January often means being bombarded with messages to "lose weight" and therefore become a better person. But what if people looked at their bodies differently, asks Ally Garrett.
Different months have different personalities. December is frantic and hedonistic, bulging with parties and last minute present hunting. If December was a person she’d be your friend who has the best earrings and who always knows about the best new restaurants but who’s also the friend you can’t see too often because she leaves you with a pounding headache and an empty bank account.
August is just glum. In August it’s been cold and wet forever and all your shoes are starting to go mouldy. August listens to a lot of Bon Iver. January can be hopeful and optimistic, full of goals to read more books and start volunteering with the elderly. January is your Type A friend who has a To-Do list for everything and regularly wears a pedometer. The problem with January is that they can also be downright sanctimonious.
Photo: Unknown
It’s not that I’m against anyone losing weight. If you want to lose weight it isn’t any of my business, just like it isn’t any of my business if you want to get a boob job or shave your head. It’s your body and you should do what you like with it, and I’ll do the same with mine. What I do have a problem with is the way that weight loss is framed as a magic solution that brings health and happiness. I have a problem with weight loss automatically being associated with self improvement. I have a problem with the idea of a New Year and a New You, as if who you are already isn’t good enough.
My resistance to this weight loss rhetoric is based in my belief in body positivity. As a believer in body positivity, I’m involved in the fat acceptance and fat activism communities. To me, these terms are interchangeable because at the core, these movements preach that all bodies are good bodies, and all bodies deserve respect. Fat activism and fat acceptance focus on addressing the stigma that fat people face – in the workplace, while travelling, while at the doctor’s office and even just while existing in public. As a fat person, dudes regularly yell out of car windows to charmingly call me a whale, and I’ve been approached by plastic surgeons on public transport who have given me their card should I be interested in gastric bypass surgery. Describing myself as fat takes the power out of these kinds of incidents – fat is just a useful describing word, and I’ve reclaimed it as my own.
"If the world is telling me to hate my body, why would I want to take care of it?" Photo: Unknown
Poor nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle do cause health problems, in people of all sizes. This is why it’s so (*&^ing crucial to separate the concept of “obesity” from “eating crap and not exercising.” The two are simply not synonymous — not even close — and it’s not only incredibly offensive but dangerous for thin people to keep pretending that they are. There are thin people who eat crap and don’t exercise — and are thus putting their health at risk — and there are fat people who treat their bodies very well but remain fat. Really truly.
Part of being body positive can be rethinking your ideas about health and wellbeing, outside of the paradigm of weight loss. Practitioners like Linda Bacon and the Fat Nutritionist champion holistic approaches like intuitive eating and Health at Every Size, while focusing on measurable health goals such as lowering blood pressure or improving cardiovascular fitness. It’s important to remember that somebody’s weight actually tells us nothing about their health and that BMI is pretty rubbish – the health of an individual is complicated and something that only a medical professional can evaluate.
Even though behaviours learned through Health at Every Size, like pleasurable exercise and balanced nutrition, can be useful and beneficial it doesn’t mean that fat acceptance and body positivity are only for healthy bodies. Being healthy is not virtuous, and it’s not a moral duty to be physically healthy. There are lots of different health risk factors, like engaging in extreme sports or travelling every day on a motorway.
Sometimes body positivity is instagramming lots of selfies. Photo: Unknown
Just because somebody doesn’t live their life in a way that we find morally or aesthetically pleasing doesn’t mean that we should be a jerk to them, or that we should discriminate against them. Berating fat people about their weight doesn’t change what they look like and it might have drastic impact on their mental health.
I know that when some dudebros called me Shamu outside the The Mill in Wellington it didn’t make me feel particularly cheery. Actually, I just wanted to go home and inhale Tim Tams as quickly as possible while watching America’s Next Top Model and crying. If the world is telling me to hate my body, why would I want to take care of it? Body positivity teaches us that all bodies are good bodies, and all human beings are deserving of respect, no matter what they look like.
