From MTV.com, an article about fatsuits inspired by the current movie Just Friends:
But to the overweight person sitting in the audience, the experience must be similar to a black person watching an old blackface minstrel show. When the character is presented as mean-spiritedly as Mike Myers’ Fat Bastard character from the “Austin Powers” movies or scary-thin Courteney Cox-Arquette’s Fat Monica from flashback episodes of “Friends,” it becomes outright torture.
I ran into the MTV piece via Big Fat Blog. I was particularly struck by this dead-on comment by BFB reader “Shyly”:
Years ago, I went to see The Nutty Professor (Eddie Murphy version) with my friend Phil. After the movie, Phil and I ended up discussing fatphobia, and he remarked that during the worse of the fat jokes in that movie I was squirming in obvious discomfort. So there we were, watching the movie: Me uncomfortable with the anti-fat bigotry on screen, and Phil made uncomfortably aware of the fact that what was on screen was anti-fat bigotry by my presence.
It was a weird dynamic. Probably a bit like going to see a Farrelly Brothers movie with a disabled friend.
That’s two “comparison of oppressions” metaphors in this post: fatsuits and blackface (a comparison that a lot of comment-writers at BFB question), and fat and disability. I’ve already done fat and gay, a little over a year ago.
But of course, no two oppressions are really the same. It’s not even the case that any two fat people necessarily feel the same oppression from anti-fat bigotry. In the comments to another post, Reddecca commented that it had never even occurred to her that fat women and fat men are facing the same oppression; she had always thought of fat-phobia as a women’s issue.
She’s not right – after all, that legislator in Hawaii didn’t suggest that only female fat teachers should be weighed and “dealt with appropriately.” But she’s not wrong, either – a lot of the bigotry experienced by fat women is not merely a meaner form of what men experience, but qualitatively different, because of how fat and gender intersect. (For example, disgust at fatness harms both fat men and women; but it also functions as a way of socially controlling and limiting all women, fat or not. See Naomi Wolf’s wonderful polemic The Beauty Myth – or for that matter, Jill’s recent experiences (see especially Zuzu’s comment)). Both lenses – a feminist lens and a fat acceptance lens – are necessary.
Comparisons are onerous and difficult. On a different comments thread on Big Fat Blog, PCKim, herself both fat and Black, objected to the blackface/fatsuit comparison:
Usually it’s not about just racism as an example it’s racism against black people specifically that’s used as examples here constantly. It’s like do you want to be reminded that you’re not thin every time you look around. We don’t want to be reminded every second we’re a minority in this country, or how the man stuck it to us. We have sites for that type of thing.
PCKim makes a great argument. At the same time, I’d hate to think that the civil rights struggle – surely one of the most important moral movemetns in American history – leaves no lessons that can be applied to other situations. Everything is different, but at the same time, every human life is different from every other life. It doesn’t mean that comparisons are always useless, or that fat people can’t learn anything about our own situation by considering the history of racism and sexism. No oppression is totally the same, but no oppression is totally different, either. (Later in her post, PCKim does seem to say that sometimes comparisons are appropriate).
(Postscript: Be sure to read this excellent post by Reddecca, too.)
For the record, after returning and reading all 86 comments following my comment, I’m convinced that “bigotry” is an appropriate term.
I do disagree with those posters who think it’s inappropriate to compare biases and try to figure out which one is “worse.” Pretty much any group you can name is subject to some nonzero level of bias. I don’t think any of those biases are acceptable – even rich, thin, attractive, straight white men are subject to some level of stereotyping – but it’s not remotely practical to take remedial action to mitigate the effects of every single one of them. As an atheist, I know there’s bias against atheists, but if someone were to suggest that it’s as bad as what black people face, they’d be making a serious error.
Empiricist — I just want to comment on this:
As an atheist, I know there’s bias against atheists, but if someone were to suggest that it’s as bad as what black people face, they’d be making a serious error.
On this thing, there are probably very few people who would disagree with you that religious bigotry in this culture has nowhere near the immediate and incredibly negative realities of the longstanding and overt racism that’s been going on for generations.
But where I have a problem is when we get caught up in trying to place bigotries on some kind of scale from worst to best, or hardest to easiest. The reality IMO is that all of these interact with each other both often at their roots (looking at intersections of race and gender, say) and in the actions taken to reinforce the bigotry (so even if it’s not as “severe”, whatever that means, it is sometimes a similar mechanism that keeps, say, atheists down as keeps queers down, or whatever).
I’ve spent many years as an activist in queer circles watching the constant “I’ve got it worse than you” thing absolutely cripple some people — it’s counterproductive at best, and tells me that many people don’t understand that the roots of bigotry — no matter how that bigotry rears its ugly head, and no matter what the scale might be — will never allow us to win “just one” of these battles. IMO, nobody has meaningful social equality until we all do, because until that point comes, our social equality can only be interpreted as conditional on our ability to placate the mainstream.
