“Look at those thunder thighs “How can she look at herself in the mirror?” “That’s just gross! Why would she even put on a bathing suit? There’s no cover-up that can hide that.”

Or we could go with the more juvenile versions of verbal abuse a lot of us grew up with. How about, “Lard ass! C’mon over, we have cake!” “Don’t send her over for Red Rover! She’ll land on someone and they will suffocate!” “Hey Tubs!” “Fatso! Have another one!”

Oh wait!  I forgot about THE LOOK. That was always a really great way to make me feel like I had just crawled from under a rock. That slow look that someone (usually the most popular girl, right?) gives you that surveys you from your feet to your head with an expression of disgust or pity or contempt or, worse, smugness that clearly said, “You are gross.”

I also heard “Hey fat-ass!” Which was, looking back, kinda funny, since for a fat person I have a pretty flat, non-existent butt. “Wide load, comin’ through!” were pretty common for me to hear during any average week. This was during the middle/high school years. Can there be a worse set of years??

Why is it so acceptable to make fun of fat? In this uber politically correct world, where saying the slightest wrong thing can ruin a person’s career, how is it possible the ridiculing of fat and obese people is still mostly ok? Even as adults we are subjected to it. We still get THE LOOK, but we also get studied when out to dinner to see what we eat and how much. At the grocery store, our carts are always openly scrutinized and then if what we have is mostly deemed unhealthy we get THE LOOK.

Aside from a select few, it’s still cool to make fat jokes and seems to me to be increasing. As I said, last post, since race, religion, politics, and gender are no longer considered fair game, there has to be some outlet for the underlying angst/frustration people have. Fat is so complicated in it’s origin and there are so many different theories for solving it that it’s impossible to make generalizations about it. The opinions about fat people still range from “it’s a disease”, to “it’s a mental health issue”, to “it’s all about will power”, to “it’s as simple as calories in, calories out”, to “they are just lazy, weak people.” From my own personal experience, apart from laziness, I can tell you that it is ALL of those and many more!

I think there are two major reasons it’s still mostly acceptable to ridicule fat people. I believe instinct plays a major role in both.

First, I think there is a major revulsion factor in a hugely obese person because, back in the day, the just couldn’t keep up. I mean, waaay back in the day. When people were tribal and moved around a lot more than they do now, the fat ones would, of course, slow everyone else down. They would eat more of the supply, they would be just more unhealthy and unable to contribute as much to the community. They would cost more to maintain than the rest of the healthy 

members and could possibly cost lives. This is all completely my own take on it, not based in any science that I have studied. It just makes sense to me.

Watching people (particularly toddlers and the very young) react to a very fat person is quite informative. You can see their reaction is almost instantaneous and seems instinctive to me. There is clearly no thought process behind their revulsion and disgust, it’s just there, immediately. That fat person is a threat to the tribe on some elemental gut level that we probably don’t even realize is there-like the natural born reaction to run from a big scary, growling dog.

I’m not saying this reaction is right nor am I defending it on any level. I just think it’s there, a throwback to a time when the weak ones were a problem because they weakened the whole tribe. Next time, we’ll get into the other reaction that I feel is almost as strong and instant. Until then, I’m here, I see you and I know what it’s like.

There was an “AHA” moment for me. It was about 3 ½ years after my GBS (Gastric Bypass Surgery). My new baby girl was roughly a year old and I can remember very clearly coming home from a morning grocery shopping trip and realizing that after all I had been through the past two years, my standards had changed. There had been a lot of changes in how I thought about myself and my life. I hadn’t even realized how much I had changed inside but I had gained a lot of confidence in myself and my views and opinions. I, suddenly, was no longer willing to second guess myself or my decisions. I had proved myself TO MYSELF many times over in the past two years and that newfound self-trust allowed me to look inside myself in that moment and realize that I didn’t need to feel ashamed. In fact, that I had been feeling ashamed about one thing or another for the better part of 20 years. Since I was about 12yrs old and started putting weight on. The specific incident that I had been thinking about is irrelevant, I don’t even remember what it was now. But this realization that I didn’t need to live my life from a shamed perspective was HUGE.

SO MUCH SHAME!

There is a lot of shame in the obese/morbidly obese person’s life. Whether it comes from themselves, media, family, friends or, like last post, some random Walmart shopper, it’s always there. If you are overweight (even a lot overweight) and have never been made to feel shameful, that’s pretty cool and I wish I had been as strong. But most of us fat people feel ashamed a lot of the time.

Everything around us tells us we should feel bad that we aren’t fit and healthy. The media constantly tells us what we should eat – low fat, low carbs, high protein, low sugar, high complex carbs, gluten free, paleo, Atkins, plant based, etc. Most of those diets even contradict each other! And then that same, oh so helpful media shows us commercials with beautiful people – slim, tanned, happy, and sexy- eating boatloads of chips, pizza, beer, wine, ice cream, pasta, and candy!!! Never mind the doctors who, if they talk about it at all to us, give us a pamphlet on “healthy eating” and tell us to google diets and try one. Oh! And did I mention that these doctors usually are slim and healthy and have not been overweight, never mind morbidly obese!

So, because we haven’t been able to decipher all these mixed messages, not to mention our own messed up psyches and get skinny and healthy, we are shamed. It not only happens, but is even encouraged sometimes. People need some outlet, right? I mean, it’s so sad nowadays…its not ok to shame someone for the color of their skin, religion, sexual preference, gender preference, acne, learning disability, developmental delay, blindness, number of random piercings or level of geekiness….but fat? Well, Hell! THAT’S STILL FAIR GAME!

SO FIX IT ALREADY!

