I Am NOT a Disease

One of the things about being a highly visible, deeply combative fat activist is that everyone seems to think you’re made of steel.  That you are so strong and confident, that nothing ever hurts you or makes you feel bad.  Nobody believes that you have bad days, that there are times where the fight just goes out of you and you can’t face another moment of trying to claw your way out of the hatred and stigma that surrounds fat people.

But that’s not true.  It’s not true in the slightest.  Even the most radical fatty, the most sartorially brave, the fiercest fighter, the strongest critic of the dominant paradigm around fatness struggles.  Every single one of us have those times where we just run out of oomph.

I am having one of those days today, and have been really struggling all afternoon.  You see, the American Medical Association today declared obesity as a disease despite a report from their own council on science and public health urging them not to.  According to the AMA, we fat people are no longer just people, we are diseased, defective, damaged, broken.  We are officially diseases to be cured, prevented, eradicated.  And this news has shaken me to the core.  I simply feel so defeated right now, like all the work that I and many other fat activists have done, and are doing to claw back our rights and improve our quality of life has just been taken away from us.

Rationally, I know why the AMA has made this ruling.  They’ve done so because big pharmaceutical companies, the weight loss industry and big health insurance companies, have lobbied, threatened, bullied and bribed them to do so.   Rationally I know that the reason these big corporations have done this is because it’s in their best interest financially to do so.  After all, they’re raking in HUGE amounts of money by convincing society in general that appearance = health, and that if you don’t meet the arbitrary levels of appearance that you must be sick, and surprise surprise, they have a drug, or a surgery, or a device, or a diet plan or an extra expensive health insurance plan to sell you to fix it.  The weight loss industry alone was worth almost $800 million just here in Australia.  Can you imagine what could be done for $800 million per year in this country?  We could all have completely free health care for every Australian, more than we would ever need.  People with disabilities could have all of the equipment that they would ever need, and any support and care they would ever need.  No human being in Australia would go without food, water or housing.  Education would be free for our whole lives, from kindergarten through any university studies that we would care to take on.   Medical research into every known actual disease, from the common cold to cancer could be funded fully.

All this just from the money that the diet and weight loss industry is worth in a single year, and there would be change.  In fact, if we only took their profit margin for ONE year, approximately $63 million dollars, and applied that to public funding annually – we could fund a lot of the things I’ve listed above.  And that’s just here in Australia, a country of only about 22 million people.  In the US, the weight loss industry is worth 66 BILLION DOLLARS.  Let alone the cumulative value of the rest of the world’s weight loss industries.

There is NO WAY ON EARTH that the weight loss industry is not behind this ruling from the AMA.  They have $66 billion dollars worth of power per annum in the US alone.  $66 billion dollars they can spend on lobbying, propaganda, graft, legal threats to anyone who opposes them, you name it to make sure the ruling falls the way they want it to.

Rationally I know this.  I know the facts.  I’ve done years of my own research into this because what I was being told about my fat body wasn’t matching up to reality.

But despite that knowledge… I feel so defeated today.  I feel so disheartened.  I feel so cheated.  I feel like I’m being marked as inferior, defective, broken.  Simply because my body happens to fall on the far end of a bell curve of diverse human bodies.  Simply because my body doesn’t fall in the small peak of the bell curve, the median of human bodies, a tiny arbitrary band of people who are granted the “normal” status just because they’re in the middle statistically.

But being at one end of the statistics doesn’t reflect who I am.  It doesn’t reflect how I feel.  It doesn’t reflect what my body can do.  It doesn’t reflect my value as a human being.  The AMA doesn’t know what it feels like to exist in my fat body.  They don’t know what it’s like in my body to wake up after a deep sleep, stretch and feel that stretch go down to my toes and up to my outstretched fingertips.  They don’t know what it feels like in my body to go swimming, feeling the cool water soft and cocooning around my body, and the wonderful sleepy feeling I get afterwards.  They don’t know what it feels like in my body to walk along the waterfront near my house on a windy but crystal clear winters day, with the sun warming my back as the wind nips my nose and fingertips.  They don’t know what it feels like in my body to laugh with my friends, my belly rocking, tears rolling down my face and my ribs hurting from giggling so hard.  They don’t know anything about what it feels like in my body.  All they know is that I am at the far end of a bell curve, and that someone out there can make money from making me hate myself and by encouraging society to hate me, and to repeatedly attempt to move myself to another point on the statistical bell curve, something we scientifically know fails for 95% of all attempts.  And with that they have marked me, and people like me, as diseased, defective, broken.

