“You’re fat”. We’ve talked about it 100 times. When you hear that phrase you sink into yourself and immediately suffer a lower self-esteem. We all know that is from the negative stigmas we have built ourselves in the past years. In the past being overweight showed that you were wealthy and could enjoy a life of leisure, now it shows that you are disgusting and you have no self control. In Fat Shame it thought that the shift of views came during the suffrage when women were fighting for basic rights and the “poster woman” for that was a thin, healthy, “beautiful” person. I think there was then a general connection with being an ABLE woman is being a thin woman and the rest is history, literally. Now we go around calling people fat and using it as one of the most painful insults. Have any of you seen someone being called fat and you can’t help to think to yourself “wow, she really doesn’t look fat to me…”? I know I certainly have. So if people go around calling people fat and using judgments, who is the one to make the final call on who qualifies as fat or thin?
Many people are at a healthy weight but dance on the fine line of what society call “thin”. Fat Shame notes that the balance between thin enough and too fat is hard to attain because of so many people’s differing opinions(34). Farrell calls it the “medium between leanness and obesity”. This is something that has always, ALWAYS blew my mind. How am I supposed to attain this perfect body that society makes me want so bad if I do not know the fucking standards because they are always changing? And even if I feel like I have finally fit into this perfect body standard, someone can still make their personal judgment and call me fat, making all my hard work worthless, because I still did not become this image that I have wanted so badly. Then, for someone to think I have no self-control, like Ferrell says, just because I have “few extra pounds” is very insulting. One person thinks I am not thin enough and then I get all the connotations that go along with it. “I lost the battle with fat”, “disgusting and huge”, “lower status”, “uncivilized”, “abnormal”. Bodily fitness became a key sign of “fitness for citizenship” (95). Now we all have to fight this stigma that has been placed on us. Someone PLEASE help me understand this.
I would like to imagine one day not having these stigmas hanging over our society’s head. I wonder if we could have another shift in our judgmental society as we did during the suffrage. Will another feminist movement, like the suffrage, cause a shift in the way we see the female body, or are we too stuck in our ways and stigmas related to the “fat body”? For example, if we make a revolutionary change of gaining equal pay in the job market in the future, would that begin the new shift of stigmas of the female body? Give it a thought!
Ugh! I totally agree that it is so frustrating to KNOW what is fat and what is not...I think the main thing is that nobody exactly knows what fat is...as you said there are people who have a heathy body weight but are still considered fat by people. I think the issue in trying to figure out what is fat and what is not lies within the issues of our society. We are OBSESSED with labeling people, and putting them into categories to rank them and to distinguish a superior group...in this case the “thin/civilized”.
ReplyDeleteI think the things that could change our ideas of what fat is, is maybe trying to stop caring who is “fat” and who is “thin” by encouraging and embracing fat positive messages and advertisements. I’m not saying ignoring the issue is going to make it go away, but maybe embracing ALL beauty can help blur the lines of the the categories we create.
I completely agree with both of you. I find it very frustrating that fat has turned into an insult and used as a label for individuals who may in fact not be fat at all. I think we have to start changing what the media's image of the "perfect" body is to help eliminate the negative view of fatness. If the media starting sending new images the body that were fuller and rounder, perhaps the country would believe that that was how we were suppose to look. But maybe I am being too optimistic.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Fat Shame, it seemed like a new feminist movement was beginning with the start of organizations like The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Personally, I had never heard of any of these organizations, so I think that if a new movement is to begin these kinds of organizations need to be put into the public eye. For real change to happen people need to start becoming aware of what they say and how they judge others and remove the term “fat” from their vocabulary. I think it is possible to create a movement to promote fatness as beautiful and “normal” but I think it will take a very long time for the public is accept it.
I think maybe in order to know what "fat" really is, we have to figure out what it is NOT, according to Society. And you're right Dayna, that perception is ever-changing. Even if it weren't and we really could pin this down, it wouldn't mean anything because this is all based on social constructions. I like where Jess is going with her suggestion to raise awareness of NAAFA to sort of get this movement going. That'd be much easier to do in this age than in decades past because even though most of the media is controlled by corporations, there's still an integral part that isn't: the Internet. It's an ideal place for individuals to stand up for their beliefs and spread the word and raise consciousness about the issue of fat negativity in a way that'd be easily absorbed by peers. Whaddaya say?
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