Zuzu has a fine post up this morning: Rejecting the Frames. It’s a follow-up to this piece at Feministing which sparked a heated — and at times — ugly comment thread.
The topic of the two posts (and this third brief, powerful one from Jill) is fat, the so-called “obesity crisis”, and the feminist response. Zuzu:
One of the things that bothers me… (as well as the whole “Diets Don’t Work!” mantra, which also usually puts in an appearance) is that it puts the focus on the individual fat person rather than on the treatment that the fat person is having to deal with. Indeed, this is a good example of the “personal is political” phenomenon as it was originally put forth: our weights may be within our individual control, but the way society treats us because of our weight demands a collective solution. Being turned down for insurance because of your BMI isn’t truly a personal problem, it’s a political one — why should insurance companies get to draw arbitrary lines to deny coverage, and by the way, why is it we still don’t have universal health care, again?
And your doctor’s berating you about your weight may seem like an individual problem, but the fact that fat hatred kills demands a collective solution. But if shame keeps us off-balance and justifying why we weigh what we weigh, or why we should (or shouldn’t) do something about that, then we never really think of the problem as being bigger than ourselves.
The self-justification also sets up a certain group (those who engage in healthy behaviors) as more worthy of being left alone by the Obesity Crisis™ Watchdog than those who don’t. But why should healthy lifestyle be the ticket to being treated as a human being? I shouldn’t have to do a damn thing to claim my right to being treated equally other than exist. Who the fuck has the right to deny me that just because I like to have a piece of cake every now and again, or because sometimes I eat too much or don’t exercise?
Amen, zuzu.
I was at my boxing gym early this morning for my regular Monday meeting with Pepe, my trainer. I know lots of other folks who work out there, and as I was packing my bag, getting ready to leave, a casual acquaintance of mine and I started talking about our Thanksgiving plans. As we said goodbye, she said laughingly, “Don’t eat too much this week. Oh, wait, go ahead — overeat! You’ve earned it!”
I was fairly groggy this morning, and didn’t think about what my friend said until I read Zuzu’s post. The language of “earning” is used a lot in fitness circles; it’s an economic and a moral term. And it’s got some fairly troubling implications.
I work out a great deal. I’ve worked out consistently for more than fifteen years, sometimes addictively and at other times moderately. These days, my exercise regimen is modest by my own standards. The chief benefit of all of this sweating is not a svelte physique as much as it is an opportunity to get high on a relatively healthy drug. Endorphins don’t seem to mess up my life the way major doses of benzodiazepines once did; I’ve switched addictions and it seems to work well to keep me relatively sane.
But my working out doesn’t make me more virtuous than someone who doesn’t exercise. Fitness is not a moral obligation. And what bothers me about the current media focus on obesity is that it introduces moral language without making a good moral point. In the current climate, “fat” is the enemy against which a diverse army is marshalled: fitness gurus, doctors, public health advocates, politicians. We’re told that being overweight is unhealthy (though the jury is still very much out on how many extra pounds that really requires). We’re told that it’s irresponsible, expensive, and disgusting.
We live in a nation that over-consumes. Not just food, but natural resources of all kinds. We overspend and under-save. And, perhaps rightly, many of us feel anxious about how much consuming (of every kind) we do. Overweight people, in the current climate, become obvious symbols of all of that over-consumption — and thus become perfect targets on to which to project our guilt. Never mind that plenty of overweight people don’t eat more than those of average build. What matters is appearance, and here the fat are at a huge disadvantage. No other “sin” is as immediately obvious. You can’t tell by looking at someone that they’re overwatering their lawn and wasting water. You can’t tell by looking at someone that they’re up to their eyeballs in debt. Except in the most extreme cases, you can’t tell someone is a serious sex addict when they’re walking down the street. But fat is, in our minds, a visual manifestation of a moral shortcoming. And because it’s such an immediately identifiable moral failure, all the rest of us project our anxiety and our guilt onto the overweight.
As Zuzu writes, fat is a collective issue. But the issue is more than “How do we get people to lose weight?” Fighting against “Big Ag” is vital, fighting for more safe public spaces to exercise is crucial, fighting to ensure easy access to healthy food is essential. But that’s not enough. The shaming and stigmatizing of fat must stop. The psychological and spiritual damage inflicted by our nation’s obsession with weight-loss is, I’m convinced, more harmful than obesity itself. Self-loathing kills as surely as heart-disease does. The argument for balanced eating and regular exercise must be made — if it is to be made — in a way that doesn’t shame and in a way that avoids attaching moral language to the discussion of weight.
(I am a vegan for moral reasons, of course, that have nothing to do with fat and everything to do with animal rights. How I eat is an ethical issue to me, not because my body is anyone else’s business but because of my convictions about other living creatures. It’s possible to introduce the vocabulary of morality into a food discussion without raising fat or appearance as an issue.)