The only time I feel diseased, defective, broken is when society repeatedly pushes me down because of how I look and what numbers show up on a scale when I step on it.  I don’t feel those things unless I am taught to feel them.  Not even when I actually suffer illness or injury.

How is simply declaring me as diseased based on statistics, and despite how I feel or the quality of my life, good for my health?

How is that good for anyone’s health?

The inimitable Marilyn Wann has started a petition against this AMA ruling here.  Please sign.

*Edited because the figures I got from a study were incorrect – not that they change anything.  Let’s try to not kick me while I’m fucking down, OK?

Public Health Does Not Make Me Public Property

If I had a dollar for every time someone emailed me with some form of “But.. but… HEALTH!!” message in response to my fat activism, I would be a very wealthy woman indeed.  I’ve heard it all when it comes to people trying to use health, either private or public, as a stick to beat fat people over the head with.  To me it just boils down to one thing… no matter what a person’s appearance, weight, shape, level of health or physical ability, every human being deserves to live their lives in dignity and peace, without fear of discrimination or vilification based on their appearance, size, shape, body or health/physical ability.

Of course, to the essentialists out there who want to claim that fat activists are somehow anti-health, the idea of EVERYBODY deserving the same rights regardless of their appearance or physical state-of-being gets them into a right lather of outrage.  There is this attitude that “public health” must somehow trump basic human rights for some kind of greater good.  Of course, this is borne of decade after decade of big pharma, the media and the “beauty” industry carefully constructing a culture that equates health with attractiveness and thinness, and manoevering those measures of health to unattainable levels that very, very few people in the world actually come close to meeting, ie thin, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cis-gendered, affluent, etc.

Fat activism, even those of us who actively call out healthism, is not an anti-health message by any means.  In fact, it is quite the opposite.  I believe that everyone, yes EVERYONE, deserves access to the same healthful resources.  Clean water.  Clean air.  Safe spaces to engage in physical activity that is enjoyable and inclusive.  Abundant, fresh, affordable, nutritious food.  Compassionate medical care.  Vaccinations against communicable diseases.  Fair pay and working conditions.  Comprehensive education for all.  Mental health care.  Accessible public spaces for all bodies.  Affordable housing.  Affordable and suitable clothing.  All of these things contribute to improving the general health and quality of life of all people.

What I do not support is the idea that public health renders some people’s bodies as public property.  Public health is important in our society, and I am all for universal health care (an imperfect version of which we are lucky to have in Australia).  I am all for public health ensuring that our water is clean, that everyone has access to the medication and treatment they need, that people are aware of the importance of vaccination, that all people are encouraged and enabled to get outside into a clean, safe environment and enjoy moving their bodies, that public funding goes into curing disease and providing those treatments to all human beings and so on.

What I do not support from public health is the marking of non-normative bodies as “diseased” or “defective”.  I do not support the removal of agency and self-advocacy from people with non-normative bodies.  I do not support intervention into our bodies and health by public health organisations.  I do not support the vilification of human beings based on their appearance.  I do not support public health being driven by the diet, beauty and pharmacy industries, or the mainstream media, all of which have financial gain to be made in the othering of people based on their appearance.  I do not support public health campaigns that mark some bodies as inferior, immoral or defective.  I do not support public health campaigns that encourage friends, family, schools or other groups to intervene in to other people’s health.  None of these things actually help improve individual health or quality of life, in fact they all impact both health and quality of life negatively.

Anything that renders human beings as vulnerable to any of the above is public shaming and public stigmatisation, not public health.

Part of living in a society is that we can all contribute to that society for the general betterment of all.  Some people will need different resources and levels of care to others, because like any other living species, human beings are diverse.  That does not make those people beholden to society in general to try to change themselves to meet the narrow band of “average” that is classed as “normal”.  Instead, the responsibility is on society as a whole to include all people, rather than just the lucky few that meet some ridiculous arbitrary standards.

A Study of the Self

Well hello!  Welcome to the plethora of new readers I have gained recently.  It’s so good to see that there are more people out there ready to think outside the dominant paradigm when it comes to bodies and weight.

Before I go on any further, a quick zine update – it’s shaping up nicely.  I’m just waiting on a few artworks to come through, and then I can finish work on the layout, with production following after that.  I shall continue to keep you all posted.

