How fat-shaming is like racism

Written 16 -26 June 2016

On Friday 10 June, my daughter, who’s doing her final year at high school, made a speech to the entire school, in Assembly, about how society engages in fat-shaming, with the full compliance of the seemingly-benevolent diet-pill industry. In her speech, which won her the school’s annual Public Speaking Competition, she shared her own journey of self-acceptance, saying how confident she was that she did not need to be thin in order to achieve her goals and dreams.

The next morning, I was listening to a local talk radio station, when I heard the presenters discussing the sentences meted out to two people who had made racist comments on social media: one had been fined a huge amount of money, and the other had received a sentence of a few months’ community service in a township. They spoke about how these sentences could act as clear deterrents to the rest of the population.

The very next thing they started talking about was how fat some politician had looked in a dress she’d recently worn. They went on to say she should have known better than to have worn it! I got really angry, and sent the following SMS to the radio station: 

“ To me, fat-shaming is no different to racism. It labels and shackles people, especially women, relegating them to second-class citizenship, and holding them back from living their best lives. Maybe we should look at the actual average size of people, and get designers and clothing shops to break the fat-shaming cycle.“

A few minutes later my phone rang, and, as I suspected, it was the radio station, wanting me to air my views live on air, which I happily did.  I had a chance to say quite a bit, but the presenter wasn’t interested in engaging with me - he was more interested in being right, and having the last word, before he ended the conversation. I felt like I do in all other similar situations – it doesn’t phase me at all. I know there’ll always be people like that, who use you for their own purposes - in his case to help fill that particular half-hour slot - and who, as long as it fulfils their agenda, will pretend that they’re actually interested in what you have to say. A radio presenter isn’t always right, and doesn’t always have to terminate someone’s input with yet another assertion of how right he believes he is – that’s just verbal masturbation.

Why does it seem as though I’m personalising this tirade? It’s because some radio presenters start to see themselves as above reproach, often crossing the line, but because they’re so highly regarded, they get away with it. This presenter said in so many words, that, if he walked into a place where he could choose which assistant he would go to for help, he would steer clear of the fat employee! This shocked me. It always shocks me when people who themselves have been discriminated against, so readily don the hat of the oppressor, when it comes to other forms of discrimination.

So, in the absence of a self-righteous, elevated-to-celebrity-status-for-no-apparent-reason radio presenter, let me say what I did not have time to say on air – why I believe that fat-shaming is akin to racism.

Fat shaming is about looking at a person, focussing on her physical appearance, and making assumptions and decisions, based on her physical appearance. Sound familiar? It is about deciding that that particular physical aspect  implies that the person is less intelligent, less capable, less competent, less desirable and less deserving in every way.

When you are teased for being fat, in your childhood, and called names because you’re rounder than someone else thinks you should be, it’s hard to outgrow the shame that you felt at that time of your life. It will always be a sensitive subject for you. I found a photograph of myself at about age 16, wearing a red one-piece swimsuit, taken at the beach, with my dog at my feet. I was a healthy, relatively happy, physically active teenager. The photo was obviously intended to be sent to someone in a letter, because I’d written on the back of it, besides some information including the date, the place and the name of my dog, “As you can see, I am very fat.”   Looking at that photo now, I feel so sorry for my 16-year-old self – I wish I could tell her to focus on other things, to free herself from the shackles, and to be all that she was meant to be.

Fat-shaming can be as blatant as name-calling, or as subtle as “Thank you for your application. We regret to inform you that you have not been successful.” While there are obviously occupations – like deep-sea diving, or sprinting – that depend on certain physical criteria, most jobs just need you to be in a state of average-to-good health, in order to function effectively. What annoys me is how people are excluded from jobs because they’re perceived as fat (“It’s not the image our company wants to portray”), regardless of their level of education, or their skill at that particular job. Sound familiar? This impacts on the person’s ability to earn a certain income, which is the deciding factor for everything else – where she lives, whether she owns a car or not, which schools her children attend, how she takes care of her family, and so much else. These are the same struggles you have when you’re excluded from positions  because of your “race”.

