Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls (5 page)

Now, because honesty is important to me, I try to share all of my raw and real moments on my blog. Obviously, I don't have a video camera with a constant live feed, so there are always parts of my life that are not written about or covered (I also appreciate an element of privacy, albeit a small one). But I share both the fun and the hard stuff. I attempt to write candidly and with vulnerability, because, y'know what? We all need a little bit more of that in our lives. We live in a made-over world that's groomed and preened, and so often we look outside and say . . . man, I wish I had my shit together, too. But the reality is nobody has all their shit together, not in every area of their life—not in
most
areas of
their lives. So when you share the shit you
don't
have together? People relate. They connect. And all of a sudden, they don't feel so alone.

Social scientist Brené Brown often lectures and writes about vulnerability and our critical need for it if we are to make any kind of progress. In her book
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are,
she says, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.”
²
Opening ourselves up and being willing to look at the hard stuff in life makes space for change, and learning how to
welcome
vulnerability? That's where everything good starts.

So work with me on this.

I'm here to share with you what I have learned, and hopefully you'll find ways to apply it in your life. It may not be easy to read and take to heart (though it's not all hard either), but all of it's important. So, if you're committed to taking this body love journey with me through the next two hundred pages, I'm gonna suggest that you open yourself up to being vulnerable. Vulnerable in the sense that you are going to set down your defense weapons and lower your walls. That you're going to forget what you've been told just for a moment and be open to new ideas. That you're going to look deep inside even when it's scary and acknowledge that
maybe
you don't have all your shit together. That you're going to use your critical mind and explore how this may apply to you. Vulnerable in the sense that you are open to the idea that no one is perfect, you're not alone, and maybe, just maybe, if you open your heart a little bit you can start to love yourself. The hardest things in life are mended with vulnerability.

And of course, it's best to make that commitment to be vulnerable and start the journey to loving yourself . . .

NOW.

guest essay
guest essay

LIVING THE DREAM AT 250 POUNDS OR “WHY DIET CULTURE IS FULL OF SHIT AND CAN SUCK MY LADY DICK”

VIRGIE TOVAR OF #LOSEHATENOTWEIGHT

I
have a
major
fucking problem with diet culture. I can give you my technical, academic definition of “diet culture,” but let's skip that for now. Diet culture is the voice in your head that tells you not to eat that cookie with an urgency that feels life-threatening. It's the reason you shared that piece of cheesecake with not one, but four of your closest friends—and why you guys
still
left the last bite. It's why grown women lie on the fitting room floor with bloodied finger tips attempting to zip up a pair of jeans. Diet culture is the reason weight loss is at the top of everyone's New Year's resolutions lists. Everyone hates dieting, but we still feel this thrill when we eat a carrot or get our dressing on the side. And even though we pay our bills, own cars, hold jobs, have children, and manage relationships, every day we allow diet culture to treat us like we're five-year-olds who can't make decisions about when or how much to eat.

That thrill is no accident. That shame is no accident. We've learned to feel these things through a sophisticated system of rewards and punishments. Some call it oppression. Some call it conditioning. Some might even call it Stockholm Syndrome. Let's just call it bullshit for short. And that's really where my problem resides: that bullshit begets bullshit. That's what diet culture is and always will be. Diet culture is bigger than any one individual diet or dieter; it pervades almost
every facet of our lives. I urge you to try and imagine going one single, solitary day without hearing someone talk about weight loss or calories or fucking
gluten
. Can you do it? I can't. And I live in a feminist bubble in the middle of San Francisco! That's how you know something is a culture—when it's unavoidable and you've stopped knowing or even caring about why there are rules, but you follow them anyway.

I used to follow these rules, chasing every diet trend, calorically restricting to the point of making myself ill, and feeling that blissed-out joy when I lost a pound. For a long, long time I wanted to lose weight more than I wanted
anything
else, and I believed life would begin later. I would wear a bikini later. I would be happy later. I would fall in love, wear cute clothes, feel beautiful, wear red lipstick, travel, enjoy cake, smile in pictures—later. Then one day I had a major breakthrough. I was sitting at my kitchen table, feeling really good about myself because I just done this intense workout. I was panting and sweating profusely, and I was dreaming about the day when I would be thin enough to eat dessert. So I asked myself:
How much longer until I can eat some damn cake
?

A year? No.

Five years? No.

Ten years? No.

I kept going like that in my head until I reached the end of my life, and I realized that was the answer. The dieting might never end, because if I stopped I could gain weight, and in my mind that would have meant I had lost. That would have meant my life was worthless. I truly believed that being thin was the most important thing I could ever achieve. I believed that once I became thin my world would change, that everything would make sense, and that I would literally be perfect. This is called “magical thinking,” and the suspension of disbelief is the engine upon which diet culture runs.

