I've been trying for a couple years now to reject
society's notion that I should be utterly ashamed of the way that I look.
I can honestly say that I'm getting much better about it, but I'm not yet
in a place where I can boldly proclaim, in my own words, my pride and my love
for my appearance, for my curviness, and yes, for my fatness. I can
barely even write that last word. But I need to claim it publicly if I'm
ever going to, for any extended period of time, successfully stop hating this
part of myself. So I'm claiming the words of someone else who has written
boldly and unashamedly about this subject for years. Maybe one day I can
do the same.
[This post was originally
written by Melissa McEwan and posted on her
blog.
I've
edited some parts out of it and inserted a few personalizing touches.]
Fat Stereotype #9: Fat people don't know how they look.
As preface, I want to acknowledge that there are
people with body dysmorphic disorders who are genuinely unaware of how their
bodies actually look to other people, and many of us, to one degree or another,
have some dissonance about some aspect our appearance when we, for example, see
a picture of ourselves. This post is not about that. This post is about the
concept of thin people (and sometimes other fat people) reflexively concluding
a fat person is unaware of how she looks if she does not present herself in a
way that conforms to cultural expectations about fat people's performance.
Not only are most fat people aware of "how we look," and the precise ways in which
"how we look" deviates from the kyriarchal norm and fails to conform
to what is considered acceptable for people of our size, we are also keenly
aware of the negative commentary being delivered on "how we look" via
the unsubtle judgmental gazes of body policers.
Internal judgment and
external judgment conspire to ensure that we generally have a heightened
awareness of both "how we look" and "how we are
perceived"—which are often two different things.
But both of them are about deviating from the expectation that fat people should be seen as making some sort of demonstrable effort to be ashamed of their fat and hide it from view, which
is second best to not existing at all.
In the comments of the
last entry in the series, I
observed:
"One of the key things to understand about systemic fat hatred is that fat
people are asked to
be invisible. Once you understand that we are
asked to keep ourselves from view, to take up less space, to be less
noticeable, all the rest of it makes perfect sense. We are not even meant to
visible, no less flashy about it."
We are meant to abide The
Rules that prescribe not calling attention to ourselves, folding ourselves up
to take up as little room as possible, and, crucially, seeking maximum coverage
of our fat bodies by loose garments that mask our shapes.
In practical terms, this
means that we are not supposed to wear anything that clings to and thus
outlines fat; we are supposed to cover as much of our flesh as possible; we are
supposed to strap our fat bodies into "shaping" garments that prevent
unseemly jiggling; we are not supposed to wear anything that flatters our
figure or suggests that we might be attractive and/or sexy; we are supposed to
avoid anything that calls attention to ourselves at all.
The perfect outfit for a
fat person is something black and shapeless. The justification is that it's
"slimming." The reality is because it helps blend us into the
background. Just another shapeless shadow.
(Fashion designers are
happy to oblige in the shame department, routinely designing clothes for fat
people—if they have plus-size lines at all—with the evident expectation that we
are ashamed of our bodies.)
Thus, when a fat
person—especially a fat woman, who has no purpose in life since she is
axiomatically deemed unfuckable and hence worthless as a woman/sex
object—refuses to be unseen, and instead demands to be seen, and/or refuses to
live a life of discomfort, and instead wears what makes her feel
good, when
she lets her fat body hang out of her clothes, when she wears sleeveless shirts
or short shorts, when her belly meets the breeze, when she dons bold colors and
patterns and (gasp!) horizontal stripes, when she shows off fat flesh bedecked
with brilliant tattoos, when she wears short hair (or long hair, depending on
The Rules according to fat policers around her), when she insists on being a
visible participant in life, she is thought to have no concept of what she
looks like.
How could she go out of
the house all openly
fat like that? Doesn't she know people
can
see her body?! Doesn't she know people are judging her?!
If she had any idea what people are thinking, she would cover herself up and
have the decency to be ashamed of herself.
Because it is
incomprehensible that anyone could be fat and content (or even happy!), it is
inconceivable that a fat person who is unabashedly fat in public, who isn't
remorsefully covering herself in eight yards of unflattering fabric to conceal
herself in deference to the delicate gazes of body policers offended by her very
existence, knows what she looks like and made the deliberate choice to look
that way.
It is a radical notion
that some of us are visibly fat ON PURPOSE.
Fat people who aren't
conforming to The Rules on how we must exhibit remorse for failing to be invisible
are not unaware of our transgressive appearance. We've made the conscious
choice to reject the obligation to take up less space, physical and
psychological, than we need.
We know "how we
look" to you. We don't care. (At least not insomuch as we're going to let
your opinion dictate how we present ourselves to the world.) What is important,
the only thing that should matter, is how we look to ourselves.
Disagreement with that
notion comes in many forms, the most frequent of which is the ubiquitous criticism
that is some variation on, "She shouldn't be wearing that." Shouldn't
be. As if it's a moral act.
The implication is that
she should be, instead, wearing something more appropriate for a fat person;
that is, something that better communicates she acknowledges her body is
hideous and ought to be hidden. Something that renders her invisible.
That's straight-up
eliminationism, and yet we give it a pass because of the profound cruelty of
asking fat people to do it to themselves.
Fewer things more pointedly
than that underscore that fat hatred is not about "health," but about
aesthetics.
Which is why I'm slowly
but determinedly giving up every last trace of any urge to hide myself for
other people's pleasure and comfort. My once almost exclusively black-and-grey
wardrobe is now filled with color. And the clothes are in the right size—not a
size bigger to conceal my shape....I have worn sleeveless shirts all
summer—Flabby Arms Meet World! I now have five tattoos that I unabashedly show
off.
There are and will be
people who wonder, sometimes loud enough that I can hear, if I don't know what
I look like. I do. I look like someone who refuses to agree with the idea that
I shouldn't exist.
All credits go to Melissa McEwan on Skakesville. Original found at:
http://www.shakesville.com/2012/07/fatsronauts-101.html
