK OFF ME YOU FUCKING WEIRDO! Print it. Laminate it. Be it.

I’m not going to spend a bunch of time blogging about fat acceptance here, because other writers have already done it much more eloquently, thoroughly and radically than I ever could. But I do feel obligated to try to explain what this all means.

I get that you think you’re actually helping people and society by contributing to the fucking Alp of shame that crushes every fat person, every day of their lives. The same shame that makes it a radical act to post a picture of my body, and tell you how much it weighs. But you are not helping. Shame doesn’t work. Diets don’t work.

Footnote: Fatphobes love to hold this assertion up, of how delusional and intractable fat activists are. ‘Calories in, calories out’ they say. ‘Ever heard of thermodynamics?’. ‘Uuuh I’ve never seen a fat person in a concentration camp. High five, Trevor.’

Leaving aside the barbarism of suggesting, however obliquely, that well, at least concentration camp victims weren’t fat. No fat activist who says ‘Diets don’t work’ is suggesting that you cannot starve a fat person to a thin death. Rather, we’re referencing the rigorously vetted academic conclusion that traditional diets, the kind that are foisted upon fat people as penance and cure-alls, and our entrance exam for humanity, fail 95% of the time. Whether fat people fail to lose weight due to simple laziness and moral torpor, or because of a more complex web of personal, cultural and medical factors, those numbers are still real. Those fat people still exist. Pushing diet culture, as a cure for fatness does nothing but perpetuate the emotional and economic exploitation of fat people. Shame is a tool of oppression. Not change. Fat people are already ashamed. It’s taken care of. No further manpower needed on the shame front. Thanks.

I’m not concerned with whether or not fat people can change their bodies through self discipline and ‘choices’. Pretty much all of them have tried already. A couple of them have succeeded. Whatever. My question is. What if they try and try and try, and still fail? What if they are still fat? What if they are fat forever? What do you do with them then? Do you really want millions of teenage girls to feel like they’re trapped in unsightly lard prisons that are ruining their lives? And on top of that it’s because of their own moral failure? And on top of that, they are ruining America with the terribly expensive diabetes they don’t even have yet?

You know what’s shameful? A complete lack of empathy. And if you really claim to still be confused. ‘Nuh uh, I never said anything guys. Seriously!’ There can be no misunderstanding shit like this: ‘I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact, being heavy is a health risk, rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly’ characterized as hate speech’. (she is quoting Dan Savage’s response to her last letter here).

Ha! 1. “Rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly” is in no way a tame statement of fact. It’s not a fact at all. It’s an incredibly cruel, subjective opinion that reinforces destructive, paternalistic, oppressive beauty ideals.

Footnote: In his response to this post, Dan took me to task for cherry picking that quote, explaining that he wasn’t mocking the flesh rolls of fat people specifically. He was mocking the flesh rolls of all women who wear low rise jeans without having the correct bodies for it.

Oh, OK, FYI, feminism isn’t super jazzed about men policing women’s clothing choices either. Also, it was totally about fat people you liar.

I am not unsightly. No one deserves to be told that they’re unsightly. But this is what’s behind this entire thing. It’s not about health, it’s about eww you think fat people are icky. Ew. A fat person might touch you on a plane, with their fat. EW. Coincidentally, that’s the same feeling that drives anti-gay bigots, no matter what excuses they drum up about family values, and yes, health. It’s all ‘ew’. And sorry, I reject your ‘ew’.

2. You are not concerned about my health. Because if you were concerned about my health, you would also be concerned about my mental health. Which has spent the past 28 years, being slowly eroded by statements like the above. Also, you don’t know anything about my health. You do happen to be the boss of me, but you are not the doctor of me. You have no idea what I eat. How much I exercise, what my blood pressure is or whether or not I’m going to get diabetes. Not that any of that matters, because it is entirely none of your business.

3. But but but my insurance premiums!

Bullshit! You live in a society with other people. I don’t have kids, but I pay taxes that fund schools. The idea that we can somehow escape affecting each other is deeply conservative. Barbarous even. Is that really what you’re going for? Good old fashioned American individualism? Please.

4. But most importantly, I reject this entire framework. I don’t give a shit what causes anyone’s fatness. It’s irrelevant, and it’s none of my business. I’m not making excuses, because I have nothing to excuse. I reject the notion that thinness is the goal. That thin equals better. That I am an unfinished thing, and that my life can really start when I lose wait. That then I’ll be a real person, and have finally succeeded as a woman. I am not going to waste another second of my life thinking about this. I don’t want to have another fucking conversation with another fucking woman, about what she’s eating, or not eating or regrets eating, or pretends to not regret eating to mask the regret. Oops. I just yawned to death.

If you really want change to happen, if you really wanna help fat people, you need to understand that shaming an already shamed population is…well… shameful. Do you know what happened as soon as I rejected all this shit and fell in unconditional lurve with my entire body? I started losing weight, immediately. Well la dee fucking da.

Footnote: If I had to do it over again I’d write this last part more clearly, because I think the way it stands undermines my point a bit. What I was trying to say was that if anti-fat crusaders really want what they claim to want, for fat people to be ‘healthy’, they should be on the front lines of size acceptance and fat empowerment. There’s hard science to back this up. Shame contributes measurably to weight gain, not weight loss. Loving yourself is not antithetical to health, it is intrinsic to health. You can’t take good care of a thing you hate.

#fatphobia #diet culture #fat acceptance #lindy west #shrill

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