What's Wrong With Fat? (12 page)

Similarly, among the elite Nigerian Arabs, studied by anthropologist Rebecca Popenoe, the fat women are considered sexy precisely because their fat differentiates them from men who, in this society, are thin.
Popenoe explains: “Women and men are considered by Nigerian Arabs to be very different types of creatures, and their bodies should reflect this in fleshy, immobile femininity and hard, upright masculinity. A thin woman is considered “like a man” just as rounder men are considered slightly feminine. Women can actively abet the gender difference intended by God by making their bodies as different from men’s as possible, i.e., by getting fat.” 122 Thus, the fatter Nigerian Arab women get, the more feminine and desirable they become. A woman’s fat is highly symbolic.
Specifically, among the Nigerian Arabs studied by Popenoe, a woman’s achievement of weighty immobility signals her father’s or husband’s wealth, enabling her enough food to become fat in the first place and dispensing her from the need to work. “When women drink the milk from men’s animals and eat the grain men buy with their earnings from trade, they become potent symbols of their menfolk’s success, transforming the goods men produce into desirability,” Popenoe writes. “Women’s bodies thus constitute a convenient and symbolically potent place for men to invest their earnings.” 123

In some places, such as in rural settings in modern Britain and Malaysia where body fat signals wealth and prosperity, heavier men are also considered especially attractive. 124 In the contemporary United States, a few “female fat admirers,” or FFAs, affirm their attraction for fat men. One self-identified female fat admirer emphasizes how fat men are more manly than thin men, by assimilating male slenderness with a “fatless, hairless, allure-free aesthetic” that is decidedly “effeminate.” 125 Thin men, she argues, are more vain and, by extension, more feminine than fat men. “I would not want to spend time with someone who invests more in beauty products than I do,” she writes. 126 Their size also exudes power. Echoing FAs’ discussions of women as naturally fat, she writes about how the alpha males among “our distant cousin the gorilla” are “often twice the size of the female” and how “his girth and bulk (and glistening grey hair) all play a part in attracting females, but also in fighting off smaller and younger (read slimmer) males from whisking away one of his harem.” 127 Gross similarly AQ 2 finds in her study of rap culture that, for men, “in the aesthetic of fat rappers, body size is also equated with power, both as strength and as sexual prowess,” noting that fat rappers declare that their penises grow in proportion to their bodies,” with Big Pun rapping that “you couldn’t measure my dick with six rulers.” 128

The big men’s and bear movements have affirmed the (homo)sexual desirability of fat men
.
129 An author of a 1995 essay in
BulkMale
thus writes about big men as the epitome of manhood, as “powerful, sexy, virile, and an icon of our masculine identity worthy of our adoration.” 130 Fat men’s bodies were especially desirable during the height of the AIDS outbreak, as, in this context, “thin equaled sick or dying from AIDS, while fat equaled healthy, uninfected.” 131

As is shown in figure 2.1, the people and groups promoting a beauty frame in the contemporary U.S. context, including NAAFA,
BBW
Magazine
, the Padded Lilies, and
BulkMale,
have considerably less economic and cultural capital than do powerful groups, like the IOTF or CDC, who are promoting a public health crisis frame. This diminishes the likelihood that this frame will be heard among competing arguments.
There have been some visible efforts on the part of powerful advertisers to expand notions of beauty to include women who are heavier than the extremely thin mainstream models. Most notably, in 2004, Dove, a subsidiary of Unilever and the largest skin-care brand in the world, launched a multimillion dollar worldwide marketing campaign labeled the “Dove campaign for real beauty,” which included advertisements, videos, and workshops ( see image 2.3 ). 132 The campaign featured women who represented a broader range of body sizes than is typically seen in advertisements. The women of varying ethnicities posing in white underwear and bras, as part of an advertisement for Dove’s firming cream, were not professional models. The campaign slogan “real women have curves” communicated an effort to off-set representations of female beauty as extremely thin.