In my gym, I see people working out who clearly aren’t enjoying themselves. We all have hard days, but some of those whom I see sweating through a kick-boxing class are miserable. You spend enough time around folks in the fitness world, you start to see the difference between a grimace of effort on the face of someone who likes what they’re doing and a grimace of agony on the face of someone who is only working out in order to keep their own fear of fat at bay. Trust me — if I were given a choice between not working out and staying slender, or working out and gaining twenty pounds in my midsection, I’d choose the latter — because I like what I’m doing, and I’m addicted to those darned chemicals. I’m a proper addict who will go to any lengths to get his fix!
The diet and exercise industry isn’t going to make enough money off folks like me. The fitness industry makes its money off self-loathing, off fear, off low self-esteem. As a feminist, that makes me angry, because I know that women in particular are likely to pay the price for our collective obsession with thinness. As an amateur athlete, it makes me sad to see so many people doing out of joyless obligation what I do for deep pleasure. And though we do need to have a serious public discussion about food, agricultural policy, and health, one of the ground rules for that discussion needs to be a strict commitment not to shame and stigmatize those whose body size exceeds the rigid cultural ideal. Indeed, until we have that commitment not to shame fat, no real discussion of a solution to the “obesity crisis” is possible.
Comments policy: no fat-bashing.
As a plus-sized model, I get a lot of compliments on how I look. They range from people telling me I’m cute to a couple of people (including one guy I dated, so maybe he doesn’t count) telling me I’m the hottest person they’ve ever seen. When I was in high school, I had horrible self-esteem. I used to measure my belly to see how much bigger it was than the day before, and I wore baggy men’s clothes to hide myself away.
What changed?
Surprisingly enough, it was wearing provocative clothes. (Or, at least provocative to me.) I started wearing cute baby doll tees and jeans that actually fit me. And, people noticed. Most of it was kids at school telling me I looked good, although one boy I knew started making fun of the stretch marks on my arms. Because people were beginning to notice me in a positive way, I started seeing myself in a positive light, which eventually led to me seeking out ways to market myself as being beautiful.
This fat-bashing isn’t a Western problem. I’ve had complete strangers from the Middle East try to chat me up on the internet then see my picture and berate me for being a fattie. In person, I think people either somewhat ignore me because of my weight or notice me because of the way I present myself. My opinion is this: the way to get people to want to be healthy is to allow them to love themselves, not give them thousands of reasons to hate themselves. I’m not a big fan of diets, but I am a big fan of cutting down on meat consumption, playing frequently, and long walks.
As an amateur athlete, it makes me sad to see so many people doing out of joyless obligation what I do for deep pleasure.
I have the same experience recurrently. Sometimes one just isn’t in the mood for a particularly hard workout, or any exercise at all, but the unrelenting glumness of people’s expressions at the gym is sad.
That said, what “argument for balanced eating and regular exercise” is strong enough to counter the human inclination to overeat and avoid exertion, especially in the context of the very unhealthy American diet? The argument from health is, after several decades, not a dominant one, to say the least, but the other arguments we tend to hear (”fat is ugly”) don’t seem to be having much effect either.
I appreciate your article and the general conversation.
I am very large bodied and in a constant struggle to reduce my size. In the course of this effort I identified a compelling reason to resist losing weight that was a considerable shock to me. As you said, a change in weight is very visible to others and people do feel very free to make judgments about people based on weight. I find within myself a deep seated belief that losing weight is an admission that every negative and harsh judgment about me because I’m large bodied is correct. I experience it as caving in and accepting myself as a complete failure, that everyone who ever said or thought something awful about me because of my size was right, that if only I were a better, stronger, more disciplined, more moral person my body would be just right. This is incredibly painful to me. It’s hard enough to keep a sense of who I truly am without this weird and tangled belief floating around within me.
If fat bashing is about over-consumption, then why aren’t other, far more ostentatious displays villified?
Meredith, we don’t shame other forms of over-consumption for many reasons, often envy chief among them. The rich overconsume many natural resources, but most people want to be rich and therefore don’t villify them. The obese may (or may not) consume more, but we’re taught that we shouldn’t want to be like them, so we say ugly things to them instead.
We can only villify what we fear, not what we desire.
The rich overconsume many natural resources, but most people want to be rich and therefore don’t villify them.
I agree your hypothesis adequately addresses wealth, but I was thinking more along the lines of alcohol. With alcohol, see the opposite trend: instead of medicalization to moralization, you see moralization to medicalization. Yet no one wants to be fat or an alcoholic, right?
Thanks for this post.
I gained a lot of weight after having both my children. After the first one, I managed to lost most of it. After the second one, I’ve struggled much more.
However, I try not to worry about it as much as I used to. My husband is rather skinny, and I’m very overweight. It doesn’t make any sense given I’m more physically active (I bellydance and like to train for triathlons) and eat less than him. He was the one who told me to quit beating myself up over it, and I can say that it helped to have someone tell me that it wasn’t “my fault”.
As you said, it’s a lot harder to go to the gym and feel like I’m struggling against my weight than it is to feel passionate about pursuing a goal in something I enjoy. And when I’m doing the latter, it’s a lot easier to stay motivated than in the former case, especially when I found out I haven’t managed to lose any weight with all my extra “exercise”. But it has taken a lot of practice to ignore some of the funny looks I get.
“Fitness is not a moral obligation”
yes it is.
