So You're Fat

NOTE: I'm not trying to 'skinny shame', I'm trying to challenge the notion that there is one type of beauty. I'm trying to challenge generalisations such as 'all beautiful people are skinny' and 'all fat people are unattractive and unhealthy'. I'm trying to challenge the idea that exterior beauty is determined by weight or the idea that exterior beauty deserves to hold so much weight. It's not that simplistic.  I'm not trying to say that skinny people do not struggle with self-image.

A good friend doesn’t tell you that you’re not fat when you say you are, they tell you that it wouldn’t matter if you were. They don’t promise to keep a secret no matter what, they value your health, happiness, and safety above your friendship itself.

If you tell somebody who thinks they are fat or ugly that they are beautiful and skinny, that does not solve the overall issue, it can sometimes help temporarily, but the issue is still there. This can also be extremely damaging because you are still implying that their value is dependent on their external appearance. It is telling them that their worth is based on how fat or ugly they are.

Instead, we need to challenge the assumption that if they were fat and ugly they would deserve to hate themselves because you would essentially be saying that they shouldn’t hate themselves now because they are skinny or beautiful. But what happens when they gain weight? Do you tell them that they should be sad? Do you actually believe that the value they had when they were lighter or prettier fades because they ate more and exercised less?

Someone’s view of them self as fat isn’t exactly what needs to be challenged because weight fluctuates and standards of beauty change, we need to address the fear of ‘what happens if I am fat?’ Or, ‘what happens if I don’t look conventionally attractive?’ Or ‘What happens if I gain weight in the future?’

Let’s say you are fat. Well, you aren’t, no one is fat but let’s say you have fat that is considered ‘excessive’ by today’s standard of beauty. Is that really the worst thing that you could be? What about unkind? Unhealthy? Prejudiced? Sad? OK maybe you are sad, but are you sad because you are fat? If you are then it seems to me that it is the being sad that is the problem and so losing weight may not fix that because you will always live in fear of gaining weight again because in your mind fat equals sad or ugly or lazy or unhealthy. In your mind, the idea of being overweight is surrounded by negative connotations which are not necessarily correlated with being overweight. 

So maybe you should start by separating these negative connotations from the matter of being overweight.

Ask yourself why you think being fat is bad?
Is it because you think that it means you are unattractive?

Your life purpose is not to be pleasant to look at but even if it was, beauty and attraction are much more complex than fat equalling unattractive and skinny equalling attractive. Can you honestly say that you have never seen someone who is attractive and overweight?

Do you honestly believe that people should be treated differently according to their weight or how symmetrical their face is? Do you think that having extra fat or an unconventional appearance makes someone deserving of hate, either inflicted by themselves or others? The fact that this is how we judge someone's character would be laughable if it wasn't so damaging.

Is it because you think that being fat means that you are unhealthy? Fat does not mean that you are unhealthy. There are healthy people that are overweight just like there are unhealthy skinny people.

Is it because you think that if you were overweight nobody would love you? Well, do you love your overweight friends and family more than your skinny friends and family? Do you see a fat person and automatically dislike them? When considering what you value most in a relationship, is ‘skinny’ (not attractive or healthy – because they tend to be separate) really what you value most? Or at all?

Humans do not like not knowing things so we make assumptions based on what we do know. That person is overweight? Well, they must be unhealthy and lazy. Not only are these often wrong and not limited to people who are overweight but they are not bad enough to warrant what overweight people face on a daily basis. Fat people are not necessarily unhealthy and lazy but I also don’t think that unhealthy people should feel so uncomfortable in their skin that they want to die or that lazy people should be laughed at when they exercise, whether they are overweight, a healthy weight or underweight.

“Today, 'fat' has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt.”
-Susie Orbach

I wasn’t happier when I was underweight, a healthy weight or overweight and that is why mental health is so important. People lose weight because they think it will make them happy. Whether it is because they think that being skinnier means that they will be more attractive which will make them happy, or they think that being a healthy weight will mean that they will be physically healthy which will make them happy. Sure, these can help but reaching your target weight doesn’t automatically make you happy.

Perhaps this is why some people regain weight after they lose it. They decide to lose weight because they think it will make them happier but they only focus on weight loss, rather than their mental health or happiness itself and when they reach their goal weight they realise that they still aren’t happy. Losing the weight didn’t really tackle why they were unhappy so the mentality pretty much stayed the same despite your weight changing. Regardless of how much you exercise or how clean your eating is, if you do these things out of hate for your body, rather than out of love, then you are not fully caring for your body and you are definitely not caring for your mind.

So, you’re fat. Does that mean you are undeserving of life? Does that mean that you can’t enjoy things? Does that mean you don’t have anything to offer the world? Being overweight does not mean that you cannot be successful or attractive or kind or loved.

 So, you’re fat… so what?

“Countering fat shaming by denying fatness says that the person doesn’t deserve poor treatment (which is true) but at the expense of reinforcing the incorrect idea that they would deserve it if they were fat (or some greater degree of fat), or that being called fat is an insult. There is no size at which people deserve to be treated poorly.”
– She’s Not That Fat (Dances With Fat)

If you liked this post you may also like:

•  Self Image.
• Living VS Surviving 
• Comparison Kills

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