Unlike fat acceptance groups and publications, Dove could use its considerable economic resources to hire some of the most powerful advertising research and public relations firms in the world, including Ogilvy and Mather, the Downing Street Group, and others, in conjunction with creative teams within Unilever and Dove. 133 Yet, its message—that average-size, rather than extremely fat, women can be beautiful—was more conservative than that advanced by fat acceptance and fat admirer groups. In many ways, these women, who appear to be in their twenties and thirties with flawless skin and straight white teeth, reinsert—rather than challenge—conventional beauty. And yet, because they are not emaciated, this campaign has been called “revolutionary” by at least one commentator. 134

Image 2.3:
Dove campaign for “Real Beauty”

This campaign also demonstrates the extent to which fat is a shifting reference. Whereas, the women featured in the Dove advertisement would not be considered fat in most social contexts, they can be read as such in the contemporary Western context in which all but the most emaciated bodies risk being labeled “fat.” Thus “Andy,” played by Anne Hathaway, is portrayed as “fat” in the 2006 film
The Devil Wears Prada
because she wears a size 6 and not a size 0 as is expected in the fashion world.

By affirming that fat is beautiful, the fat as beauty frame reinforces the importance of beauty for social acceptance and human dignity. It does not challenge the idea that people, and especially women, are only seen as valuable if they are beautiful.

THE FAT RIGHTS FRAME

Rather than health or beauty, equal rights are at the heart of the fat rights frame. According to the fat rights frame, anti-fat bias and weight-based discrimination in employment, public spaces, and health care are the real problems that we need to oppose. The fat rights frame equates fat with other identity categories that receive some federal or state legal protection, including race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Indeed, viewed from this perspective, in which fatness is a form of identity, efforts to make fat people thin are analogous to efforts, via conversion therapy and the ex-gay movement, to make gays straight. 135 Some even compare the anti-obesity crusade to eugenics or ethnic cleansing. 136 From this standpoint, medical weight loss is objectionable not only because it is largely ineffective and often harmful, but also on moral grounds.

The fat rights movement has been the most visible advocate of this position. Just as the Black Power and civil rights movements reappropriated the word
black
and the gay movement reclaimed
queer
,
so the fat rights movement has reclaimed the word
fat
.
In 1969, when Fabrey founded NAAFA, he intentionally chose the moniker to echo the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). 137 In addition to providing a social outlet, NAAFA also serves as a national legal clearinghouse for attorneys challenging size discrimination and offers self-empowerment via workshops and support groups during the annual national convention and local chapter meetings. The Council on Size and Weight Discrimination focuses exclusively on political activism, serving as a consumer advocate for fat people, especially in the areas of medical treatment, job discrimination, and media images. Following the tradition of civil rights, women’s movements, and queer politics, fat acceptance activists have developed a critique of the personal as political, framing fatness as a significant component of self-identification and a basis for social and political mobilization.

While feminists have traditionally been somewhat marginalized in NAAFA itself, they have played a central role in the larger movement. In the early 1970, feminists founded NAAFA’s Fat Feminist Caucus and several independent groups, including the Feminist Underground (FU). 138 For eleven years in the 1970s and early 1980s, FU members critiqued fat oppression through a feminist lens, wrote manifestos and position papers, and interrupted free introductory sessions of weight-loss companies. 139
For instance, in an essay entitled “Fat Women and Women’s Fear of Fat,” FU members Lynn Mabel-Louis (aka Lynn McAfee) and Aldebaran (aka Summer-Vivian Mayer) wrote that “in the position of fat women is shown the true position of woman in our society. Without the pretense of chivalry—for fat women are presumed not to deserve it—women have nothing but scorn.” They continue: “Fear of fat is a means of social control used against all women. The current ideal woman’s body is so thin that many women with quite average figures consider themselves to be too fat. A woman is warned that if she ‘let’s herself go,’ her husband will leave her, she will have no lovers, and she will be miserable.” 140

