[My housemate Elkins posted this comment in the “fat people and gay people” discussion. With Elkins’ permission, I’m making it a post of its own. – Amp]
Mary put her finger on it here:
That’s it exactly. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging people to take better care of their health, but I don’t think that’s really what anti-fat discrimination is all about. It is an appearance-based prejudice, and it has far more to do with fat itself than it does with “health.”
I’ve never heard anybody defend quite so passionately the notion that employers ought have a “right” to screen job candidates for blood pressure and cholesterol levels before deciding whether or not to employ them. But suggest, even in the mildest of tones, that perhaps discriminating against a fat applicant might be inappropriate, and people get very passionate indeed! Why? Why is that?
So what’s actually going on here?
One of the parallels that Amp did not cite between obesity and homosexuality–possibly because it is not quantifiable enough by half for his preferred standards of debate–is that whiff of religious righteousness that always seems to permeate these exchanges, that stench of moralism, or even of moral panic.
It strikes me as intrinsically connected to both misogyny and homophobia, this. The terror that fat seems to inspire, the moral terror, seems rooted in the same fear and loathing that has traditionally been reserved for the promiscuous woman. She is not obeying. She is “out of bounds”–much like the fat that oozes over the sides of the airplane seat. Her problem is a surfeit of appetite–which is the reason that no matter what medical studies might actually show, people will continue to frame the problem of obesity wholly in terms of eating and of appetite.
It is also very much the way the religious right views those who dare to break gender boundaries. Queers are disobedient, they are in “moral rebellion.” They are encroaching on our public life. Those who support them must have a “recruitment agenda.” They lack the will-power to restrain their nasty urges. They are not only weak, but also insatiable.
As it becomes less and less socially acceptable to try to regulate sexual behavior, we turn to the subject of eating instead. Whether eating habits really have all that much to do with obesity is irrelevant. We must define obesity in terms of voluntary appetite for it to serve the same social function that sex once served.
Eating is the new sex. Anti-fat hysteria is the new Puritanism.
a couple of differences though:
1) sex is not a limited resource, while there is only so much food to go around in the world at one point in time.
2) people don’t die out of lack of sex.
though i think that the anti-fat problem is tied more to socioeconomic levels in north america, since the affluent can usually afford their personal trainers and their organic trans fat-free foods and all that.
This rambles, but I am reminded of the movie “Real Women Have Curves.” The story was a lot about being comfortable with yourself and refusing to apologize. The mother kept telling her daughter not to be “shameless.” It was the attitude as much as the action that upset her.
How dare someone be happy having broken the stricture of society? You get away with “being” outside the norm, as long as you suffer for it and pay lip service to the superiority of the dominant ideals and images by engaging in activities designed to take you closer to them, even if there is no chance of success.
God forbid you just leave people as they are, because then all the effort you’ve put into things might not have been necessary. What if “fat” people can be happy? What if you don’t have to be a size six to be loved? What kind of insecurities do you have to face up to if you lose that convinient excuse and are still lonely?
Extrapolate to the spiritual and you’ve opened up a great big can of worms: what if “they” are right? What if you can be counted as a good person even if you didn’t check off 1,2,3 on the “Big List of Things that Get You Into Heaven”?
Worrying about appearances gives us something obvious and measurable to take the place of internal elements that are harder to quantify or even acknowledge.
