Earlier this week, Kim Kardashian tweeted the following (which has since been deleted): “The flu can be an amazing diet. So happy it came in time for the Met lol #6lbsdown.” Aside from this being a bad way to start my Wednesday, it got me thinking about the lengths women are pressured to go to just for the sake of losing a few pounds. Regardless of whether you like the Kardashians or not, it is irrefutable that they have power. Lots of impressionable people follow them, both adults and teens alike. So for Kim to suggest that illness is a sensible weight loss tactic is deeply worrying and irresponsible. It’s worrying that a grown person thinks weight loss due to illness is desirable, never mind her thinking it’s acceptable to then spread this message to her fans.
Of course, Kim has to deal with people scrutinizing her body at every turn, but dragging other women, fat women, down with her is not the way to go. Telling the people who follow her–an audience predominantly made up of women–that it is unacceptable to be fat, is just one example of the overarching hatred our society has for fat bodies. We tell women that they must do everything they can to loose a few pounds, even if that means risking your health.
It’s about acceptability, really. Isn’t it? Doesn’t Kim’s tweet prove that she doesn’t see herself as acceptable without being a few pounds lighter? As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so eloquently says in her speech ‘We Should All Be Feminists‘: “we teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller”. We tell girls that they are simply not allowed to take up space. Any weight loss is good weight loss, right? As long as it’s making you smaller! Women are taught to live in a perpetual cycle of guilt, shame, and self-judgment with regards to our bodies. We are taught to take something completely arbitrary, like the size of our waists, and turn it into a moral battle. The preoccupation with fatness is so evident amongst women; you don’t have to go far before you hear someone apprehensively muttering “Do I look fat in this?” “Someone called me fat,” “I’m cutting carbs because I’m fat,” “Why am I so gross and fat?” ” I wish I could not be so fat,” and oddly enough, these statements are usually eschewed from the mouths of thin people.
Thankfully in response to this tweet, I saw a lot of people criticizing the tweet and opening the conversation to the wider problem of fat shaming. It’s great that more and more people are becoming aware of fat shaming, but it seems to me that that awareness is only extended to women who aren’t ‘that fat’. Amy Schumer seems to LOVE fat shaming because it means she can go on TV and rant about how she’s a ‘normal’ size. What about women who are ‘that fat’? The body positivity movement, as well-meaning as it is, seems to be limited to the people who can brandish a badge that says they’re slim enough. The women who aren’t slim enough? They’re left behind. They’re the extension of the whispered appendage ‘within reason’ that seems to be inextricably tied to all body positive rhetoric. Don’t be too fat. Don’t eat too much. “Eat what you want!” is followed by “as long as you’re healthy!” And the unhealthy people? Are they not allowed to speak? Apparently not. But you’ve got to be the ‘right’ kind of unhealthy, too. What kind of hospital patient is allowed to speak about their experiences? What illnesses are you allowed to have before you’re shut up by Deliciously Ella? Why do we always seem to stop listening as something makes us a little uncomfortable?
The body positive movement is in such a mess that to discount any single person’s perspective on what they’ve done, why they’ve done it, and what it’s done for them is counter productive and frankly arrogant. But it is salvageable. We owe it to ourselves to reframe the way we approach our bodies, and the body positivity movement. The world ain’t about to tell us we’re fine as we are–there’s too much profit to be made. So we need to stop entertaining fatphobia. We need to make the body positive movement a place where fat people can exist regardless, rather than it being a place where fat people have to beg for thin people to treat them with respect. Fat women shouldn’t have to be constantly defending their existence at every turn because some thin gal is “just worried about their health”. We need to stop saying we “feel fat” every time we eat some pasta or a chocolate bar. Fat bodies aren’t scapegoats or hallmarks of your low self esteem. We need to lay down the weapons and stop battling our bodies every single day. We’re not doing ourselves any favours. Basically, we need to be lifting each other up. It sounds corny, but it’s true. We can’t do this without the support of each other. Audre Lorde says in her essay collection Sister Outsider, that “For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological, but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered.” Let’s rediscover that power. We’ve got something worth fighting for.