So today I want to talk about selfies.  For those of you who don’t know, the word “selfie” is colloquialism for a self portrait, mostly these days taken by smart phone and uploaded to social media, like Facebook or Instagram.  With cameras ubiquitous in phones, especially now that many have front facing cameras, and most of us having connectivity to the internet, selfies have become something of an everyday occurrence.  I’m sure you’ve all seen one.  If you haven’t, here’s one I took yesterday:

Freshly pink haired.

Selfies get a lot of criticism.  They’re considered vain, posing or childish.  They’re ridiculed, especially selfies of women, and in particular selfies of fat women.  I know mine get stolen off my various social media sites and posted other places for ridicule, because “OMG look at the gross fatty, she thinks she’s people!!1!”

But that’s not going to stop me doing it.  People have been taking self portraits of themselves for centuries – be they photographic or other media.  Do I need to list some names of some famous self portrait creators?  Frida Kahlo.  Van Gogh.  Rembrandt.  Da Vinci.  Warhol.  Basquiat. Vivian Maier.  The list goes on and on, and right back through history.  Have a bit of a Google around and you’ll see everything from the brutally critical to the utterly whimsical.

Self portaits and self examination are important and powerful.  There are several reasons why I take and share selfies.

1. Until a few years ago, I never allowed anyone to take photos of me.  I was so used to being shamed by people for my weight that I believed I wasn’t worthy enough to be seen in photographs.  Now I’m proud of who I am and am happy to participate in photographs (with my consent – taking photographs of me or anyone else without our consent is douchey, don’t do it) and part of that is from playing around with taking photos of myself.
2. I don’t see people who look like me in the media.  Fat women are not represented in the media, unless it’s to vilify us.  We’re not represented anywhere in a positive light unless we represent ourselves.  As Junot Diaz wrote “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”*  If posting my selfie on my Tumblr or Twitter or blog gives someone like me some representation, as a fat woman, then it’s worth it.
3. Looking at yourself a lot from different angles and in different lights and colours helps you remove self criticism.  If you never see yourself, you never see yourself as “normal” (because as my dear friend Ian always says, “Normal is what you are.”), so seeing yourself helps you get used to yourself.  I’ve found I’m far less self critical since I’ve been taking selfies than I was before.
4. My friends near and far like to see me.  They like to see what my new glasses look like, or what colour I’ve dyed my hair, or just to see my face.  Just like I love to see them.
5. It’s valuable to have a record of yourself through your life.  It’s healthy to look at how you change and grow through your life.  I look back at old selfies and I realise how far I have progressed in life, both externally, in things like my job and where I live and things like that, but also internally, how I feel about myself and how I present myself to the world.  Selfies tell my story.
6. Because I discovered, on regular self examination in my self portraits, I’m kinda fucking awesome.

Self portraits, be they taken seriously with skill and care, or a spur of the moment capture of yourself for fun, are part of being human.  Since we first worked out how to scratch on a rock face or in the dirt while looking at our reflections in water, we humans have been taking self portraits to tell our stories, to examine ourselves, to share with our loved ones, or just for fun.  It’s not vanity to want to see yourself represented, either just for yourself, for those around you or in the world at large.  It’s part of marking that you are a member of humankind.

Have fun.  Pose.  Share them with your friends or share them with the world.  Get used to seeing yourself.  Find your own awesomeness.

*Thanks Lonie for posting this one on FB this morning and reminding me of an awesome quote.

 

Resources! Get Your Resources Here!

Well hello!  Welcome to all of the new readers, thanks to my being listed on WordPress’ Freshly Pressed feature overnight.  It’s an honour to be featured on Freshly Pressed and I hope that by being featured there, some new fellow fatties have found me and perhaps the fatosphere in general.

Because of the influx of new readers, both from Freshly Pressed and those who came along from the UQ Women’s Collective event I did last week, I think it’s time to do a refresher course on Fat Activism 101.  Because it will save us ALL a big headache in the long run.

Now, one of the things about being an activist is that people expect you to educate them all the time.  But it doesn’t work like that.  You have to go educate yourself.  If you’re reading this, you have an internet connection, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you can use Google.  If you don’t understand a term or a word, please take the time to Google it, and do a bit of reading.  Not because I’m too lazy to educate you, but because if I have used a term or word or even talked about an issue, it is undoubtedly the gajillionth time I have had to do so.  None of the questions that anyone presents me as a fat person about fat rights, fat stigma or even fat health are new ones for me, nor for most fat people you will meet.  We get this shit every day of our lives.  And we keep talking about it publicly, but again and again and again we’re still asked the same questions.