“though the jury is still very much out on how many extra pounds that really requires”
are you still referring to obesity? or a few extra pounds above IBW? obesity IS unhealthy.
i have’nt feared being fat. nor have i really cared what others think about me being obese. but given the health risk i.e. pre- hypertensive, pre- diabetic, hyperuricemic, boderline metabolic syndrome that obesity has lead me to, it is time i do something about obesity. i fear the hard work that it will take to lose the weight and get into shape. i currently envy those in better shape that can continue to eat foods i will have to abstain from for awhile.
I think most people overeat and look tortured at the gym because eating is fun and working out is boring.
If we could go out and play kickball with a group of other people in a beautiful park on a spring day, THAT might be fun. But running on a treadmill is incredibly dull.
I eat right and go to the gym so I can be healthy, but I don’t particularly enjoy it, except for getting a sense of accomplishment for going through with the process. It’s nice for you that you get an endorphin rush from working out, but I would rather sit in front of the TV, watch The Office and eat some loaded nachos.
yes it is.
Ok. Why?
Or is that troll feeding?
I really wish that we could isolate the whole fat =/= immoral, but I can’t find good arguments for it. My friends, occasionally, will get that “we’re just concerned about your health” speach or “you’re just not comitting yourself to it” with an underwritten tone of “we’re better than you because we’re skinny”. I point out to them that we generally eat meals together, and exercise together, and we eat the same amount (or I eat less) and exercise about the same amount (or I do sometimes exercise less). I also point out that I HATE exercising, while they enjoy it, and I committ better to things I enjoy (such as reading more books a year) than they do. But, that’s just a comparison to them: I wish I had a more theoritical argument that talked about why it would be bad to fat shame even if it was a total stranger who ate nothing but cake.
The “concern” always kills me, because every person who has a pound or two extra on them “knows” that fat is bad for them. You are not giving them new information. You are being an ass.
You can isolate the whole fat=/=immoral debate — ask them to provide a theoretical justification for it. Then you just undermine it like any other utilitarian or deontological system.
I actually (bizarrely) enjoy working out. But I think that’s due to that whole endorphin high thing. I’ve been told that there are people who get great endorphin kicks from exercise and people who get nothing. I don’t know the veracity of this. Scary to contemplate, though.
My uninformed overcaffeinated $0.02: No, weight is not a moral obligation and this ‘health’ crap is just the polite window dressing for fat phobia. That said, I’m a big hypocrite because I am *so* fatphobic about my own body. That said again, I think the body is made to move and can’t be expected to work right without exercise. The North American diet sucks hard and causes a zillion health problems. I think most people would be happier on something closer to the Okinawa diet (or lots of others like it). But a slice of chocolate cheesecake now and then won’t kill you. I don’t know whether getting smarter as a society about food and exercise would kill our weird moral shaming on the subject or not.
Agreed with people in-thread who said that running around a field playing soccer is more fun (or would be for most people) then the treadmill. Maybe more walking/biking and less cars. *sigh* Anyway, ironically, I’m off to the gym now.
I wish I had a more theoritical argument that talked about why it would be bad to fat shame even if it was a total stranger who ate nothing but cake.
Because fat-shaming isn’t really about health at all, it’s about power and control. You know the stereotypical abusive asshole who’s always telling their perfectly attractive SO “you need to lose weight” or “you should grow your hair” or “you’d be so much more attractive if you did X, Y and Z”? Fat-shaming is the exact same thing.
Thank you for this post. Especially for this:
“But fat is, in our minds, a visual manifestation of a moral shortcoming. And because it’s such an immediately identifiable moral failure, all the rest of us project our anxiety and our guilt onto the overweight.”
I’ve ranted this many times, but you’ve said it much more succinctly as well as being a rather prominent feminist icon in the blogosphere. (And a guy, but that’s another rant altogether.)
And oh, the searing irony, that it’s progressives who tend to stress that “moral failure” most. I think in a lot of otherwise progressive minds, SUV gas consumption tends to conflate with excess Red State Cheeto and Dorito consumption.
(And then there are Professor Campos’ theories on the implications drawn from correlations between fat and poverty, but that’s a much longer rant than there’s room for here.)
Everyone must have been studying for finals. I thought you would have been flooded with posts. Perhaps it was the no-fat-bashing edict.
One of the things that makes this complicated, as you intimated, is that the “food industry” flat out LIES frequently about what’s in our food, so even if you are a compulsive label-reader (I try to keep it under control so no one hates shopping with me), you still can’t interpret them accurately unless you have an additional graduate biochemistry degree.
I do believe part of the thinness obsession has to do with the conflation of women’s fear of not being “loved”/being alone (and that can do also with employment and general social alliances, not just romantic relationships), mens’ (GENERALLY, now, people) fear of being ridiculed by their peers if their companions don’t “measure up” — you know, the “no man respects a man who has a fat wife” types — and the patriarchal apologist women who “enforce the standard” that these men purport to “require”.
I’d pay — and I suspect I wouldn’t be the only one — pretty rabid attention to any thoughts you posted on that, Professor, since the premise might fall within one of your areas of scholarship.