There isn’t just one way to be body positive. Body positivity can be resolving to tell your colleague his lunch looks delicious, instead of telling him that he’s being “good” for eating a salad or noting “that looks healthy”. Body positivity can be tenderly rubbing moisturiser into the raspy bits on your elbows.
Fat activist and academic Charlotte Cooper said at the Australian Fat Studies Conference that fat activism can be as simple as walking down the street eating an ice-cream. Eating an ice-cream in public can be a radical act; you’re thumbing your nose at the idea of shame around eating certain types of food in public and you’re proudly taking up space.
Fat activists and body acceptance activists change the world around them in ways that make sense to them. Fatshion bloggers like GabiFresh, Nicolette Mason, Corpulent and New Zealander Meagan Kerr document their outfits and share fashion tips, driving a wrecking ball right through ideas like ‘‘fat girls shouldn’t wear stripes’’ and ‘‘wear black because it’s flattering’’. Many fashion bloggers reject the idea that clothes should be flattering at all.
Documentary makers and artists like Definatalie, Kelli Jean Drinkwater and Margritte Kristjansson explore ideas about bodies and beauty in their work. Fat academics are writing books, organising conferences and publishing essays. Fat identified sports teams like Aquaporko or athletes like Regan Chastain challenge ideas about what bigger bodies are physically capable of.
On set photo filming for Kelli Jean Drinkwater's documentary Aquaporko Photo: Unknown
The body positivity movement isn’t perfect. The relationship between clothing brands and fatshion bloggers is complicated, and in this xoJane article Natalie Perkins questions the impact that advertising and sponsored content has had on the online community. In fatshion blogging and throughout the fat acceptance movement in general, the loudest and most commercially successful voices are often those belonging to those with the most privilege.
The most visible fat activists are often wealthy white women, who meet conventional beauty standards – body positivity and fat acceptance communities are dominated by women, with body image still a taboo topic for many men. There has been a lot of discussion within the fat acceptance community on how the movement can be exclusionary to people of colour, trans* people and disabled people.
I hope that the fat acceptance movement can evolve and develop to a place of inclusivity for all bodies. There is so much to be gained from body acceptance and from holistic health approaches like Health at Every Size. Body positivity isn’t only beneficial to fat people, and fat acceptance doesn’t come at the expense of thin bodies. A world without weight stigma would be a more gentle world for everybody to live in, and a Qualitative Health Research eHeastudy has shown that involvement in the body positive community can result in better health outcomes. I love Marian Kirby’s words in a piece on her blog The Rotund:
Fat Acceptance is for everyone.
Everyone.
EVERYONE.
That means thin people, too.
That means fatties who work out at the gym three times a week.
That means fatties who sit on the couch and eat doughnuts every single day.
That means fatties who fall somewhere in between.
That means thin people who practice any and all of the above behaviors.
It means EVERYONE.
Fat Acceptance, at its foundation, is about believing there is no such thing as an unacceptable body.
It’s January, and you don’t have to make a resolution to lose weight if you don’t want to. If you want to have a healthier body in 2014 there are specific, measurable resolutions you could make to improve your health. You could resolve to eat blueberries three times a week or adjust your cholesterol levels or set a goal to deadlift 100kg by the end of the year.
"It’s January, and you don’t have to make a resolution to lose weight if you don’t want to." Photo: Unknown
Health-based resolutions can also be about mental health, like working on negative self talk or making an appointment to see a therapist to talk through that thing you can’t get out of your head. You could make resolutions around body positivity and self love. One of the most powerful things I ever did for myself was to swear never to say anything negative about another person’s appearance. As soon as I stopped thinking snarky thoughts about the way other people looked I started noticing all of the snarky things I thought about myself.
Body positive resolutions could be vowing to compliment people you see with terrific haircuts or enrolling in yoga classes or perfecting your application of liquid eyeliner. If you think you’d be happier if you lost weight, remember that there are ways to start being happier right now. If you’re waiting to lose weight so you can wear tiny shorts, wear tiny shorts right now. Go travelling right now. Go on a date right now. Don’t put your life on hold until you fit into a certain size of jeans. Your body deserves love and respect and life, just the way it is.
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