In fact, you can use the search engine on the top of this page to search just my blog and I’m sure you can plenty of information and instances where I’ve already answered your questions.  There are almost 400 posts here just on Fat Heffalump, I’m sure I’ve answered a lot of your questions already.

But!  I’m feeling generous today.  I’m going to help you with some resources, because as well as being tools for people to educate themselves, they are also fantastic resources for those of you who are fat and are looking for help with everything from clothing to health care to simply just standing up for your rights.

Some of these posts will be older ones, but they’re so good they’re worth keeping in an archive of resources.

Before we get into all subjects fat, it’s best that you understand privilege.

Let’s start with the piece that blew my world open, by Kate Harding for Shapely Prose:

The Fantasy of Being Thin

Then there is this brilliant post by Michelle aka The Fat Nutritionist:

Eat food. Stuff you like.  As much as you want.

In fact, while you’re at it, go read the entire back catalogue of The Fat Nutritionist.  Michelle’s work is amazing and she has helped SO many people get started on the road to healing a whole host of disordered behaviours around food.

Now, for those of you who have questions about health and fatness and all that malarkey, I cannot tell you how valuable Dr Linda Bacon’s book “Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight” is.  Here, have some free excepts:

Excerpts and Downloads: Health at Every Size

Don’t understand what fat activism is exactly?  Well, Dr Charlotte Cooper has you hooked up for that one:

What is a fat activist?

Another great place to get a whole lot of  101 on a whole host of fat topics is Melissa McEwen of Shakesville’s Fatsronauts 101 collection.  Pretty much everything Melissa has to say about fat is a valuable read.

The moralisation of health is a big issue for fat people, and Shannon over at Nudemuse has a recent post that sums it up beautifully.

Other useful links:

Brian at Red No. 3 is very good at getting right down to the nuts and bolts of fat hate.

Need an Australian Health Care Provider who is fat friendly?  Try the All Bodies Directory.

Marilyn Wann is like the first lady of fat.  Her book Fat! So? is a bit of a bible to many of us.

If you don’t understand thin privilege, this checklist is a good starting point.  Then move on to the This is Thin Privilege Tumblr.

There you have it.  A nice pile of resources to get you started on understanding fat activism, fat rights and fat stigma.  If anyone else has others, please feel free to drop them in the comments.

Why I Take No Shit From Anyone in My Online Spaces

• Angry fat bitch!
• You’re so bitter!
• You don’t care about the CAUSE, it’s all about YOU!
• OMG you’re so rude!  It’s no wonder you’re hated when you’re so RUDE!  I was just giving my OPINION!!
• You’ve got such a foul mouth!
• Why are you so sensitive?  God, get over it!  What are you, paranoid?!
• Well, you’re not getting MY support any more!  Not if you can’t be nice.
• If you weren’t such a rude bitch, you wouldn’t have these troubles.  You catch more flies with honey than vinegar you know.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard something along the lines of the above statements, I would have a LOT of dollars.  It happens a lot.  I get people turning up here, and in my other spaces online, lecturing me on how I’m supposed to behave and react and address them… in my space online.

I feel like a broken record half the time, telling people to fuck off.

But I think people need to be told to fuck off once in a while.  It does us all good.  Actually, if being told to fuck off on a blog or a facebook page or somewhere else online is the worst of your troubles in a day, you’re doing well I reckon!  I wish the worst that happened to me in life was being told to fuck off!  In fact, at any given time that I comment on someone else’s blog or other online space, I do so knowing that they have the full right to tell me to fuck off.  After all, I’m in THEIR space.

There’s a reason I’m so vehement about telling people to fuck off.  Two reasons really.  The first is because most of the time, in everyday life, we can’t just tell people to fuck off.  Because people are so threatened by two words “fuck off” they’re likely to resort to violence, or ACTUAL bullying tactics.

Incidentally don’t let anyone convince you that telling someone to fuck off is bullying.  It’s clear, it gets the message across, it’s not hidden away from witnesses like actual bullying is.  It doesn’t denigrate someone or cause them any harm.  It is simply a succinct, profane instruction.  Fuck off out of my life.  As much as so many people want to clutch their pearls and carry on like they’ve been slandered or wounded or some other great harm, fuck off does nobody any actual harm.

