Maybe I should have thought for a while before dedicating myself to the "-tacular" schtick.
I realised in my last post, which talks about the supposed threat fat people have on nationwide health care systems like the British NHS, that some of my arguments might fly over many people's heads.
The reason for this is simple. Obesity, as it is known and portrayed in society, is viewed as an enormous, catastrophic health epidemic. You've heard all the taglines before: "Kids will die sooner than their parents!" "One in three women in *insertcountryhere* is overweight!" "Obesity is the leading cause of heart problems!" "Obesity causes impotence!" "Obesity causes most common cancers!" "Obese individuals are biologically twenty years older than their thin counterparts!" etc etc.
These were the sorts of taglines I used to sticky-tape to my walls and paste in my Everything books to try and get my arse into gear and lose weight. Everybody around me has been telling me to lose weight since I was seven. When I was three I apparently had to lose weight too. I... don't know. Too much fruit juice or some malarkey like that. This was a curious thing indeed. And I certainly didn't get it. I was a kid. A kid that liked food. Mum took some time a month or so ago to assure me, quite categorically, that my being overweight was totally my fault. Well no, that's harsh. The conversation went something like this:
Me: You know how I was pretty overweight since I was three?
Mum: Hmm, well, it was more like when you were seven.
Me: Oh, OK, seven then. Well, I tended to eat pretty healthily back then, right? I mean, I ate what I was given.
Mum: Mostly, but you used to sneak food. And you were never interested in doing exercise. I used to try and get you into dancing, but you were never really into that back then.
Me: Huh...
I'm definitely overreacting. Definitely. The thought that occurs to me, though, is: Why did I used to sneak food? I know why I "never used to exercise" (not true. I ran around and stuff), but why I used to sneak food... hmm. Could it have been because I was, I dunno, HUNGRY?
Anyway, yeah, so I was told to lose weight from when I was seven. I was rewarded for losing weight, scolded for gaining it, forced to watch what I ate from when I was a very young age and wanted to be allowed to eat a packet of chips like all the other kids but was instead stuck with an apple (and let me assure you in no uncertain terms that I fucking HATE apples)... it's no wonder I rebelled. It's no wonder I still rebel, even though my eating is mostly my business and mine alone, now. And for most of my life I figured that was how it should be. I was fat, after all. I was in severe danger of dying far younger than anybody else I knew, and didn't I know that being fat was the most unhealthy thing in the whole entire world?
When I allow myself to think back to my childhood, to all the crying, all the guilt and the shame associated with eating a mars bar, and of my proclamations that "it was UNFAIR!" and "WHY couldn't I be THIN like all the OTHER kids?", to my tiny little pathetic world that was always, always, CONSTANTLY about me needing to exercise and not "needing" to eat and all of that crap while everybody else got to be free from it all, it upsets me, angers me, and hurts me even more, to know that all of that bullshit was for nothing. Because the correlation between obesity and health is total bullshit.
That's right. You heard me. Total bullshit. And the amazing thing is that most people in the world are not privy to the information that they really, REALLY need to know about obesity.
A lot of us are taught as children that people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, flavours (at my school, we had to lick all of our classmates to confirm this one. The Indian kids tasted like curry ;)), etc. What I think a lot of people don't quite understand is how broad the term "shapes and sizes" really is. We accept and acknowledge that people come in all shapes and sizes, but as soon as we see either an exceptionally thin person, or an incredibly fat person, we automatically feel that that person must be that way through some freakish behaviour on that person's part. So the thin person eats nothing at all and the fat person is taking a toilet break from quaffing pints of lard. And you know what? Sometimes that's true. But sometimes it's the thin person that's quaffing the lard and the fat person who's eating nothing at all. And for most, there's a happy medium. I think teaching people that we come in all shapes and sizes is great, but it requires a certain amount of follow-up as well. How are people supposed to believe that people come in all shapes and sizes, when only a pretty pathetically small range of those sizes is considered "normal" and "natural"?
Another important thing to realise is the difference between "obesity" and "not looking after yourself". I admit that my diet is not very good. I'm trying to work on it, but my love of junk food and my ED and my general laziness make it hard. That's not an excuse, but I'm laying it out there. I was raised by a mother who felt that "healthy" meant "artificially-sweetened low-fat high-sugar chemically-processed bullshit food that tastes like crap but has less of something in it". She had (and still has) really warped ideas about what constitutes as healthy food. I was raised with that, people! I am also a genuine lover of the food you get at fast-food places. hamburgers are fantastic. I love pizza, I love fried chicken, I love hot chips... and I'm not shy about that love. So what I've started trying to do is to make my own versions of these foods. This is pretty hard in a country where I don't have an oven or deep fryer to work with, but I'm sure you can appreciate the sentiment. I also don't exercise much. Not at the moment anyway.
But other fats aren't like me. Other fats do eat well. Other fats do exercise, lots, and really enjoy it. In fact, more of them would enjoy it if they could bear the idea of people looking at them and laughing at them for working up a sweat, even though thin people work up a sweat too. They just look prettier working up a sweat, I guess. *shrug* And you know which fats are much more likely to exercise for long periods of time? The fats who have accepted that they are fat, and while not necessarily being cool with being fat are at least able to accept that that is all they'll ever be, and they might as well be healthy because lord knows they ain't ever going to be thin. When you remove that sort of "must be thin must be thin must be thin" pressure from yourself, the exciting world of exercise really opens its doors to you. It's fun! It's good for you! It makes you feel amazing! etc etc etc.
I think it is time for the world to stop focusing on fatness, and start focusing on health. The two are not the same, and more people need to see that.
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