It would be much easier if I was judged in this life and the next solely on my outside and never had to tackle dreams and faith and emotions and all that stuff that’s even messier than sex.
um, wow. can i just thank elkins for a very articulate and well done post? i know i’m probably being dramatic, and i realize that i am not on oprah, but that post just slayed me.
having experienced the fat thing from both sides, i am thoroughly disgusted with the way a lot of people treat the fat. i come from a family with a long and rich history of bieng short and wide. i am 5 ft 3 in. before i had my son, i wore a size 10. i was admired, and i pitied those who were larger than me. i berated fat people for their lack of will power, and i tried to get every family member on a diet and exercise regime. i did not heed my mother’s warning that i too was in for a shock when i chose to have children.
now, 7 years after the birth of my son, i am still a size 16. i have tried countless diets and have lost and regained the same 30 pounds about 100 times. i have scales, books, videos, posters, cds… and nothing helped. finally i gave up to being fat. i eat regularly, walk every day, take vitamins, and i’m a healthy size 16. which is apparently the size god intended me to be. but now i get berated, i get lectures, i get asked if i really should have a slice of birthday cake, i get oinked at by rowdy teens, i get glares from people in the mall, etc. what kills me is that being a fat women seems to mean i am stupid, poor, and promiscuous… at least that’s how people treat me. and i think elkins hit the nail on the head in explaining why people are so scared of fat.
not being a homosexual, i can’t say if elins hit the same nail for homosexuality, but it seems to make sense. thanks for a great post, sorry if i rambled. oh, and for a great book, read Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann. excellent read :)
Maybe someone has already written about this – if so, sorry to repeat the point.
I gather that for the past few decades there has in fact been an increase in Christian diet plans, weight-loss programs that quite literally equate fat with sin. I know very little about the subject, but for anyone interested, there is at least one book on the subject called Born Again Bodies. (I haven’t read it, for the record, I’m just aware of it.)
This is great, and very insightful, but I’ll quibble with the idea that it is becoming “less and less socially acceptable to try to regulate sexual behavior.” I’d say in the current political environment, it’s becoming more and more acceptable…
First off: although my first name is Don, and my last name begins with P, I am not Don P. from the other threads.
Second: I once saw, in a Christian bookstore in Texas, a book called “Help Lord — The Devil Wants Me Fat!” I didn’t want to give them any of my money, but I’ve regretted not buying that book ever since, because I’m really curious about it. (I see it starts at $1.90 from Amazon now…oh, it turns out it advocates a 10-day fast “to destroy the devil’s food stronghold in one’s mind”! Aiiee! (“Mmmm…devil’s food.”))
Third: I suspect that a lot of the “panic” is class panic rather than moral panic. I noticed on the other thread that Don P. talked a lot about eating too many Big Macs and pizza, which are “marked” as lower class, as is being overweight in general.
Fourth: although evolutionary psychology makes for facile arguments, it might be a factor here. In an environment of scarcity, if you see a fat person, you might well conclude that that person’s got their share of the food, and yours too. Which could understandably anger you if you’re hungry.
The fat-gay comparison is unconvincing. Fat people face appearance based prejudice, but homosexuals themselves are into appearance based prejudice. How many 300 pound “twinks” populate the pretty boy galleries? It is thus a somewhat hypocritical to lecture on about “lookism” when the homosexual subculture is one of the main offenders. In fact the same could be said of race and homosexuals. A Google search on the complaints of non-white homosexuals amply shows a strong measure of racism within homosexual ranks.
And so what if there is moralism in the debates? Homosexuals themselves never fail to invoke moralistic tones- whether it be ludricous comparisons to Rosa Parks, or lectures about “lookism” or “disrimination”. And your claim that fat people are “persecuted” and “loathed” is not all its made out to be. For one, until recent times, fat has been seen as a symbol of prosperity and good health, hence the ancient phrase “as the fat of the land”. Various cultures vary on how they view fat, with black culture for example admiring a “thick” woman or Hispanics appreciating a voluptuous figure. But even if this were not so, the issue of hypocrisy again comes up. Homosexuals themselves prize and favor young, non-fat people, whether they be muscular or wispy pretty boys. “Moralistic” lectures on this score only call to mind the old saw: “Practice what you preach”.
but homosexuals themselves are into appearance based prejudice
Unlike heterosexuals. You will never see a skin mag aimed at heterosexual men that favors young, thin, white women.
