Can I Be A Fat Ally If I’m On A Diet?
Yesterday morning A Practical Wedding started a discussion about weight. I played in the comments, and we talked about privilege. I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege recently; I feel sometimes as though I lack some of the basic language and tenets I need in order to express myself appropriately. It is an interesting and humbling experience. (See also, this post from the Double R Diner on writing from a privileged perspective. See also, this post on the basics of privilege. See also, my inability to adequately explain that a privilege check is not a judgment; it is a reminder intended to further positive dialogue, and can be meant in a kind and helpful manner.)
Then, after I went out for lunch, I started trying to write a post about being a fat ally. (See also, an interesting conversation about the problematic nature of the term “ally.”) I put a shout-out on Twitter and got back some awesome results (complete list of links and references at the bottom of this post):
But last night, as I came back to the post and tried to find a way to finish it, I realized I was totally stumped. Because of this: The Tim Ferris Diet. Which I have been on for the past four weeks. I was stuck staring at a screen with a single sentence on it and a tiny, blinking, blank cursor below: Can I be a fat ally if I’m on a diet?
And it seems the answer, my personal answer, may be no. No, I cannot.
I could give you a lot of reasons why I have been on this diet. Like, I feel healthier. I have more energy. I don’t need as much caffeine to get me through the day. But the reality is those are sideline benefits, most of which are probably because I’m sleeping more. I have been on this diet because I wanted to be thinner than I am. Period. End of story.
(Because when I am thinner, oh you might ask, because when I am thinner I will be sexier/be better able to wear the clothes I want/be ready to dye my hair and get another tattoo/be more successful in my job/be more in line with what my lovers consider attractive/ be more loved.)
Finding myself in something of a literary corner, I clicked more links. I read the archives of blogs I have only followed in current form, thus far. And I ended up here.
Once you’ve really started believing in fat acceptance — as opposed to thinking it sounds nice for other people, but you still need to lose X lbs. before you’ll be acceptable — it can be hard to remember how you thought about these issues before (just as it can be hard to imagine what it would really be like to accept your fat body before you’ve done it).
Praise and adore the power of the Internet. Someone further along in their journey than me put into words exactly what I needed to hear, and then they put it online where I could find it.
So I have decided, “Fuck this bullshit.” I’m sick of diets that don’t work and I’m sick of feeling ashamed of myself when I’m on them, and more ashamed when I’m not. I’m sick of buying clothes that don’t fit and convincing myself they’ll fit once I’m thinner. (What the fuck? Am I a seamstress or not?) I’m sick of the reality that I still buy into cultural messaging that I believe to be damaging and wrong, as though it’s enough to acknowledge that it is damaging while ignoring that it is damaging me.
Of course it is not this simple; I cannot bop my body issues on the head with a magic wand and say “Begone!” I did not wake up this morning refreshed and fancy free of all possible troubles related to my body.
But I can make some active changes in the way I think about, talk about, and present my body, changes that have been brewing unconsciously for some time but have yet to be realized.
Like, spending the time I would typically use to worry about the “right” kind of food hunting down things to eat that are delicious.
Like, altering my problem clothing so that it fits better.
Like, photo blogging about fashion and what I wear on a daily basis, which I have never done because I am loathe to share pictures of myself so openly with the world.
Like, starting a newborn, shellacked and sparkle-eyed Tumblr to hold all of these new resolutions.
Like, reminding myself every day that I am of my own making, that my flaws are not intricately bound to my weight, and that I have control over my own narrative, lifestyle, appearance and dreams.
As I said, I did not wake up this morning refreshed and fancy free. But I did wake up with red hair.