Dieting was many things to me: It was often difficult and soul draining, but it also made me feel good and, somehow, safe. I realize now dieting was my way of communicating to myself and others
that I wanted to be “normal.” Dieting was my way of communicating my understanding that my fat body was unacceptable and shameful. It was my way of communicating that I understood a woman's role is to be small and totally obsessed with how little space and resources she could take up. Dieting represented a way I could create meaning in my life, but the problem is you can't create meaning by obsessing about kale or calories or what the tag on your pants says.

Dieting is about forever placing our eyes on a future where our goal is to be someone we are not, and never living now. Dieting is about obedience and submission—to a rule that says you are worth nothing more than the number on your scale. Dieting limits our lives. In the rules of dieting lives the centuries-old legacy of the second-class citizenship of women. These are the same rules that have kept women from achieving amazing things for too long. The truth is that a woman who is singularly obsessed with how she looks
will never be an independent woman.

We deserve more than that. You deserve more than that.

And that was the biggest realization I've ever had: that my body is mine, this life is mine, and no bullshit set of rules is going to take that from me. I no longer sweat at my kitchen table dreaming of cake and joy and love. Now I am a wearer of short skirts and red lipstick, an activist dedicated to eradicating diet culture, a lover of fine French and Italian pastries, a world traveler, the proud owner of seven two-piece bathing suits, a San Francisco bohemian who adores pedicures, cheetah print, and Chihuahuas, and couldn't live without huge accessories and huger sunglasses. At 250 pounds, I'm actually living the life I was convinced only dieting could give me. The thing is: Diets were
never
going to give me that life.

Only I could.

you hate your body because don draper told you to: throw some shade at history
you hate your body because don draper told you to: throw some shade at history

[ CHAPTER THREE ]
[ CHAPTER THREE ]

D
on't get too pissed at Don, though. It was really his predecessors who came up with the bullshit marketing plans that trained people to hate themselves, live restricted lives based on an impossible-to-attain ideal, and even, in some cases, kill themselves (literally) trying to reach it, or because they couldn't reach it. Don didn't come up with these ideals of beauty—he just perpetuated them.

Okay, actually, get pissed. Maybe even really pissed.

We're all aware that when it comes to physical appearance, our society is a fucking bully. But I always wanted to know
why
. Why is our structure this way? Why are fat people bullied, often to the point of suicide? And why are women singled out for body shame? Why have we all learned to hate ourselves?
How THE FUCK did we get here
?

After my own realization that even in this world I could learn to love myself as I am, I immersed myself in reading that supported this theory. Self-help books, women's issues books, feminist theory books, health books, and history books. Guess which kind of book was the catalyst for one of the most pivotal turning points in my journey? History books.
Motherfucking history books.
They changed everything.

I thrive on facts: They speak to me, I trust in them. Sure, the cheerful body love memes online can help a little on the self-love journey, but they aren't enough—for me, they're not a game changer, and are easily forgotten. I want something solid to prove why something is, so I can use that information to better my life. Only then do things start to shift for me. Oh, you too? GOOD, because I'm about to school you in a way you've never been schooled before.

Buckle up, bitches. I'm about to blow your mind.

This “why” comes from several moments in history, and to be honest . . . they're all a little complicated. There's nothing simple about civilization's sordid, oppressive, and money-driven past. It's also a very long story, so I'm just going to share the CliffsNotes version of several very large chunks of history, each of which we could probably talk about for days. The
reason
I'm sharing this with you is to give some insight into three significant questions about body image: (1) Why are women the ones we often talk about when it comes to body image? (2) Where does our “thin is always better” mentality came from and (3) Where did the perpetuation of the ideal body we see today start?

The first question can be answered by exploring the history of farming communities.

Part 1: Farming and the Development of Patriarchy

Historians believe that early human civilization was made up of nomadic hunter-gatherers and structured as an egalitarian society, with no chiefs or leaders. Women had their super specific roles: They
took care of the children, nurtured the community, and kept everyone connected. And men's priorities focused on awesome stuff like hunting and fertilization. Y'know. The fun chores.

It's said that because early humans had to move constantly for survival, it didn't make sense to have a food “stash” that would need to be guarded; the food they had on hand was only what they could carry. And because of all the travel, women were careful to have children only about every four years to ensure the youngest child was able to walk on their own with the group before another came along. This, as you can imagine, significantly limited family size.

The transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers was long and tenuous, according to many. No one woke up one day and said, “HEY, WE SHOULD DO THIS THING AND CALL IT FARMING!” It was fucking slow and messy progress. Farming wasn't discovered or invented; it evolved based on needs. Gradually, as farming was adopted more and more, the accumulation of food was possible, and with the accumulation of food came denser populations.