Now, obviously we all have to focus where we can, since nobody can possibly fight all battles at once. And I also think that some bigotries are so grave, with such immediate effects, that they require maybe more immediate attention than some others. On the other hand, to say that one is worse than another — while in some cases, it’s likely — just isn’t a useful line of thought to me, and isn’t IMO the right way to approach the problem.
Add to that that even when it is probably true, what comes out of it is usually “quit your whining, because I’ve got it worse than you”; this is never a productive way to approach various people’s experiences.
Copper coinage.
I’m on holiday at the moment so can’t participate in this debate as much as I’d like, but I just wanted to make a short comment before my internet time runs out.
The reason I have a problem with the simple comparison of oppressions, is not because I think there’s some hierarchy of oppression, but because I think that different oppressions work differently, and that we need to be able to analyse these differences.
It’s not that I don’t think that both fat men and fat women are discriminated, it’s that I think for fat women, that discrimination is only a small part of the issues around being fat.
I agree that the American lifestyle is very unhealthy, but fat people are not the only ones living that lifestyle by a long chalk, and I disagree with you strenuously about the notion that thin people all eat healthy diets of grains and vegetables and go to the gym regularly.
This is really the core of the issue. If you’re a lighter weight, you’re assumed to be healthy automatically. No matter if your fat/lean muscle mass/bone density is poor.
To use an anecdotal example: I’m 5’5” and 125-130 pounds. I have three sisters; not sure exactly their weights, but let’s say: 5’2” 125, 4’11” 120, 5’1″115. Short mesomorphs.
Now, if a doctor or a passerby were to look at us, no one would think poor eating habits or non-exercisers. If a Hollywood type were to look at us, the 5’1” sister is probably the closest to ideal. The 5’2” sister? Looks ‘heavy’ by their standards. Gets teased by my dad to lose weight. But still, attractive, healthy types, right? Assumed to be perfect exercisers and ‘deserve’ being thin?
Well, they eat normally; sometimes healthily, sometimes not. The Hollywood ideal baby sis? Never exercised ever. Eats what she wants. The ‘heavy’ one? Training for a marathon. Short stuff at 4’11”? Gorgeous, never needed to exercise, works at McD’s and insists its okay. Me? Regular exerciser. Lately, diet’s gone to hell as I deal with depression/grad school.
So one of four of us actually is a hardworking exerciser who eats well. But none of us are ever going to be singled out and told to eat healthier by passersby. This generalizes to my friends: girls who weigh 95 pounds? No exercising, poor diet. Girl who weighs 160? Watches diet, exercises. Who would get the scorn?
Of course health is an issue. Of course nutrition is an issue. Of course heart attacks, diabetes, etc is an issue. No one’s denying this; but to use that as a justification for ridiculing heavier people really misses the point. My sisters would likely be healthier 15 pounds heavier if it were due to exercise & muscle mass.
But if they were to gain those pounds, they wouldn’t be looked at as healthier and would probably get belittling looks if they ordered a regular Coke..
I think redecca raised a really important point – that the problem of comparing oppressions is that they work differently. To expand on this using the example of race: fat people are not assumed to be criminals on the basis of being fat, fat people are not overrepresented in the prison system because they are fat, fat people are not prevented from voting/their votes are not uncounted because they are fat, and so on.
The feminist theorist Nancy Fraser divides oppression into axes of misrepresentation (exclusion from the political system), misrecognition (institutionalized cultural/symbolic discrimination), and maldistribution. Some oppressions, such as racism and sexism fall into all three categories. Others tend to fall into the categories of misrecognition or maldistribution, although these obviously effect each other. I think one could argue that the anti-fat bigotry is an issue of misrecogntion, with economic discrimination following from that. This means that the possible solutions to anti-fat bigotry would be changing attitudes about fat people, as opposed to affirmative action policies, or reforming the justice system.
There is a difference between drawing a comparison between a kind of discrimination (as in, fat drag is *like* blackface) and making a qualitative comparison like fat people are treated just as poorly as blacks. Its a rather big jump to assume one is the other. Comparing a specific form of discrimination to another specific form of discrimination should be a functional part of discussing various prejudices in our society. It is not comparing oppressions as a whole to draw comparisons of specific examples of the oppression.
We can all learn from each other and from the successes and failures of other civil rights movements. Pointing out similiarities also can have the benefit of reaching out to people in an oppressed group who also feel prejudice towards others. It should never be assumed to be a qualitative judgement. If its a qualitative judgement, it will be stated. Such as “Group A is hated more than Group B”. That kind of discussion doesn’t need to be started because the likely result will often be Group B understandably feeling the need to protest that declaration.
Certainly, what is unique about fat oppression merits a great deal of discussion, but points of similiarity and simple comparisons have their purpose and its unfair to think such discussions imply any manner of value judgement on either form of oppression mentioned. This isn’t about “A is better/worse than B”. Its about looking at what happens to B from the historical insight of what happened to A.
dorktastic – “maldistribution” – would that be grouping people geographically on the base of their objectionable trait? As in ghettos (both in the original Jewish sense and the current urban sense) or concentration camps. I ask because you didn’t elucidate that one as you did the other two.
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