But seriously, isn’t it interesting how ‘phobes forget there are female homosexuals? Anyone able to make the argument that lesbians prefer thin and young with a, um, straight face?
All I gotta say is “I heart fat dykes!”
:)
(I actually don’t like the fat-gay comparison because it assumes a common non-normative experience predicated on a eurocentric, wealthy status quo…. but that’s just me!)
is it just me or when you hear someone say “the homosexuals” do you get the feeling they’ve only heard of such creatures through rough description?
anyways, here’s a good book on fatness & moral terror:
Revolting Bodies: The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity by Kathleen Lebesco (UMA, 2004)
isabelle: “sex is not a limited resource, while there is only so much food to go around in the world at one point in time”
Sex is a very limited resource, at least for the average straight man.
(Same way money is a very limited resource for most people, even though the government could theoretically print as many bills as it wants.)
Ilkka, I find it odd that you swing back and forth between complaining that men can’t find sex and complaining that women don’t diet enough to be good enough for men’s sexual attentions.
Sex is a very limited resource, at least for the average straight man.
The point you’re missing is that if one person has sex, that does not limit the ability of another person — even a poor, persecuted straight male — to have sex, even with the same partner that the first person had sex with. Whereas, once the cake’s eaten, the cake is not available for anyone else.
Except, perhaps, the earthworms.
Wait, are there people in this comment thread arguing that it’s rational to hate fat people because they are eating up your food? What? What? Are you trying to say that we are running out of food in the United States and that’s why we hate fat people?
Are you high? I hate people who argue like they are high, don’t you know dope is a limited resource and once you’ve smoked it there won’t be any left for me?
Amanda: “Ilkka, I find it odd that you swing back and forth between complaining that men can’t find sex and complaining that women don’t diet enough to be good enough for men’s sexual attentions.”
I wasn’t complaining: I was stating a fact.
(1) Sex is a scarce resource for typical straight men. (2) In the eyes of typical straight men, fat women are sexually undesirable when compared to normal-weight women.
There is no logical contradiction whatsoever between these two claims.
As a feminist, you understandably have very little empathy towards the limitations of average straight men. It’s OK: I also have little empathy towards the problems of many groups that I don’t personally identify with.
Perhaps a better choice for a group for whom sex is a highly limited resource would have been morbidly obese women, or women who are over 70 years old, since these two groups are not traditionally famous for the large surplus of sexual opportunity that they enjoy.
Shall we ask some randomly chosen members of these groups whether they share the view of sex being a nonlimited resource?
Kelite’s post shocked me. I am horrified that Kelite, or anyone for that matter, would be treated badly for their weight. But what really shocked me is the relatively small amount of overweight that provoked the bad behavior.
A woman who is size 16 is berated by people she knows, harrassed by teenagers, and glared at by strangers? That is unbelievable! Size 16 isn’t even considered plus size clothing- it is the last size of misses. I have a girlfriend that is a size 16, and if you were to ask me, I would consider a size 16 body somewhat overweight, not “fat” per se, and certainly not obese! Has fat hatred gotten so bad that now these horrible people are discriminating against such a relatively minorly overweight size?
In my privileged ignorance, I had thought that fat hatred would be reserved for the morbidly obese (and actually, I find that term offensive, even as a technical medical term). The fact that people at such a low proportion of overweight would be treated badly seems to indicate that this discrimination is NOT about health concerns, but really about punishing those who are not able to meet the slender standard.
I’m tall, and I got mooed at on the street in Chicago for being a size 14. (A few sizes ago.)
Oddly enough, I don’t catch that crap in New York, where everyone thinks that if you’re not model-thin, you’re nobody. You’d be amazed at how many men there are who dig big girls (and I mean over Bridget Jones sized). I have literally stopped traffic crossing the street at size 18 while some Jamaican men in a van admire my ass.