When you’ve been fat-shamed, and made to feel inferior because of that aspect of your physical appearance, you start to internalise that inferiority. You carry it around, and it informs everything you believe about yourself.  Years, even decades, after the last incident of overt fat shaming, you still feel the effect - that I’m-not-good-enough twinge, like a psychic scar that throbs when it’s cold. Again, exactly like internalised racial inferiority.

And fat-shaming is not just about being called names – it’s an overriding theme in mainstream culture, which clinically separates people into two groups, with every individual from as young as four, with relentless media promotion, knowing which group he or she belongs to. You know how apartheid taught you to “know your place”? It’s exactly the same.  

While it might seem like I’m referring only to ‘morbidly obese’ (no less of a slur because it’s a medical term) people, the most blatant effects of people who feel fat-shamed are all around us. At a gathering of friends or family, no matter how much of a good time you’ve had, when it comes to a certain time in the gathering, all of that changes – I’m talking about photograph time. Watch people when group photos are taken. People who regard themselves as fat automatically adopt a set of defensive behaviours we’ve learnt over time, usually through those same glossy magazines that devote monthly articles to how fat people can look slimmer. Those of us who perceive ourselves as fat and who’ve taken on the mantle of shame that society has insidiously suggested we wear, will either stand behind someone (usually with no part of the body visible), or at the very least, stand at an angle. Magazines and television programmes obsessed with telling women how they should look and what they should do to compensate if they don’t look like they should, can get really specific about how one should lean slightly forward, put the weight on the front leg, and tilt the head just so…….. I mean, really??? Have you ever seen how (predominantly-female) audiences applaud when these tips are given, as though they’ve just discovered the secret to eternal life?

We all buy into it, stoicly avoiding horizontal stripes, bold prints and bright colours. It becomes such a part of our thinking, that we don’t even see the funky outfits our essential, free-as-a-bird selves would naturally be drawn to, and instead make our way to the rails of shapeless, darker-toned items. These days, you even have entire shops dedicated to “plus-sized” women. I’m still trying to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. Now you’re labelled by just walking into that shop. You tell me you’ve walked into one of those shops and not felt a slight twinge of something negative, and I’ll applaud you. Even when you know the issues, and intellectually grasp the multi-layered ramifications, you are still tainted by years of being socialised into the skewed, hegemonic version of what’s acceptable and what’s not – basically, you know your place.  

And have you noticed how boring some of those clothes for ‘plus-sized’ women are? The message is clear, even from designers – if you’re bigger than a certain size, you don’t deserve to look cute, pretty, stunning, gorgeous, sexy, or any other adjective we automatically associate with slim women. The truth is that you can be an obnoxious individual, but have all kinds of positive attributes inferred on you, simply because you are slim. Let’s face it, a slim, chain-smoking woman, wearing a pencil skirt and stiletto heels, is always going to be more likely to land a job than an overweight non-smoker.

So many other issues arise from keeping women, in particular, in a state of belief about themselves as inferior, and we see this over and over again in the prevalence of abusive relationships. Keep a woman believing that she doesn’t deserve love and acceptance, and she’ll remain in an unhealthy situation for years, trying one thing after the other to figure out how she can change herself, to make the situation work. For some of us, we end up replicating this toxic dynamic in a series of relationships, wondering why we keep choosing partners so clearly wrong for us. Until we reach a point where we know the truth, love ourselves, and understand how worthy we are of being loved, we will remain stuck in successive variations on the theme. Until a disenfranchised population rises up against oppression, the abuse will persist.

I now live in a post-apartheid South Africa, where our constitution guarantees freedom from all forms of discrimination. Excluding people from living full lives as citizens, because of a physical feature, whether it be skin colour, disability, or weight, is a form of discrimination pathologically similar to racism, and has to be challenged at every possible opportunity.