Overcoming My Own Fatphobia
66% of women in the US were obese or overweight. as of 2017. Most of us are fat. Netflix, HULU, and Amazon prime are stocked with documentaries about food and the take over of fat people AKA the “obesity epidemic”. For some time, it seemed as if all of social media was under the spell of these documentaries and reality shows that share horrors of the food we eat and how to get rid of the fat that it gives. The Biggest Loser, What the Health, and Forks over Knives are just a few that point blame for fatness on the poisonous foods we eat at convenience and the lack of self-control preventing weight loss. The message is clear: “Love yourself when you are no longer fat”.
Fat people are treated as if they should not exist and are unable to contribute to society. Fat people exist in society but thin culture rarely sees a fat person outside of their size. They are told to fix the fat in order to be valued and acknowledgeable. The fat-positive movement (which is now the body positive movement) began in the 1960s when the obese population was not a large as today. The movement began by women who grew tired of judging their body through the gaze of men. This gaze says that women must be thin to be desired. However, this assumption is heteronormative, sexist, and patriarchal. Men as judge and jury over the trial of a woman’s physical body is what led fat women to totally reclaim their bodies.
I am a fat woman who struggles with being fat and has a clear case of fatphobia. Unfortunately, I have seen fat as something to escape. I am fat. Although someone larger than me may look at me and think otherwise, I know the truth. I am overweight and obese according to my BMI. I realized my fear of fat and being fat in 2017. I made an episode about it. (See here) My childhood was filled with sporadic diets, workout classes, and searching for ways to get rid of “the fat”.
I am still struggling with my own fatphobia. Being fat has always been the monster I have been running from my whole life. I’ve gained and lost 20–40lbs times every 3 years since high school.
The journey to working through my fatphobia has been the rejection of the idea that my body is a problem for anyone. Simply because it is mine. Social media has been the greatest ally in my journey. Most of us run through a comparison tunnel on social media. Instagram models, skinny tea, and waist trainers are saturated on the timelines. I follow accounts that do not trigger the fatphobic voice in my head. I have flocked to leaders in the body positive movement.
The accounts of Sonya Renee Taylor, Thadeus Coates, Shes All Fat Podcast, and Leah Vernon. Although we are constantly receiving messages, we can modify what messages we receive. I have learned to immediately unfollow anyone’s account who triggers me into self-hate or deters me from body acceptance.