The last time I got a nasty comment from a stranger was last week, from a crazy woman who thought when I glanced her way in the bathroom at Grand Central that I must be staring at her, and who caught up with me outside and told me to get a life (had I not been so stunned I probably would have told her to get a grip). The only reason I could see for her to be sensitive (and in fact the reason I even recognized her) was that she had very rosy cheeks, probably the result of rosacea.
I posted this in the other “what gay and fat people have in common” thread, hope you don’t mind if I quote it here too, as it was precisely Elkins’s comment on moralism and puritanism that made me remember reading it a while ago. I thought it’s a great read and rather interesting look at these ideas of the role of willpower in eating and the moral assumptions involved, from a cultural and philosophical point of view. It’s review of low-carb dieting bestellers in the London Review of Books: The Great Neurotic Art by Steven Shapiro. A few tasters (though I recommend eating, erm, reading the whole thing):
“Sex is a scarce resource for typical straight men. “
Yeah, right… and Iraq had nuclear capabilities that could have obliterated London in 45 minutes. Tsk!
You’re excused, Ilkka, after all, lies are the essence of the post-modern state we all live in. Or something like that.
Illkka, I see no evidence for the rampant sexual frustration for straight men that you see. The only men I know who suffer from this problem are those that repulse women by starting in on the critical attitude from date #1, or show such a hyper-attention to a woman’s “assets” that she suspects that he will lapse into the super-critical attitude if ever she were allow him to get comfortable around her.
Illkka, What I really don’t understand about the “straight male sexual frustration” concept is how this is even possible without a corresponding “straight female sexual frustration”. I mean, it’s a 1:1 ratio, right? Or are you arguing that men just naturally want sex more than women? If that’s the case, what do you propose as a solution? Women must have sex with a mandatory number of men?
As a feminist, you understandably have very little empathy towards the limitations of average straight men.
actually Ilka, insofar as feminists are concerned with equality & not gender superiority or exclusivity there is no reason to make the assumption that feminists lack empathy toward average straight men (let’s ignore for now the completely imprecise & confusing term “average”).
in fact, though it’s hard to believe, i’m here to tell you that many feminists are not only friends with, related to & even give birth to average straight men, but moreover (get this) are in fact even involved in loving intimate relationships with average straight men (which is where we get the birthing part)! strangely enough, this even goes for white ones!
try dusting off your anti-feminist tropes before employing them…
You know, it occurs to me that it’s really inconsistent to jump all over fat people and say they are just making excuses when they say, “This is who I am, get over it,” and then beg for pity for having sexual desire only for very thin women by saying, “That’s just how straight men are, get over it.”
Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, Amanda. This is Big Mind stuff.
emma and zuzu… yeah, marilyn monroe was a size 16 and she’s still turning heads.
thanks for the empathy. i have found that finding a partner who truly thinks you have it going on and who helps you to discover how sexy you are helps a lot (even if you don’t stay with that person long term). i’m not saying i got my self love from someone else (and i don’t even have it all of the time) but it helped me open my eyes.
what i have noticed is that people feel safer harassing me than they do my size 28 friend. when i go out with this friend, who is also amost 6 ft tall, people don’t look at her or say a word at all. they seem to try very hard to just pretend she isn’t there. which i think may be worse. for me, when people give you bad looks or bug you about what you eat or whatever, you can get mad and get over it. for my friend, it’s just a complete and total denial of her existence. so in response she sometimes gets a little wiggy – wearing deliberately provocative clothes, going to karaoke bars and getting very rambunctious… i worry about her more than me.
again, very interesting reading about the homosexual/fat parallels… a bit of a mid expanding topic for me.
Not all straight men need a size 0 to get it up. I know many nice plump girls who have boyfriends. Uh…some of them are white if it helps. Many boys for whom sex is scarce turn away sex, so that’s why they can’t get any.
Marilyn Monroe was a size 16, but on a far different scale than today’s size 16. I think she’d be about a 6 or 8 today.