To put it simply: As humans had the opportunity to store food, they also had the opportunity to survive severe winters and other life-threatening situations. They could farm during the plentiful seasons and survive the harsh ones using the food they could now amass. And amass they did! As soon as food could be reserved and kept for future survival, the need to have
more
food for
longer
survival became paramount. And an acknowledgment of class distinction began: Those who had more would live longer, and were therefore more powerful. Those who had less were less powerful and had a lower chance of survival. This, in essence, is where class systems may have first come into play.

Because of the desire to climb to the top and the need to access resources to do so, some historians say that crops became of utmost importance, and
more
farmers were needed to generate more product. With this quest, then, women became the “farmer-making machines,” and therefore coveted property. Unlike during the hunter-gatherer
period, women could now have as many children as they could feed, which allowed for large families of future farmers to develop.

As female bodies turned into property, virginity became a desirable trait (it was essentially a promise that the woman hadn't “given” any farmers to someone else), and it's often said that this is how patriarchal rule was interwoven into the growing society. Women (property) were now at a distinct disadvantage, which is part of the reason we see the gender injustice that we do today. Because women were minimized then, they continue to be so today.
¹
That loss of power and influence is why, in part, marketing and advertising specifically targets women and their role in society. Now, know that this is historical conjecture, as hunter-gatherers and farmers didn't exactly hand over their diaries to us, but this theory is supported by many scholars and certainly warrants a few moments (or more) of consideration.

Part 2: The Slenderization for Class Distinction

In the early to mid-1800s the United States was in quite the predicament: Food was scarce, so people with larger bodies tended to be wealthier and had enough to eat. Because of that, they were thought to be healthier.

In her essay, “The Inner Corset: A Brief History of Fat in the United States,” Laura Fraser lets us in on the secret:

Once upon a time, a man with a thick gold watch swaying from a big, round paunch was the very picture of American prosperity and vigor. Accordingly . . . years ago, a beautiful woman had plump cheeks and arms, and she wore a . . . bustle to emphasize her full, substantial hips. Women were sexy if they were heavy. In those days, Americans knew that a layer of fat was a sign that you could afford to eat well and that you stood a better chance of fighting off infectious diseases than most people.
²

But that all changed very quickly.

In the late 1800s, advances in transportation made it easier to distribute food widely. With this came an influx of large groups of immigrant workers, many of whom had shorter, stockier bodies. The visibility of stockier bodies, combined with the food influx, meant that now most Americans were able to “fill out,” and the gap between the large wealthy bodies and the smaller poor bodies began to close. The
upper class
soon sought a way to differentiate themselves and reclaim their social power over the lower classes, and they did this partially by idealizing thinness. Adding to this, people romanticized the frail bodies of several European artists at the time who had tuberculosis, and soon Americans were grabbing onto the NEW ideal: slenderness as a form of class distinction.

No longer was it best to be fat: Thin bodies became all the rage, a sign of prosperity and style.

Previously, the medical field had warned of a link between thinness and certain disorders, and cautioned women against losing too much weight. Now, society's tune had changed: The fashionable figure was suddenly a slender one that seemed liberated and elite, and, even though at first doctors didn't endorse this obsession with thinness (in fact, they fought it), eventually they caved to societal pressure and the chance to make money by remedying patients. But disgust with fat bodies was created by the people, not doctors. People, and, well, the U.S. economy.

One former president of the American Academy of Medicine named Woods Hutchinson bemoaned this flighty shift in support of the skinny ideal. In a 1926 edition of the
Saturday Evening Post
he said, “Fashion has apparently the backing of grave physicians, of food reformers and physical trainers, and even of great insurance companies, all chanting in unison the new commandment of fashion: ‘Thou shalt be thin!'”
³

There are still countries where the fat woman or an “atypical” body is the traditional ideal, but we, the United States of America, are
most certainly not one of them. We are a country that obsesses about dieting and weight in a phenomenal way, and it's directly because of our history.

Laura Fraser clarifies: “Thinness is, at its heart, a peculiarly American preoccupation. Europeans admire slenderness, but without our Puritanism they have more relaxed and moderate attitudes about food, eating, and body size (the British are most like us in both being heavy and fixating on weight loss schemes).”

Reading homework?
The Fat Studies Reader
, edited by Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay.
⁴

Part 3: Perfection as an Economic Life Raft

We now live in a world where it is acceptable for women to vote, own land, make decisions about reproductive health, start a company, choose a single lifestyle, have copious amounts of sex, and run for prolific positions in government. But there is still one thing that is heavily contested by most communities, government, the medical field, and the media: women who have a body that lies outside our mandated thin, young, white, able bodied, and, consequently, “pretty” standard.

Beauty ideals have existed as long as patriarchy, and every generation has had to fight its own version (cold creams and cosmetics to imitate film stars popped up long before World War II and were sold to young ladies with money to spend), but there was a point in history when the standard of beauty became an insidious political weapon used to hinder the advancement of women no matter their age or status. This particular segment is directly related to World War II.