The Bigger Person

A Facebook friend of mine posted a line yesterday. She's very much against what's known as "body-shaming" - the notion that it's ok, indeed even positive, to make people obsessed or depressed about their physical size or shape, because it spurs them to take action about it. She posted the line as a kind of quote, a kind of justification from those who do this sort of thing, mainly to see the multiple reactions of her friends. She has cool friends, who don't do the body-hating thing. I'm one of them, obviously, so clearly this is not a response directly to my friend, who's cool, but to those who speak the line she posted in all seriousnes. The line was this:

"But how will they know they're fat if I don't tell them?"

This kills me. How would we know? Because it's not as if there are any hints in the media that there's a cultural norm to which we must aspire. Not as if clothes shops don't actively discourage us from feeling comfortable in our own skin, or indeed in any trendy clothes - not as if in fact they don't act against their own economic interests by purposefully not making the cool clothes available to us, in case our lack of cool leaves grease stains on their brand. Not as if the concept of sexiness, and the concept of cool, aren't personified everywhere as being entirely Other than us, and not as if when we attempt to stamp our personality on, say, the dating scene, we aren't rebuffed by those who have, like us, been inculcated into the certain knowledge of these realities - fat is not sexy, fat is not cool, fat is not normal, or stylish, or somehow even skilled.

We know all this with the certainty of the age in which we live. And if, somehow, we manage to ride over the crest of all this and still not be fucked up, we still have to look at ourselves in mirrors, windows, and shiny surfaces every morning. Let me save you some time here: There's a fair chance we know we're fat.

What the question seems to actually mean is "How will they know how inappropriate and disgusting their fatness is...if I don't tell them?"

Maybe there's an idea there. Maybe, if the body-police didn't feel that revulsion and that disgust, and didn't express it when they could and do, just maybe it would start a chain reaction. Maybe then we wouldn't learn to feel it ourselves. Maybe there'd be no economic incentive to reinforce body-stereotypes for fashion designers or advertisers. Maybe cool, and smart, and sexy could be things that people just were, or weren't, depending on some deeper factor than their level of fat or their body-shape - or come to that, their physical ability or disability, which is perhaps the deeper prejudice in our society (laced as it is with that saccharine sympathetic nod of pity).

So while I know that none of my readers are likely to be the kind of people to feel the "need" to tell people how fat they are, if you know anyone who does that, tell them this:
We know. Sadly, tragically, we know. There are still plenty of voices in the electronic ether showing us and telling us exactly how fat and wrong and revolting we are. We're still punishing, and hating, and killing ourselves because we know how fat we are, and we know how wrong and how disgusting you think that must be - how wrong and how disgusting you sentence us to be. So how about, just once, you be the bigger person, and say nothing. Maybe your moment of quiet will begin a ripple, begin a wave of sweet acceptance and relief. Maybe, by not saying a thing, you might just change the world.