Hell, I’m a fat white girl and I have a couple of lovers, neither one of whom is a fat fetishist. And both are straight white males. Who see other women as well.
Sure, I’m not going to appeal to the kind of guy who wants a Heidi Klum, but that kind of guy, fortunately, isn’t the only kind of guy out there. I may be a niche product, but there is a healthy market out there. One of the lovely things about sexuality is the variety of tastes and flavors when one lets go of cultural norms and explores one’s own desires.
The thing that always makes me laugh about straight men who make a point of letting women know they don’t find fat attractive is that usually they are not exactly Grecian gods themselves. If every woman in the world suddenly put on 50 lbs, I don’t think all straight men would tear their hair, rend their garments and enter the priesthood.
Everyone has their quirks when it comes to what turns them on (or off) physically, but someone who chooses partners the way they choose apples in the store (only the prettiest! only the shiniest!) deserves to be sexually frustrated – just like those of us who go for the pretty, shiny apples deserve the Red Delicious (genetically engineered into the most pulpy and flavorless, yet shiny and pretty apple ever).
MG
Marilyn Monroe was a size 16, but on a far different scale than today’s size 16. I think she’d be about a 6 or 8 today.
Actually, she would be more like a size 12 in today’s sizes. At her heaviest, she weighed about 140. I wonder if she were around today would she still have been cast in all those sexy roles? Or would they have made her starve back down to her pin-up days weight before casting her?
I heard some “comedians” on the radio once complain that they couldn’t see why anyone thought someone as “fat” as Marilyn Monroe was ever considered sexy. It amazed me that men whose jobs are supposed to be in humor were so far into outer space that they thought, like Ilkka here, that the desire for Kate Moss was inbred and has no relation whatsoever to the influence of fashion.
Of course, anyone with eyes can see that Monroe was a Great Beauty, and that beauty involves a lot more than dress size. We’ve gotten so uptight about making all women anorexic as a society that merely looking skeletal seems enough to be considered a Beauty anymore.
[ot]Just for Ilkka:
http://wakaba.nervalhi.net/mods/src/everyonehashadmoresex.swf [/ot]
Paul Campos’ book The Obesity Myth really does an excellent job supporting that “moral panic” and classism are at the heart of anti-fat bigotry. (Have issues with some bits of this book, but overall an excellent read.)
Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight which is actually a series of essays, is also an excellent disection of cultural attitudes about women and weight.
I think Elkins’ post is excellent, and I’d add that even the most “conservative” (in the sense of adhering to dominant beliefs about weight and health) medical publications conclude that health benefits benefits from lifestyle changes can occur even when little or no weight is lost.
Elkins: That’s why she (the statue) is wearing a mumu! : )
Excellent post! I would comment more on its manifold virtues, but am low on sleep too, so maybe tomorrow. And thanks for the compliment. I can’t stand a nasty, pulpy apple!
Good night – MG
All those Beaux-Arts statues and allegorical figures were built like brick shithouses.
great quote from a scene in ‘some like it hot’ (marilyn monroe movie) where the two male characters are watching marilyn walk to the train;
“Who are we kidding? Look at that – look how
she moves – it’s like jello on springs – they
must have some sort of a built-in motor.
I tell you it’s a whole different sex.”
Wait, are there people in this comment thread arguing that it’s rational to hate fat people because they are eating up your food? What? What? Are you trying to say that we are running out of food in the United States and that’s why we hate fat people?
Are you high? I hate people who argue like they are high, don’t you know dope is a limited resource and once you’ve smoked it there won’t be any left for me?
I think this is addressed to my posting of 12/14 5:09PM (sorry, I didn’t check back for a couple of days). Anyway, that’s not what I intended to say, but rereading I see I left off the part that would have made my meaning explicit, so consider this added:
“This could be a reason why some people are disposed to irrationally resent overweight people. In our current environoment of non-scarcity, it’s an inappropriate response.”