The second is that unless we stand up and stand solid in our own little corners of the internet, then we just get silenced again.  And again and again and again.  We fat folk are constantly told that we have to play by society’s rules.  We have to put up with so much shit in this world.  From hearing that we’re sub-human, worthless and inferior, through to being the subject of hate, derision and scorn, and right through to physical harm – be it passive (diets, weight loss surgery, dismissal of our health needs, an environment that we have to painfully squeeze our bodies in to) or aggressive (actual physical assault and harassment).  Every day we are subjected to being policed for every aspect of our behaviour – from the mere space we take up through to what we eat and what we wear and what we do with our bodies.

So when we do carve out a little space, a tiny corner of the vast universe of the internet, then we have EVERY right to set up boundaries in that space and not tolerate anyone who tries to police us within those boundaries.  I have to sit through people telling me I don’t have the right to agency over my own life and body every single day, I’ll be damned I’m going to sit quietly while people do it in my tiny spaces online.

Actually I just thought of a third reason.  So that I can hopefully give you folk, even if it’s only one of you, the strength to tell someone to fuck off when they’re behaving in a manner that is unacceptable to you.  If I give just one of you some strength when you’re feeling like the whole world is just pushing you down at every opportunity, then it is worth it.

You bet I’m angry.  You bet I’m going to get hot headed and loud about it.  It’s WRONG and unless those of us who can speak up DO speak up, it’s never going to change.

I’m under no illusion that I’m “nice” or “sweet” or even “popular”.  I don’t want to be nice, or sweet or popular.  There are no “true colours” waiting to be exposed – I’m angry, I swear a lot and I have little tolerance for bullshit.   I want to be the thorn in people’s side when they’re behaving in a way that is unacceptable.  I want to be that painful bit of sand that irritates the oyster of the world and creates change.  So what if people hate me for it – people hate me already just for living in a fat body, they hated me even when I was a brown mouse fatty too scared to say anything to anyone.  I’m used to being hated.

I’m tired of playing nice with people.  Nobody plays nice with we fat folk.  We are forced to justify our existence time and time again, we are dismissed, dehumanised, derided and denied.  We are treated as though we are inferior, and we are vilified as monsters at every turn.  So I feel no obligation to be “polite” with people who turn up in my online spaces under the guise of “disagreeing” or “freedom of opinion” with our rights to live our lives on equal footing with any other human being.  Nobody gets to debate fat people’s right to fair treatment in the world.  NOBODY.

I’m not here to convince fat haters, not-fat people looking for superiority and “skeptics” of fat activism that fat people deserve to be treated as human beings.  They’re never truly going to be convinced anyway, and they waste all of our time putting caveats on that, on the condition that we “play nice”.  The minute they disagree with us or we stand up to them, they turn that hate back on to us all over again.  Don’t be afraid that you’ll “lose their support”… if they’re that easily turned away, we never had their support to start with.  And NOBODY is that important that their withdrawing their support is going to end the fat activism movement.  And I believe if you connect with ONE person properly that it’s worth far more than suppressing your voice to make a thousand people happy.

I’m here for my own sanity, my own voice but most importantly my fellow fatties, who are told everywhere else in the world that they are inferior.  I’m here for you my beloved fat community.  I’m here to show you that you don’t have to stand for shitty treatment and that you are valuable, that you are worthy, that you are equal human beings to anyone else.

I have no interest in catching flies with honey or vinegar.  We all know flies eat shit anyway – I’m here with a can of Fuck Off, to repel those flies from this one little corner of the internet.

Notes From the Fatosphere – Admin Help Needed

So how many of you use the Notes From the Fatosphere rss feed to keep up with all the fatty awesomeness out there?  I know I do, and I know it draws me a lot of readers who stumble across my blog while reading others out there.  If you’ve never noticed Notes From the Fatosphere before, you can see it on this page, it’s the list of links and opening lines on the left there at the bottom of the info I have here on my blog.

Now for the past four years it has been administered by the lovely Bri of Fat Lot of Good, and she has done a great job of doing so, but is ready to hang up her NFtF hat for awhile so that someone else can have a go of driving the mother-ship!  So she has asked me to post the piece below calling for a new administrator for the service.

So if you think you can help, please contact Bri via the email address below – it would be a shame to see this fantastic tool disappear.

Hi All!

I have been the administrator of the Notes From The Fatosphere rss feed for around 4 years now and while continuing as a Fat Activist I feel it is time to pass the feed on to someone else.

At the moment the feed is administered via a Google account and a public Google Reader feed. However Google Reader will no longer be available after July 1 so another way of administrating the feed will need to be used.