In 1988, a member of the NAAFA Research Committee and the National Organization for Women (NOW) jointly founded the Body Image Task Force (BITF) to promote “consciousness raising on the issues of “lookism” and “fatphobia” and their connection to other forms of prejudice, especially sexism.” 141 NOLOSE (National Organization for Lesbians of SizE) links fat acceptance to other social justice issues: “Fighting fat phobia is seen as integrally linked to other social justice issues such as the women’s movement, antiracist and anti-imperialist struggles of people of color at home and around the world, queer and transgender movements, class struggle, disability rights movements and more.” 142 NOLOSE’s website announces that the volunteer-run organization is “dedicated to ending the oppression of fat people and [also] creating vibrant fat queer culture.” 143 In the early 2000s, British fat activist and author of
Fat and Proud
Charlotte Cooper started the Chubsters, a mostly online group, as “an international […] fat and queer girl gang.” 144 Taking inspiration from queer and punk cultural practices, the Chubster website mixes fantasy and reality in an effort to open up imaginative activist possibilities. In an essay, Cooper explains that “as queers it’s likely that we are a little bit more advanced [in] that we are better able to reject homophobia, or question assimilation.” 145

While big men’s and bear movements have reclaimed (male) fatness as sexually desirable, they have not politicized this to the extent that lesbian fat groups have. 146 That is, they have remained within a fat as beauty (and sexy) frame and have not developed a fat rights frame. Fat heterosexual men are also a small minority within the fat rights movement. This may be related to the historic and continued emphasis on dating between fat women and FAs at the largest fat rights association, NAAFA, and may also reflect that men suffer less documented weight-based discrimination than women. 147 Similarly, the historically relatively low representation of black women (and men) in fat acceptance groups may stem from an overall de-emphasis on thinness among African Americans, and/or the existence of racism as a more pressing concern for this population. That said, there are some notable exceptions and some evidence that this is changing. 148 In popular culture, African American model Tyra Banks has been a visible proponent of fat acceptance, and African American comedian Erica Watson’s one-woman show “Fat Bitch” expresses her anger at how people put her “in a box” based on negative stereotypes of black, fat women. The fact that members of fat acceptance organizations tend to be middle-class women in the heaviest 1 to 2 percent of the population is reflected in the associations’ key concerns, including making seat belt extenders mandatory in cars, finding solutions for people too big to fit in one airline seat, and making available MRI machines that accommodate people who weigh more than 350 pounds. 149

While the fat acceptance movement rejects the idea that fatness per se is a disease, it advocates for fat people’s right to access respectful medical care. 150 In addition to demanding larger MRI machines, this movement calls for hospital gowns and other medical equipment that fit fat bodies.
They thereby build on the claim of the disability movement that disability is created by environmental factors that do not take into account the needs and rights of different kinds of bodies. 151 Fat rights activists demand health care professionals who treat fat patients with respect and do not assume that whatever health problems they have are due to their weight or that weight loss is the solution for whatever ails them.

Some fat acceptance activists condemn social barriers to fat women’s (and men’s) access to physical activity and other health-promoting behaviors. Thus, in 1988, Pat Lyons and Deb Burgard coauthored a fitness book specifically designed for large women. Both are fat acceptance activists.
Lyons is a registered nurse and holds an MA in psychology. Burgard has a PhD in psychology and counsels people with eating disorders. In their book, they examine barriers to physical activity for large women, including how clothing and gear that fits bigger bodies is hard to find and expensive, how activities are paced for lighter bodies, and the fear of public ridicule or hostility. While rejecting the idea that fat women are morally obligated to exercise, they assert their
right
to pleasurable and safe physical activity. 152
Similarly, in an interview with me, Marilyn Wann talks about staking a claim to being able to participate in health-promoting “activities that are coded as having thin people as participants.” She says she likes to “order the vegetarian entree in a restaurant because I like that kind of food [and to] do yoga and talk about how great it makes me feel in my body with the same ga-ga enthusiasm that thin women use talking about yoga.”