One of the things we’re facing in the void of plus-size, thin-size, or ultimately self acceptance is what I consider the superstitious void. While we in the Western world think don’t think of ourselves this way, the truth is that we are an aggregate culture just rife with superstitions. If we weren’t, Snopes.com would have no reason to exist and email would get to everyone 10 nanoseconds faster because no one would be sending those forwards telling you not to flash your brights at other drivers.
It stands to reason that we are also superstitious about fat, about being fat, about what it means to be fat, and about what the fact experience actually is. It would explain the constant dissonance and insanity – people thinking laxatives help counter binge eating (they don’t), or that getting fat is because of a weak, undisciplined character rather than for the milieu of factors involved for anyone’s body type to change, and that recent and disproved idea that fat is contagious and moves through social groups.
It’s going to take decades to remove all the misinformation and false beliefs we have accrued concerning our bodies and diets. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start now.
We’ve already got the basics:
It is possible to be fat, and still be in good shape. Yes, fat people do exercise – they just don’t exercise for three hours a day, because they are maintaining health, not conforming to an aesthetic.
We know from Junkfood Science that overeating is not the direct cause of obesity.
And you hang out at Fat Chic, so you know that even plus sized people have it in them to look fabulous.
When you’re out in public with people saying silly things to you about your body as though it’s their business, there is no way to smack them upside the head and have that head filled with the correct information about fat people, or to get it through to them that they need to find some other way to vent their hostility. But that horrible behavior – it starts somewhere, and there’s a steady slew of media convincing people of the rightness of their opinions while sucking away the basic ability to distinguish fact from opinion.
The fashion industry is partially to blame for this reprehensible condition where size 12s and 14s are told they are “plus sized” and women who shrink to a 00 are rewarded for trying to disappear instead of taken in for medical treatment. (I hear about “natural” 0s, and maybe, but if you’re a “natural” 00, I don’t believe you, please seek help.) More than one designer has said something snoot-nosed about “giving women something to aspire to” because being rail thin and wearing clothing that wouldn’t fit a Barbie somehow outranks the goal of becoming President of the United States or at least becoming a captain of industry. Women, especially wealthy women, can bear the rest of the burden of the blame from buying from fashion designers who hold such an insulting attitude (anyone who waves a hand and refers to the “little people” is a small person indeed). By buying from designers who hold their own customers in such contempt, women were buying into the misogyny – funding these little acts of hatred for women one piece of fabric at a time.
This misogyny that even female designers are buying into to “keep up with the business” has problems all over it, and in its warped and sexualized way has some of the same marks of Puritanism all over it: a belief that women left to make their own decisions were a danger to themselves. It’s absurd.
The worst thing I have ever seen a sane, healthy, intelligent adult woman do when left unattended is buy clogs. It’s the ones that have been driven crazy because they’ve been tricked into believing the insane whisperings of the fashion world and it’s 1% population of buyers who have surgery just to fit in the clothing that worries me. Risking your life to say your size is a single digit ? Now that’s dangerous and crazy.
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