The task of administrating the feed is fairly simple. You add blogs you believe fit with the ideology of the Notes feed (ie fat oriented) and you remove any blogs you think no longer fit the ideology. Occasionally a blog will “fall off” the feed and you need to re-add it -generally the blog’s author will email you and let you know their posts aren’t showing up in the feed.

Moving the Feed to another reader site (or the like) will involve finding a suitable place to host the feed and then subscribing to each of the blogs currently on the Google Reader feed. This will take a while but once it is done you only have to add new blogs or remove existing ones.

If anyone is interested in taking on the admin of the Notes feed please email me at scarlettheartt @ gmail.com  (without the spaces) and we can chat.

Yours in Fat,

Bri King

Fat Lot of Good blog

Fat Stigma, Healthism and Eating Disorders

A little housekeeping first – the zine is still trucking along nicely, thank you to those of you who have already submitted contributions, (I’ll be in touch soon if I haven’t already) and to those of you thinking of submitting something, please do!  I particularly need artwork, even just small pieces to fill in around articles and break up the text.

Trigger warning on what follows: discussion of eating disorders, prejudice against fat eating disorder sufferers and rampant healthism.

Photo by Isaac Brown for Stocky Bodies.

Now, on to the actual topic of this post!  As you know, on Tuesday night I was proud to present at the UQ Women’s Collective Diversity Week event.  One of my fellow speakers was a representative from the Eating Disorders Association Inc (EDA) and she spoke on what eating disorders are, who is most likely to be affected by them, and what methods of treatments there are.  We had some robust discussion during the Q&A portion of the event in response to audience questions.  I only wish we could have answered more audience questions, but alas, we ran out of time.

Since then, I have had a LOT of thoughts swirling around my head around eating disorders and how they relate to fat people.  As you would have seen in my last post, I have been an eating disorder sufferer for most of my life, however I was in my 30′s before I was finally officially diagnosed with EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified), which technically means an eating disorder that for some reason does not fit under Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa or Binge Eating Disorder (which has only this week been classified officially as an eating disorder).  In personal terms, for me it means that I have an eating disorder… but I’m fat, so I am excluded from being diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia, despite meeting almost all of the other criteria.  Yes, just being fat disqualifies you from having anorexia or bulimia regardless of your meeting all or most of the other criteria.

So it’s probably no surprise to any of you that I have issues with how the health care industry, most eating disorder support organisations and the general community of eating disorder sufferers treat fat people.  Particularly as it is mostly assumed that fat = binge eating disorder, which is nothing short of bullshit.  Can I put that in any plainer terms for anyone?  BULLSHIT.  Fat people are assumed to just be overeaters or binge eaters by way of being fat.  It is often believed that it is impossible for a fat person to have a restrictive or purging eating disorder, or to be involved in disordered exercise behaviours.  Even as much research (and anecdotal evidence/lived experience) there is out there showing how many fat people have engaged in these forms of disordered eating/activity, the medical profession and most eating disorder organisations still do not recognise it in fat people, and instead suggest that “denial” is one of our symptoms of what must be binge eating disorder.

What regularly happens to fat people who present with all of the markers of restrictive/purging/exercise mania is that we are told to “keep up the good work” instead of having our illnesses recognised.  Behaviours which are widely recognised as destructive, disordered behaviour in thin people, are considered a “positive lifestyle change” in fat people and actively encouraged.  It certainly was for many, many years through my suffering.

And it seems that hasn’t changed much.

So fat people are being failed by most eating disorder support organisations, the medical/health care industry and the general eating disorder community still.

The first question to the panel on Tuesday night was asking how we respond to the “But what about your health?!” demands.  As the fattest person in the room, it meant a lot to me to make it clear that my health, and in fact anyone’s individual health, is nobody’s business but their own.  That it’s not a subject up for discussion unless the person themselves wish it to be so.  You know, the “If it’s not your body, it’s not your business.” mantra.

The representative from EDA then added that she saw the situation differently, and while she started positively with stating that the same health messages should be given to all people, regardless of their body shape or size (which I agree with), it soon devolved into a lot of deeply healthist and fat stigmatising rhetoric about bell curves of mortality rates in body sizes, BMI, “obesity epidemic” and “weight risk factors”.  I was at pains to point out that as someone at one end of that “bell curve”, most of this rhetoric is deeply problematic as it has a risk of demonising and othering those of us who fall at either end of that bell curve.  It also implies that we require intervention into our health, and ignores the fact that “risk” in no way equals “certainty”.  It perpetuates an assumption that people at the ends of the bell curve are by default defective, rather than just the natural extremes of a diverse spectrum of body types.  It also perpetuates the assumption that very fat people or very thin people by default are inevitably going to suffer health issues and/or shorter lifespans that they are only statistically “at risk” for.  This is not an accurate assumption nor is it a helpful one.

