We have a taboo against big bodies in our society. Since lock down started, I have seen more jokes about gaining weight in isolation and the fear of getting fat. In some of my favourite shows an movies, I have come to notice the constant use of fat jokes as if being fat is the most shameful thing a person can be.
Despite this, we are also seeing a demand for beds in eating disorder wards and an increasing health income gap in which many family members are having to forgo food due to lack of accessibility in the current crisis.
Why do we have such a bias against fat bodies?
When we look back on ancient standards of beauty, we can see that larger bodies were deemed to be more beautiful, for example the Greeks and in the Renaissance plump bodies were seen as full of virtue and wealth.
This is also emulated in other cultures as being bigger often suggested that one had better access to food and therefore were wealthier, whereas being slim meant being a labourer and therefore poor. For example, in many African and Arabic countries, overweight has been associated with richness, health, strength, and fertility.
When did this change?
Arguably, in the 1920's, the preference for a boyish, slim look rose to popularity as more women gained access to the work place, therefore wanting to downplay their feminine features. From this, beauty eventually developed into the form of heroine chic, which portrayed a backlash against white, middle class America in favour of a romanticised view of lower class life. From then, wealth slowly became equated with thinness due to promoting rebellious counter culture meanwhile poverty became associated with obesity due to the reliance on cheap, unhealthy food.
So when did being big become a problem? One argument for this is through the creation of the biomedical model which integrated since into care, using medicine as a tool for deviance. Through this, personal issues of health emerged as public issues whereby disease was viewed as a breakdown within the body from its normal state, consequently suggesting illness was a form of deviance.
Overtime, it became a common discourse in the public health sector that obesity was treated as an epidemic disease threatening the public's well being. As a result, the war against obesity constitutes a moral panic and war on fat people, further enhanced through the individualist approach to health. This places moral overtones in regards to health, blaming a lack of control rather than actually trying to improve public health.
In response to this, fat activists have started to ask: “why should health status or physical ability be the basis for discrimination?", challenging the idea that fat bodies are flawed and worthy of discrimination.
One way that this is done is by replacing the biomedical model with the social model. This differentiates between impairments and disabilities by looking at ways ways in which social and built environment create barriers for people with impairments by privileging those with able bodies.
Like the impaired body, the fat body is a site for medical intervention with fatness seen as a pathological physiological state in need of correcting. Fat activists argue that impairment is a part of human variation but under a system of oppression has become a category of social significance.
Furthermore, slimness and mental health are both elastic categories and we are all encouraged to take action to ensure them therefore the promotion of thinness is an abelist assumption and uniting the two groups together opens new opportunities for social transformation.
From this we can see the utility of the social model as being fat is considered a personal problem or medical affliction which can be cured by weight loss. Instead, the social model reframes our experiences of self hatred and stigma as a political issue therefore the problem lies in construction of prejudice and not our bodies. Unfortunately, it fails to challenge the neoliberal healthist norms around embodiment and shifts the borders around who is seen as deserving of political recognition.
I know that I am guilty of being susceptible to these constant messages of undesirability that have framed large bodies. I constantly struggle with the thoughts of weight gain and dread the words "weight restoration". But, hopefully, if we continue to see large bodies as a marginalised group, worthy of acceptance and not as a deformity, we can let go of the never ending struggle to to maintain the ideal thinness that our neoliberal society desires.
All bodies are beautiful and I hope that I will begin to accept that mine is as well, no matter what size.
If you are worried about yourself or a loved one, please call the Beat hotline on: 0808 801 0711 or 0808 801 0677.
Giddens, A and Sutton, P. (2015) Sociology Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lawrence, F. (2020) "UK hunger crisis: 1.5m people go whole day without food." The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/11/uk-hunger-crisis-15m-people-go-whole-day-without-food
Naigaga, D et al. (2018) "Body size perceptions and preferences favor overweight in adult Saharawi refugees." Nutritional Journal. https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-018-0330-5
Pause, C, Wykes, J and Murray, S. (2014) Queering Fat Embodiment. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.oxfordbrookes.idm.oclc.org/lib/brookes/reader.action?docID=1652956
Rizzo, M. (2001) "Embodying Withdrawal: Abjection and the Popularity of Heroine Chic." Desire Vol 15. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mfsfront;c=mfs;c=mfsfront;idno=ark5583.0015.004;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1;g=mfsg
Yang, E. (2015) "Women's Ideal Body Types Throughout History." Buzzfeed. https://www.buzzfeed.com/eugeneyang/womens-ideal-body-types-throughout-history#.ohrrLWZkZ