P.S. Because Twitter has produced a ton of awesome links about the topic of fat acceptance and fat allies, here is a reference list for anyone who’s looking:
General
NOLOSE. “who we are.” Accessed April 4, 2011. http://www.nolose.org/about/who.php
Lesley Kinzel. “Two Whole Cakes.” Accessed April 6, 2011. http://blog.twowholecakes.com/
Kate Harding. “Kate Harding.” Accessed April 6, 2011. http://kateharding.info/
Marianne Kirby. “The Rotund.” Accessed April 5, 2011. http://www.therotund.com/
Specific
Erin Majestic Legay, December 2009, “FAT SOLIDARITY: THE BASICS,” INNER FAT GIRL. Accessed April 6, 2011. http://innerfatgirl.tumblr.com/post/1711026325
Tish, October 15, 2003, “The Thin Privilege Checklist,” fatshadow.com. http://www.fatshadow.com/October2003.htm#e412 (via Frances, http://heyfatchick.tumblr.com)
Shannon, April 5, 2011, “FA for not fat people and noobs.,” Nudemuse…daily nattering. http://blog.nudemuse.org/2011/04/fa-for-not-fat-people-and-noobs.html?zx=6d1b4cfe62eca705
Meems, April 5, 2011, “How to be a good FA ally,” The Inbetweenie. https://theinbetweenie.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/how-to-be-a-good-fa-ally/
For Elizabeth
The Chicago Manual of Style Online. “Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide.” http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
I love you too
Elizabeeeeth, come raise biblophibian sproglings with meee.
So I have decided, “Fuck this bullshit.” I’m sick of diets that don’t work and I’m sick of feeling ashamed of myself when I’m on them, and more ashamed when I’m not.
Oh, God, yes. I did the same thing a few years ago and, while I still don’t love my body every second of every day, I think I’m still much better for it, both mentally and physically.
If you’re interested, I have a suggested reading list on my blog – it’s not a static list, but it’s a good place to start reading about why diets don’t work for most people and what the health implications really are(if you haven’t already). Realizing that I’d been fed so much bullshit about my weight for so much of my life was a real eyeopener.
To be honest I’m already running into problems with this. “Do I eat this cookie? Do I want this cookie? I can’t tell! Ack!” I’m trying to stay neutral with myself at the moment and just see how things go.
I heart your blogroll. I intend to rip my way through it this weekend.
Relearning how to listen to your body is really hard – definitely not something I’ve totally gotten the hang of yet, either. Michelle Alison (http://fatnutritionist.com/) is amazing with stuff like that…but Health at Every Size is probably the best place to start. Linda Bacon has a website I should add to my links…
Thanks for the bounty of links. Like I mentioned on Twitter, I found you through your APW comments yesterday, and I think you are giving yourself too hard a time when you say “my inability to adequately explain that a privilege check is not a judgment; it is a reminder intended to further positive dialogue, and can be meant in a kind and helpful manner” because that is exactly what caught my attention!
Hey Robin! Thanks for visiting!
I am a big, big proponent of link love, so I try to make sure everything I write is full of tasty links. Next project: blogroll. I needs one.
Also thanks for throwing positive thoughts my way re: privilege checks. As someone highly privileged myself, I sometimes question my ability to talk openly about the privilege of others. (And that is my own thing, and I am dealing with it.) I have been trying to live a more aware life in general, and to take some steps toward being brave enough to mention privilege when it becomes a factor in conversations around me. (Hard!)
I had to check out of the APW conversation, mostly because the comments thread got a little too intense for me to follow while I was at work. But there’s definitely a part of me that thinks I could have said something better, something that would have made it even more clear…
Ah well. It is over, and out in the world.
Hey Sara,
I followed you over here from APW, too, and I just want to ditto Robin. I think you articulate the privilege check quite well and without judgment (the hardest part of bringing up or calling privilege!). Sadly, not everyone can hear a privilege call-out, and that has nothing to do with a lack of articulation.
Thanks for speaking up over there. One of these times it’ll sink in!
~E
Thanks for the cheer, El
.
I have to be honest that it’s maybe not the best approach for me to think it’ll eventually “sink in.” Because that feels a little like judgment; i.e. why don’t you get it already, jeez? That feels counterproductive to the idea of making a privilege check a non-shameful tool within a dialogue.
Unfortunately I don’t have a better alternative to offer. I will reiterate that I think the APW community / lead ladies are fabulous, and are having some really intelligent conversations about very, very difficult stuff.