So once I had my “AHA” moment did it all just change overnight? What about when the weight started to come back on? In the movies, when a person has that moment of clarity, they experience a whole change in perspective that stays with them from then on and allows them to change everything about their life. In real life? Not so much. Because life creeps back in.

I kept seeing those same news reports on the latest and greatest diet followed by those same ridiculous commercials. Once the weight started coming back on, I still got those looks. People who knew I had the surgery would watch what I ate, or comment on how tight a shirt was getting. So even though I KNEW how much had changed on the inside and that I wasn’t ashamed anymore, I’d still find my self-talk going down that path again.

JUST CHANGE YOUR MIND…  

So how do we fight that constant barrage of negative? How do we not let them shame us? It’s that self-talk. I had to train myself to stop midstream and think about all I had accomplished even if the outside world can’t see it. I still do. It’s not easy, but it is very simple. A friend of mine once said to me, “It’s simple! You have to just CHANGE YOUR MIND and not do that anymore.” (Thank you Katie!) She was right. It is simple. But it is NOT easy. It takes a lot of practice to even catch those thoughts before they spiral downward. But once you’ve had that moment where you realize you are so much more than what they can see, it gets easier to push the shame away.

Its something I have to do every day. When I have that second bowl of chips and I know I shouldn’t have had the first one, it’s easy to let myself feel ashamed. It’s hard to just let myself make a mistake and then move on with acceptance. But I know I wasn’t put here to curl up in a corner and feel ashamed! It’s what they would love for us to do because then we wouldn’t be out there challenging their views, then we would sit at home and DO NOTHING. Let’s not do that anymore.

Why do they think it’s still ok to treat obese people that way? Why, in the sooo politically correct world is it still alright to humiliate and hurt fat people? I have a few ideas on that score, so let’s press into that next time. Until then – I’m here, I see you and I know what it’s like!

PEOPLE OF WALMART…   

When you see that hugely fat person walking around Walmart, more like lumbering actually, is your reaction empathetic? If you’re like most people, probably not. Our instinctive reaction is to either stare in horror or look away quickly as if it’s “catching.” But what are we thinking? After the first “Oh gross” would probably come “What are they doing to themselves?!” and “How can they do that” Both of those are versions of “They should be ashamed of themselves for abusing the body they were given.” There are several posts within this issue of shame but for today we will just stick with the question of does fat shaming work?

SHAMEFUL!

Picture this: I am morbidly obese. I am exhausted from carrying around 100 extra pounds. None of my clothes fit well so I’m generally uncomfortable all the time. I don’t think doing makeup and hair would make a difference to my appearance, after all it can’t hide that extra 100 pounds or make it pretty to look at, so why bother? It physically hurts me to walk the length of Walmart and if I’m really, really fat I’m probably sweating by the time I get to a register to check out. It has taken me a good hour’s pep talk to get myself out in public in the first place and I’m really just wishing I could have all my interactions with the world inside Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. But no –  you see me. You give me THE LOOK (you know that up and down look that tells you exactly how repulsive you are?) and end up staring at me as I make my progress by you. I can FEEL what you are thinking as if you have spoken out loud. I feel ashamed for existing. I feel ashamed for treating my body this way even when I don’t know why I do. I feel ashamed for not having solved the problem since so many people think it’s as simple as “calories in, calories out.” I just feel shame. I want to curl up-if that was physically possible for me- and be invisible.

FAT SHAMING IS HELPFUL, RIGHT?  

I’ve read that there are people who actually believe “fat shaming” is a good thing because it’ll give the fat person the proper motivation to change and get healthy. These people watch waaay too many movies. I think they really expect the fat person in question to all of a sudden affect an enlightened radiant demeanor and exclaim for all to hear,

“Oh Thank you! You have made me feel so bad about myself that I can no longer live like that. You have made me hate myself so much that I will now love myself back to health. Where is the nearest salad bar? Quick! I cannot control my newfound craving for health food!” Then we should be able to see a 40 second montage of the fat person eating healthy, working out (with a smile of course!) on a treadmill, jogging on a picturesque path and doing Pilates. Then will come the big reveal where the former fatty walks into the room and everyone is stunned by how beautiful and attractive they are. That’s how it’s done, right?

What actually happens is that fat person goes home, sits down and numbs the horror of that Walmart trip by escaping into the food that is killing them, but making them feel better. On top of that, there is almost nothing worse than feeling ashamed. It eats at a person’s soul. Feeling guilty is one thing. That means you feel bad about something you have done. Feeling ashamed means you ARE bad. (Thank you, Brene Brown, for showing me the difference!) People who are morbidly obese have plenty of shame heaped on them by themselves. Having it come from outside sources just makes it all worse, makes that downward spiral even more attractive.

CAN WE FIX THIS?   

So how do we fix this one?  I have some ideas, stick with me! Weight does have that element of self-control (nobody forces me to eat and be sedentary) it seems inevitable that it will somehow be wrapped up in shame and guilt. Talking about it will help. But talking about it isn’t something we do..yet. I have ideas though, so stick with me! That exchange in Walmart was completely without words. No fat person is actually going to stop and address the person giving THE LOOK. And no person giving THE LOOK, wants to even be seen talking to the morbidly obese person that has trouble just walking the length of the store. Maybe writing it out will help. If we can begin to talk about it in general, maybe that will eventually lead to talking about it when it’s actually happening.

I have learned to not live from a shamed perspective anymore. I refuse to let myself feel that I AM bad when really it’s that I feel bad. I refuse to let other’s views of me shape me anymore. Shame and guilt are not places I am willing to operate from nowadays.

TELL ME HOW!!!

But that is NOT an easy attitude to accomplish or maintain. Next post we can get into the daily nitty gritty of not letting shame overtake us. In the meantime, I’m here and I see you and I know what it’s like.