Oddly enough, in an environment of widespread scarcity, fat is a sign of wealth and something to be desired.
Here’s a review of the new play by Neil LaBute (of “In the Company of Men” fame), called “Fat Pig”: it seems to be right on topic here.
Some excerpts:
In “Fat Pig,” a good-looking young professional named Tom meets the “generously proportioned” Helen, and, to his surprise, finds her funny and attractive. As the relationship develops, he faces abuse and mockery from his caustic friend Carter and former girlfriend Jeannie…
Expounding his philosophy of life toward the end of the play, Carter says: “People are not comfortable with difference. You know? Fags, retards, cripples. Fat people. Old folks, even. They scare us or something.
“We’re all just one step away from being what frightens us. What we despise,” he adds….
LaBute said he was inspired by his own experience of dieting and losing 60 pounds (27 kg), only to regain all the weight. What first sparked the creative juices was simply the phrase “Fat Pig,” which he thought would make a good title.
“I was thinking of it in terms of how that’s often used disparagingly and it seems it’s used more often toward women,” he said, beginning to sound like a feminist — a label he says is no closer to the truth about him than misogynist.
For Atkinson, the play is about bravery: “Loving your fat girlfriend when people make fun of her or … feeling positive about yourself when all the messages you get from society and the media tell you you should be ashamed of yourself.
“In America there’s a lot of people that would rather risk death than disapproval,” she said.
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If every woman in the world suddenly put on 50 lbs, I don’t think all straight men would tear their hair, rend their garments and enter the priesthood.
Or choose to be gay?
Women’s bodies tend to be “fatter” than men’s. Our fat-muscle ratio is different; we tend to a curvier shape; we have breasts, which are wiggly and soft, which behave in many ways just like that dreaded and disgusting fat. Menstruation can result in regular, harmless weight fluctuation due to water retention, and pregnancy obviously causes big body changes as well.
A while back, Amp posted about a Martha Nussbaum essay on disgust and mused on the relationship between Disgust and Prejudice. (You may find some of the disputes in the comments of that post quite, uh…familiar?) Like me, he also saw a connection between misogyny, homophobia, and fat phobia lurking around in that subtext.
But now I’m also reminded of some of the weird rhetoric you sometimes see in ex-gay and anti-SSM circles–rhetoric which seems to be predicated on the idea that dealing with the opposite sex is so fundamentally trying and unpleasant that we must not recognize the validity of same-sex pair bonds; if we do, then EVERYONE will start doing it and the human race will die out! woe!–and I’m wondering if some of what we’re seeing here could be related to that fear.
If women and their bodies are just plain icky, and if the fatter and less masculine they look the ickier they get, then I suppose it is the sacred duty of all straight women to protect “The Family” by trying to keep our bodies as inoffensive to the predominant straight male aesthetic as possible. Else we’ll drive those men straight ::cough:: into the arms of other men! And then what will happen? The moon, red with blood! Plagues of locusts! Rains of frogs!
Aaaaand…and I think I’ve been far too sleep-deprived lately. Maybe y’all shouldn’t pay too much attention to me right now.
(I loved the red delicious apple metaphor, by the way! And while Marilyn Monroe was prob’ly about a 14 by today’s standards, I’d guess that the Statue of Liberty, were she life-sized, would go over that Magic Size Maximum of 16-18, and would therefore find clothes shopping a decidedly frustrating experience.)
Emma,
I’ve been given disaprooving glances, and heard comments like “such a pretty face, it’s a shame, she’d be really hot if she lost 30 pounds”, and I’m a size 8! In my social group (San Francisco, indie hipster types – basically people who tend to go see a lot of live music) anything over a size 4 is frowned upon.
I think the fatness=out of control assumption is right on. In my experience the “all women need to be skinny” stuff tends to come from men (and sometimes women too, sadly) in whom the Madonna/whore complex is alive and well.
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