I do think that that what is meant by “sink in” is that it requires some time for new terms and ideas to become second nature. Like it takes a while for learning how to knit to sink in.
Also the “sink in” thing thing represents that there is a huge difference between what one intellectually understands and what one understands emotionally/subconsciously. It takes a while to get from the head to the heart.
Well said, Suz
.
I really appreciated your comments about privilege. My honest gut response to the post and much of the commenting that followed was as follows: “wow this kinda feels like when you’re trying to explain racism to a white person and they get defensive and try to explain (politely and intelligently) that actually they know exactly how you feel because they once got called a white bitch by a homeless person.” When you related the discussion to the privilige of being the culturally accepted weight range, wow, ding ding ding for me! thanks
Sort of tangentially related to the idea of drawing parallels between experiences: in the process of researching and reading on this post, I found something I read ages ago that it was good to revisit and think about:
http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/accepting-kyriarchy-not-apologies.html
Maybe you’re read it, maybe you haven’t, but posting it feeds my link love. You know, in case anyone is looking for more reading.
Yes!! I had this same thought!
I really enjoyed your post. That said, I’m tripping over “fat ally”. I think you are a little too, so this is probably OK. What I find problematic is the idea that fatness is a thing which can or must be allied with (or against, I suppose) and as much noise there is out there about weight I think that responding to it by allying in support of … fat people, I suppose is what you mean, the result is contribution to a binary which then fails to serve anyone. You’re still talking about people in terms of their weight relative to a perceived norm.
But, also, congratulations on taking steps toward becoming more comfortable in your skin. May you find it a happy place to be.
Hey Kate!
I am definitely tripping over the term “fat ally,” which in retrospect was not really what I was trying to say. A lot of my reading and experience with people who are comfortable in their bodies (regardless of size) involves the unshameful use of the word “fat.” That may have been where I started with this. A more accurate term might have been “FA Ally,” which you’ll see is the language Meems and Shannon both used in the posts I’ve linked above. Even that is tough…body acceptance ally?
This comment is actually a tiny microcosm of the thought process I was going through when I wrote this post; a lot of the reason I decided it wasn’t working for me (and required more reading) was because of problems with the term itself. But I didn’t capture that above, so deep, deep appreciation for pointing it out here.
Hi Kate – I also want to agree with you that it’s not a binary between fat and not fat. There’s a lot of gray area in between and there are a lot of different ways people might define fat, like BMI (which is pretty much bullshit), physical appearance, or clothing size. They’re all subjective and none of this precludes thinner people from being body policed.
The first thing I talk about in the post Sara linked to is thin privilege – basically all people are body policed, but those who have decreasing thin privilege, especially women, are particularly discriminated against. That’s where being an ally comes in, I think. On it’s most basic level, it’s about treating fat people with the same respect and decency you’d treat everyone else, while being aware of how our culture treats anyone who is noticeably larger than the acceptable norm.
Of course, but don’t you ever get the feeling that focusing on any one particularity about people- age, weight, color, gender, what have you, that we end up distracted by one or another debate over that particular thing’s politics, instead of just blasting the “treat other people with respect and decency, period” message?
While I type that, though, I’m reminded that Rome wasn’t built in a day and though I may try to treat others as I would like to be treated, that I can’t really expect my behavior to cause anyone else to. Silly me for being a lazy radical.
Still. Division is how we lose power.
Hey Kate,
Blasting the message of “treat one another with respect and dignity” is, I would think, at the core of every conversation of this nature. Of course! And I feel like you do; Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re honestly not there yet. And even if some of us are there as individuals, we definitely aren’t there as a culture.
I think conversations about one particular kind of politics are valuable (so long as they’re done in a manner that’s respectful and aware of other issues) because otherwise, how would we learn? One of the things I like about Shannon’s post, linked above, is that she lays out a sort of continuum of ally action, in which respect and dignity are the baseline.
Another thing I’m finding (Kate, not in regards to you, but to other experiences of mine over the past few days (mostly, surprisingly, in one-on-one conversations with friends and loved ones)) is that the confident declaration “we treat everyone’s personal experience with respect and dignity” can be a way of being uncritical of broader trends.
