I do not mean this as an insult to myself but as a simple true statement. But the fact that such a statement needs to be qualified should show you how denigrated my body type is in this society. If you don't agree with this basic premise, you need to go elsewhere because I am not going to try and argue something so obvious. Instead, I plan to tell you about me because it's my blog and on my blog I get to be a narcissist.
I used to hate myself. There were a lot of reasons for this and most are more relevant to my therapist than my blog readers. Because I hated myself, and my body was a manifestation of many of the things I disliked about myself, my body became an easy target for that self-hatred. I was a queer man in a world that hated queers. I was gender-fabulous in a world with a very strict gender binary. And I was fat in a world that hated fat people. Since I couldn't become un-queer and I consistently failed at following gender norms, I focused on trying to "fix" my body. Even the other queers and gender non-conforming people hated fat folks. And since they were my only hope of acceptance and safety that meant I needed to lose weight - my survival as a baby queer depended on it. So even though I hated exercising I did it for several hours every day. Even though I love food I was always restricting what I ate. Sometimes this made me lose weight - though never enough for my BMI to drop down to "normal." Mostly it just made me miserable.
Cartoon rhinoceros running on a treadmill next to a picture of a unicorn.
Finally I was in my 20s. I was a vegetarian who had just gone vegan for lent. I was working as a dog walker which entailed walking dogs for 5 hours and biking ~12 miles between the houses each day. I was fat. I was the only dog walker who was fat. After a work party I went home with my boyfriend and started bemoaning this state of affairs. And he introduced me to the fat acceptance movement. Readers, there is a special place in heaven for the people who introduce self-hating fat queers to the fat acceptance movement. (For what it's worth, this same boyfriend also liked that I was swishy which was AH-MAY-ZING.)
Graffiti: Buddha triumphantly lifting a bicycle.
Fat acceptance changed my life. I read everything I could get my hands on. I intentionally made fat friends whereas I'd had NONE before then because I was grossed out by fat people. I completely stopped dieting and exercising. I questioned ideas I had accepted about how terrible my life as a fat person would be. How could I believe that shit when I saw fat people who were married, who were professionally successful, who were good at sports, who were stylish dressers, etc? So, for a while I swung the opposite way. I did not exercise at all and I ate whatever the hell I wanted - including one day when I literally ate cake for every meal. I think most fat people who finally discover fat acceptance do this. I also think it's why you see all of those posts by newly revolutionized fat people that other people accuse of "glorifying" obesity. We've finally escaped from the hell of others' expectations and we're overzealous in our identification with the cause. I've met a lot of people in this stage and it's an important stage to reach because hating yourself sucks and it's important to put an end to fat phobia.
Fat David sculpture.
So anyway, after a couple years of being very RAH RAH about fat acceptance, a funny thing happened. My eating gradually settled down on its own. Because food isn't a scarcity for me and no foods are "forbidden" I no longer feel the need to eat everything in sight. There are some days when I want dessert and I eat it, but there are other days when I really crave spinach or brussels sprouts or a nice big salad. I NEVER craved that sort of thing before. But my appetite has finally balanced itself now that I'm not periodically starving myself. I've also found myself craving more physical activity. I've always hated exercise but now that I'm not making myself do it to lose weight, the idea of movement is appealing. I've discovered that I love dancing, swimming, rock climbing, weight lifting, yoga, and biking. Basically, I've gradually and accidentally come to embrace the idea of Health At Every Size (an idea you can find out more about here).
Sparkly scale that says "Yay!" and has positive phrases instead of numbers.
I've finally made peace with my body which has included making peace with being fat. Paradoxically, this peace has given me the space I needed to be able to set some fitness goals this year. I'm ok with my weight and at the same time, I want to be more physically fit. I never thought I'd be able to separate fitness from weight loss. But apparently there is one more thing on the other side of fat acceptance. It's getting more healthy for yourself, because you love yourself and want to stick around for as long as possible in the best condition possible. So bizarrely enough, now that I've accepted my fatness, I've decided it's time to improve my diet and exercise. I even made it one of my New Year's resolutions.
And now that you've gotten through all of this, here's a post from Nerd Fitness: How Fat Acceptance Doesn't Have to Glorify Obesity and Shame Fitness. I'm not 100% on the tone of this piece, though I think it was probably difficult to tightrope walk this issue in print. Tone aside, this article expresses some of my thoughts rather well. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.
And in case you need a boost of fat acceptance in the form of music videos, here are two of my favorites: "Sista Big Bones" by Anthony Hamilton (warning: there is a brief instance of problematic orientalism in this video) and "Big Girls (You Are Beautiful)" by Mika.
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