A Little Less “Balance” Please

Posted on May 26, 2006 in Sugar and Fat

I get myself in trouble on the fat acceptance/rights issue. They went into it at Feministe recently. Most the discussion was good, (see what zuzu says about what kind of food is available in poor neighborhoods for example — she is right on) but I took exception to the highlighted sentence:

Health issues are a particular minefield when discussing weight and weight discrimination. On the one hand, you have situations like Magis’s, where the medical default is weight, and you also have a lot of anti-fat prejudice cloaked in “concern” for the “health” of fat people and the “obesity crisis.” And then there’s the fact that, for the most part, weight alone is not the cause of various ailments. But on the other hand, you have the fat acceptance stance that any discussion of health and weight is necessarily inherently anti-fat, a stance that tends to shut down discussion of larger issues.

Health issues are a minefield because the whole debate has been recouched as a “love your body or don’t love your body” dichotomy. This is not unlike the “smoking is a civil right” campaign that tobacco companies lauched a few years ago: the real issue was the harm done by second hand smoke and the aim of the campaign was to promote opposition to laws preventing smoking in indoor areas such as we have here in California.

I’ve been disturbed by the fat rights movement on numerous occasions. Suffering as I do from mental illness (and being forty pounds overweight because of the meds that I am on) I know how stigma aches. Couldn’t the anti-stigma angle be covered in a broader appreciation of diversity, food reform, and universal health care? I wonder.

The fat acceptance movement demands much that I will not grant it. First, it insists that the obese and the large-framed are the same. I differ. I know some women who have broad shoulders and hips. I do not call them fat. They suffer persecution for this accident of orthopedics even though they work hard to be well. No amount of exercising or dieting will make them appealing in the eye of fashion. Suggesting that they are ill is plain wrong.

Second, I have watched as fat acceptance advocates and some feminists repeatedly attack anorexics in fashion, the media, and elsewhere. That kind of cruelty sickens me. It’s purpose is to take the focus off the demonstrably excess cellulite covering their own frames.

Third, I have seen fat acceptance advocates ridicule those of us who put on weight because we are on psychotopic medications. The desire to lose this weight (and end the backaches, the insulin resistance, the heart problems, etc.) is treated like nothing more than a vanity trip. Many of my fellow sufferers expressed their confusion at the attacks they received for saying “I want my old body back”. To deny their upset at seeing their body radically changed is heartless and, in this case, promoting a foolish, shallow agenda.

Our goal must be to promote health. Sometimes it means that those close to the patient must deliver hard truths. And zuzu, before you jump to the conclusion that doctors attribute too much to fat, read the literature. First, you will find that allopathic medicine is often far less mean on the issue of obesity than alternative practitioners who I have seen openly harass and belittle the overweight. Second, where the fat acceptance movement can cite a study or two, the findings of these have often not been corrobated by other studies. You can rest assured that doctors don’t usually make up connections between being overweight and being ill: countless patients have provided ample case studies for proving the connection between fat and heart disease, etc.

No one should belittle a fat person. Like my own disorder, it is a medical condition. The struggle to reach an appropriate weight is hard and the need for support is crucial to recovery. Yet we must be aware that beyond the stigma are genuine disorders that the patients often wish to cover up. Fat can mean a lot of things: feelings of inferiority, self-hatred, glandular malfunctions, reactions to medication, etc. It is cruel, very cruel and unhelpful to abuse a person for his size. On the other hand, I do not follow the call of the fat acceptance movement. I say that individuals should not accept their own fat, not as a matter of perception in the public eye, but because they respect their bodies and love them enough to be well.

The fat acceptance movement wants complete silence on the issue of obesity. Mention it at all and you are lambasted as a bigot. Denying obesity is like denying mental illness or alcoholism or nicotine addiction. The patients will give you every excuse in the world why they are different or why the studies are wrong. This makes them no less of a person or deserving no less compassion as a human being (they probably need more), but it means that they are on a reckless course. A real friend will tell them so and be there as they trip, fall, and pick themselves up again.