Ex: “My uncle died because he was fat and he had health problems.” “I’m really sorry your uncle died, but that doesn’t mean all fat people are unhealthy.” “No, you don’t understand. He died. It was terrible.” To be honest, these kinds of narratives totally stump me; I’m still trying to figure out what to say next.
P.S. All, I have no idea why your comments aren’t approved after I’ve already moderated one of them – sorry about that. I’m trying to figure it out.
Unfortunately, I think the reality is that, as much as I agree that “everyone should be treated equally” is a wonderful message, we live in a culture that creates the division for us. Some people are fat, and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s treated as such by so many people that it very often feels like it is. Something FA offers is a safe space – refuge from a constant barrage of messages telling us that fat is wrong and ugly and unhealthy and lazy, etc.
I think Sara makes a lot of good points and I particularly agree that conversations about identity politics can be very useful, because they are an opportunity for learning and better understanding.
Fat in particular is deeply personal to many people and I think it can be difficult to separate personal experience (like the example Sara gives) from the broader reality without actually diving into the personal experiences of a broader cross section of the group in question.
Love the post and how you really go the extra mile when thinking through such issues/discussions and presenting them!
& lots of awesome linking.
Also wanted to say your tumblr is looking great (i don’t know how to work tumblr so i’m commenting here, sorry if it’s out of place). Finally, have you ever tried salmon and avocado on crumpets (with a bit of lemon juice and salt&pepper)? it’s amazing.
Hey Liz!
I heart Tumblr. I was very skeptical at first, but I appreciate having a dedicated place in the Internet to put things that I find essentially don’t “fit” here or on Twitter.
I have not tried your crumpet idea, but it sounds stunning. I will be hard-pressed to purchase crumpets from my corner store, but I promise to try and track something down and report back.
Now that I’ve had a look at a few Tumblr pages it makes more sense. I’d only seen the single images that people link to before, not actually looked at a full page of images/stuff.
Hmm, I forgot crumpets were more of an English/Commonwealth thing… did you try them in Oz? I’m from NZ and we can even get toasters that have a ‘crumpet setting’ (toasts more on one side than the other, otherwise the bottoms get burnt!).
Now I’m hungry
First of all, this is an excellent post and an incredible site.
Secondly, isn’t the idea of a “fat ally” just promoting the idea that there is a difference between being fat, and not? I am certainly an outsider on this topic, so I apologize if this comes across as insensitive but I’d think if you’re going to push aside quantitative measures (like BMI, etc) then everything is relative – you’re only as “fat” as you allow others to make you feel.
So I reject the idea of being a fat ally; there is no reason to draw a distinction other than to call even more attention to a subject that only seems to make people unhappy. Perhaps there is value in consciousness-raising for the general population but if that’s the primary objective, aren’t ad campaigns (like Dove’s, designed to show that fat can be beautiful)generally more effective?
Hey E,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m really glad you like what you’ve found.
I think, in response to your comment, I might point you toward my conversation with Kate and Meems, threaded in the comments above. I did, actually struggle with the term fat ally, and I think that “fat acceptance ally” is a better, if still imperfect, idea. I’d welcome more language discussion. More words are good!
That said, I would strongly disagree that this is a subject that shouldn’t have attention drawn to it. If it consistently “makes people unhappy”, that is a problem. We should call attention.
I would also disagree that the distinction between “fat” and “not fat” is without value; while it’s certainly not a binary and has huge shades of grey, the reality is that the distinctions do exist in our/(my) culture. (Reference: the thin privilege checklist, linked above.) Also, that while the definition of being a “fat person” is very grey, “fat” as a concept is culturally synonymous with shameful and wrong. Even your comment implies this (I don’t mean intentionally), by saying “you’re only as fat as you allow others to make you feel.” Some people are fat. It just is. It’s not wrong. The stigma needs to be broken down, not ignored or buried.
I love the Dove campaign, but it’s still a very narrow representation of body types. Have you seen The Adipositivity Project? http://adipositivity.phototage.com/