I was grateful that it was also raised by someone in the audience (kudos to Amy if you’re reading this) that BMI is both an inaccurate and ineffectual measure of anything (other than ratio of weight to height) and that it is deeply triggering to not just fat people but also to eating disorder sufferers in general (which was many of the audience – since it was an eating disorders event).  BMI is often the stick that people with poor self esteem and body image, and eating disorders beat themselves over the head with.

Unfortunately, I have found healthist rhetoric like this is alarmingly common from eating disorder support organisations, and while they may be well intentioned, are causing the exclusion of many people based on body shape and size, as well as level of health.  The reality is, many eating disorder sufferers have other health issues or may be people with disabilities as well as those caused by or part of their eating disorders, and these already vulnerable people are often made to feel that they do not deserve compassionate treatment and support because they’re hearing the message that health is the most important factor in treatment and support.

We need to keep repeating the message that not only is health completely and utterly arbitrary, but it is not a moral obligation either.  Moralising health is a deeply ableist attitude.  We need to keep fighting for our personal agency in health care as well.  Yes, occasionally there are people who are genuinely unable to advocate for themselves, these are in the vast minority and most importantly, that cannot be determined by either their weight or their actual physical health.  I believe the ONLY way to assess the inability to self advocate is through thorough and compassionate psychological assessment.

As long as we as a culture continue to define wellbeing and human worth by weight and/or arbitrary health measures, we are engaging in both ableism and fat stigma, neither of which actually help people build better wellbeing.  And it’s not just fat people/people with disabilities who are affected by this.   The fear of fat and stigmatising, ableist messages about health trigger damaging behaviours in people of all sizes and levels of physical health/ability.  As long as people are afraid of being fat or place moral obligation on health, they will be engaging in damaging and indeed unhealthy behaviours to avoid being fat or unhealthy.  It is a vicious cycle of direct cause and effect that we have to break for any progress to be made, and that needs to start with the very organisations who are in place to help break disordered behaviours.

What we need an entire cultural change around health and weight and I believe that eating disorder support organisations and groups need to be at the front of this cultural change, not being dragged along by those of us on the margins.  They have a responsibility to make effort to include and support those of us who are most vulnerable to stigma and bigotry, not marginalise us further.

Wait…

Just home from the UQ Women’s Collective Diversity Week event “Embracing our Bodies” and I wanted to share with you all the piece I did tonight. I had an amazing evening, some robust discussion and overall the event had a really positive and inclusive vibe to it. To those of you who attended and came up to speak to me, thank you all, it means a lot to me to be received positively in a world that generally tells me I am less than human because of the shape and size of my body.

I know it was of high emotion for some attendees, a couple of you came to speak to me and I’m really honoured, thank you so much for sharing yourselves with me so openly. Honestly, I was deeply moved by what I saw was courage for some of you.

Anyway, without any further ado, here is the piece I gave tonight. I hope it connects with you all and that you don’t feel so alone.

You are not alone.

Wait.

Wait until you lose weight. That’s what they say. When you lose weight, then you will get a great job, live in a nice house, wear cute clothes, travel the world, boys will like you, you’ll be happy.

I’d settle to be treated with respect. You know.

To be able to walk down the street without being called disgusting by a guy with his finger buried to the second knuckle up his nose.

To be able to eat in public without people sneering and calling me a fat pig while my thin date eats three times as much as me and still picks off my plate.

To sit on a bus without people clucking their tongues and clutching their pearls at the fatty who takes up too much space, while the dudebro on the seat opposite spreads his legs akimbo to showcase his enormous imaginary testicles.

To go to the doctor and be treated for whatever it is that made me go there in the first place, a sore throat, a sports injury, crippling menstrual pain, a lump in my breast… without being handed a diet and being told to wait.

Oh I’ve waited. I waited for 35 years.

I waited through diets and meal replacements.

I waited through grapefruit and cabbage soup and two days on/one day off fasting.

I waited through “appetite suppressants” that were legal amphetamines that made me not sleep or eat or even drink water for four days solid.

I waited through over 20 years of sticking my fingers down my throat and purging what little I allowed myself to eat.

I waited through stealing laxatives from chemists and supermarkets because they had all worked out my little scam of buying a few at a time in many locations so that they didn’t know what I was doing with them.

