"It's ok to screw up your health - so long as you don't look fat..."

I’ve just read a wicked post on Definatalie’s website on how she defines “fat acceptance” and what it means to her. I just love it when other people echo your thoughts and feelings on a subject in a coherent and compelling way when you’re struggling to pin down what exactly the issues are. Nice one, Natalie!

Casual size-ism is rife in every aspect of life and I’m so deeply bored of it and trying to educate or challenge ignorant minds. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to have a meaningful conversation with a smoking/drinking pal in the pub who rants about how “obesity costs the NHS millions and millions of pounds”. At this point, I usually try to explain that smoking and drinking related health problems have more of an impact on the NHS but they refuse to accept this and start moralizing about how “disgusting” or “lazy” fat people are. When people start preaching about issues from a moral standpoint – i.e. eating chocolate is “bad” or “wrong” - it’s generally a cue for me to stop trying to engage.

As Natalie so eloquently states, “…one must understand that human beings have different body shapes, racial backgrounds, medical conditions, and socio-economic circumstances (amongst other things) and fat is not just a result of eating too much or exercising too little.” She also rightly notes that “It is assumed automatically that thin = healthy, and I bet when you actually think about that assumption… it starts to unravel. Do you know thin people who don’t exercise and eat poorly? I do. But those people are not told by their doctors that they need to lose weight, because they might not have any visible markers of fatness (read: poor health). And that’s how fat is pathologized and that’s why this kind of assumption works against everyone, because even thin people aren’t getting the health care they need when their health workers are relying on fat as a measure of health.”

Surely anyone with an aeon of brain power knows all this stuff, right? That ‘thin’ does not necessarily equate to ‘health’ and that there are myriad reasons why some people are bigger than others? Why then, do people insist on clinging to offensive, judgemental and downright incorrect body fascism? A few suggestions:

- we’re utterly indoctrinated by media telling us that the desirable body shape is slim and white, and that anything falling outside of this category FAILS. Even if you’ve been suckered in to this, it by no means justifies regurgitating this nonsense by adopting hateful language

- people are insecure and feel it necessary to pass judgement on other people’s weight to make themselves feel better. Yep; loads of people do this in different ways but dissing someone based on their weight just sets off a red alert in my mind that the person saying it is a class A muppet and should be avoided at all costs

Tsk. I also want to know what the PC word is (if it even exists) for bigger people? If I was asked to describe someone who fell out of the minuscule window of size acceptability, I’d probably use the word “big”, e.g. “she’s a bigger lass, with dark hair, etc.”. How do the aforementioned folk feel about this? I see lots of “fat positive” terminology but this tends to be used by bigger people who (I’m assuming) have reclaimed the word “fat”. I’m not sure if I get to reclaim it as I’m not that big and it could be interpreted as prejudiced coming from my mush. Thoughts?

Thanks to Kathrynoh whose comments on Natalie’s post inspired the title for this post; absolutely on the money.

Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

I’ve just finished reading the introduction to “Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women” by Elizabeth Wurtzel. Have you heard of it? It was written in 1998, and has been collecting dust on my bookcase for as many years. The inside cover reads, “Bitch is a brilliant tract on the history of manipulative female behaviour, from biblical times through to trophy brides, political wives and dazzling depressives.” As indicated by the title, Wurtzel is attempting to reclaim and celebrate the label, and begins by exploring what traits are characteristic of a bitch and why it can be a positive term. In this sense, the book is a little dated, as so much has been written over the past 11 years about reclaiming the word, and why a refusal to tow the party line in terms of ‘acceptable’ female behaviour is progressive and powerful. Despite this, she highlights a number of issues that are even more relevant now than when she first wrote them.

Wurtzel quotes Ellen Wilis who argues that, “Feminism has transformed women’s consciousness without, as yet, transforming society, leaving a gap between what many of us demanded of a relationship and what most men were willing to give.” She challenges the reader to “go to any bookstore” and review the vast array – the industry, in fact – of self-help books for women who love too much/can’t keep a man/are fearful of abandonment/are addicted to love, before attempting to identify any similar works aimed at men who want to address their failure to commit/be faithful/non-possessive, etc. The reality? They don’t exist. They don’t need to. Why? “Men don’t have to change the way they sexually assess women, the way certain triggers and indications of female power or feminine weakness may frighten them off. They don’t have to because we women will learn to behave.” Depressingly, I still feel that this statement is all too true. Although there are exceptions, thanks be to Christ, it generally tends to be women that are expected to check and change any behaviour considered to fall outside the narrow margins of female acceptability, not men. As if to reinforce this position, Wurtzel quotes Susie Orbach, the feminist psychoanalyst, who states, “I see all sorts of young, confident women around, but when they’re in my consulting room, they talk about the same bloody issues we had thirty years ago. They’re afraid. Women in the most oppressive relationships are trying to manage them rather than get out of them. Only now, with no women’s movement, if you have problems you feel like a freak. All the problems are internalized.”

The sentence in bold above particularly resonates with me, as I have a close friend who I see making the same futile mistakes time and again with her partner. Rather than removing herself from an unhealthy relationship, I witness her pacifying and mollycoddling her controlling and possessive partner, rather than taking the zero tolerance approach that women would hopefully adapt if feminism had successfully filtered down to the personal. In this situation, the problems are her male partners’, who repeatedly refuses to acknowledge or take any responsibility for them, whilst she suffers considerably as a result. Attempts at assertiveness are often met with threatening and aggressive behaviour, while she chooses to display typically female traits of acceptance, control and denial “out of love”. She’s 21 years old. What hope is there for the rest of womankind?

I’ll leave you with a quote used in the book that I’d quite like embedding in brass and hanging above the threshold to my pad:

“Women who pay their own rent don’t have to be nice.”

So remarked by novelist Katherine Dunn – all power to yer!