Fat

finally they see it my way. excerpts.


[I]

Is weight the new race?
Do we demonise the obese purely on health grounds or is it a gutreaction based on prejudice?Rachel Cooke
Sunday July 09 2006
The Observer

[II]

I cannot remember a time when I was not fat, though photographs prove that there was indeed such a time. I am always complimented on my “sense of humour”, I am always “one of the guys”, I am the “sweet” girl. I have also been the butt of innumerable jokes; I don’t even notice the little children who walk past me on the road and yell moti (fat girl) anymore. I cannot have a serious conversation with my family because it will always come around to the highly contentious subject of my weight. I have developed an ‘attitude’ to combat the ‘niceness’ of other people, an attitude that often creates problems because it is too outspoken and too defiant. I remember being hurt in school, I remember being a ‘sport’ in college, and I remember always hiding the hurt behind the jokes: because if I made the joke first then someone else couldn’t be laughing at me. But the one thing I never felt was anger at the ease with which the world was allowed to comment on my body, which gave complete strangers the right to ask inappropriate questions and make outrageous remarks about something as intensely personal as my daily routine. No blame attaches to the person who believes it is their inalienable right to intrude. There was always a hint of shame, after all I was the one who was fat and they were just being nice or funny – it’s not personal.

That particular justification for continuous social comment on women’s bodies is possibly the most offensive one possible, because it dissociates the body from identity and selfhood, which is impossible to achieve. The woman’s body being public property to look at or not, to be commented on or not, to be touched or not, to be used as a defining characteristic of her self – these are all common phenomena. There is something intrinsically wrong with a system that allows this to happen, and ignoring it does not help. To say that a positive attitude will help is merely to ask a woman to completely ignore the arbitrary intrusion of people into her selfhood – whether it is the boy on a motorbike who whistles as she walks past, or the lady in the shop who gives her weight-loss tips. Not reacting makes you frustrated and angry with yourself, and reacting makes you hypersensitive.