I waited through calorie counting and carb counting and fat counting and doing it lite and easy.

I waited through Weight Watchers.

I waited through months spent in gyms and public pools, pushing myself until I passed out or vomited or preferably both.

I waited through the walking. Walking for hours every day, in the morning, during lunch, of an evening. Walking until my feet bled and my knees gave out underneath me. Walking until I broke a pedometer that couldn’t count enough steps.

I waited through nutritionists and doctors and psychiatrists who read my food and exercise diaries and said “You must be lying, you need to tell the truth in these diaries.” I had lied. I put more food and less exercise on there than I had actually done, because I knew they wouldn’t believe me anyway.

I waited through decades of being told that I couldn’t possibly have an eating disorder because I was “obese”. Through countless blind eyes turned towards my restricting and purging and exercise mania, because what is considered disordered in thin people is considered a “lifestyle change” in fat people.

I’ve waited through losing my friends and almost losing my job because all I thought about or talked about night or day was “I must lose weight.”

I waited through chalky teeth and shitty metabolism and permanent damage to my intestines.

I waited through crippling depression and rock bottom self esteem and suicidal thoughts because I was never good enough unless I could lose the weight.

I’ve waited long enough. I waited so long I forgot to live.

So I stopped waiting. I forgot about waiting and I embraced my weight. I stopped waiting for others to give me the respect I that is my human right and I gave it to myself. I wrapped my arms around my full, fat body, I embraced my prodigious belly, my thick thighs, my mountainous bosom, my chunky arms and all my glorious chins.

I got tattooed, I got a lover, I got a promotion, I got a passport, I found my voice, I got a life.

How long will you wait?

Embracing our Bodies – University of Queensland Women’s Collective Event

It’s short notice, but I just got this great poster for the event I’m speaking at on Tuesday night. If you’re in Brisbane, and you can make it… come along!

Embracing Our Bodies: A panel discussion and information session on eating disorders in Australia
Date: Tuesday 21st May, 2013
Time: 6pm
Location: UQ Student Union Complex Innes Room 2

Focusing on the Fabulousness

Folks, I am getting so excited about this zine.  I have had a few contributions submitted already, and I’ve written a couple of pieces myself, so it’s shaping up nicely.  Now don’t be shy, you can email me at fatheffalump at gmail dot com and for those of you who have already mailed me – send me your pieces!  I plan to put this all together while I am on leave (this coming Friday is my last day at work before holidays, woot!) and then have it ready to go out by the end of May/early June.

I am particularly looking for artwork (as I can’t even draw a stick figure!), and I particularly need a cover image.  Something that glorifies obesity all over the place!!  Send me your fatties!

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering a bit of activist fatigue at the moment.  I’m writing a couple of pieces (I’m participating in the University of Queensland Women’s Collective Diversity Week event on Tuesday and have another commissioned piece) which I am finding I have to work a lot harder at than I usually do.  Mostly because I’m really quite over being expected to justify our existence as human beings, and to explain why we “deserve” the right to live our lives in dignity and respect, without fear of vilification or ridicule.  I think I just need to keep reiterating the following:

1. Fat people are human beings.
2. ALL human beings have the right to live their lives in dignity and respect, without the fear of vilification or ridicule because of their bodies, health or appearance.

It’s really that simple, and I simply don’t understand why we keep having to argue this shit!

I’d like to focus much more on celebrating fat people.  I want to focus much more on appreciating who we are.  The richness of our lives.  Our diversity, our style, our talent, our passions, our creativity.  I want to get us out there into the world and let us see each other.  Not for the benefit of the haters, the doubters, the excuse-makers, but for US.  I want to see fabulous fat people like me represented everywhere.  And because I don’t see that everywhere, I’m going to have to be it myself, and maybe others will follow.

So here’s to fat visibility.  Here’s to prodigious bellies, voluminous bosoms, generous butts, thick thighs, round faces, multiple chins, luscious arms, chunky calves and bountiful backs.  Here’s to getting out there and being seen and seeing each other.

Make it a goal to smile warmly at other fatties you encounter in the world.  Signal boost fab fatties that you find online.  Reblog, share, and collate all the fab fatties you find online.  Tell a fatty they’re fabulous.  Believe me, we all need it from time to time, and it’s so much better to focus on that than the shitty attitudes that force us to continually justify our existence.

Now… share a fab fatty or three (in whatever format) with us in the comments.  Let’s link us all up!