I stumbled across this while researching old feminist publications. I can’t really explain why I liked it so much.
I don’t agree with the author’s perspective, but it’s a point of view I’d never heard before, and she writes beautifully, with wit and humor and pain.
Fat phobia is probably the prejudice I am most personally and intimately familiar with, and it has continued to astound me the depth of self hatred and external vitriol it can inspire.
This feels like such a poetic expression of the mental dance that turns in to emotional knots. I think it’s fair to be angry that there exists enough social and cultural pressure to be “acceptable” that people would undergo a fairly dangerous procedure that intentionally removes one of the greatest simple pleasures in life. And it’s not a coincidence that far more women get bariatric surgery than men.
I feel the knots in my own head when I think about the wegovy prescription I recently got. My decision was made because I have enough health issues that this would theoretically help, but do I get excited about the fact that I might be able to just get cute clothes from random shops again? Do I get excited at the thought that maybe more people will think I’m pretty and maybe I could finally find a partner or even just have someone flirt with me? Absolutely. Am I excited that maybe doctors will stop blaming my weight for my chronic issues that started long before the weight? Yes. Does it feel like a deal with the devil, even without the potential horrors of bariatric surgery? Also yes. (And is that too many rhetorical questions in this format? Seems likely 😅)
I’m not sure I have the energy to debate anyone about this, but I thought I would share my own perspective 🩷
Thank you, Wren, this has given much food for thought!
I’m so glad, and thanks for sharing your experience.
Doctors are bitches. I come from a strong line of packmule women and I’ve had doctors I could bench-press tell me to exercise more. I don’t even have that much actual fat! I hate that big is sometimes the only metric people use to determine health when it comes to women, so, I get why someone would reject everything about weight loss. And, I hope you always feel healthy and at home in your body, no matter where the new meds take you.
Anyway, I had to read this twice. I did not like the author on the first go. Then, I went back in pretending she was fictional character, gaining much more compassion for her. It made me realize what a brave piece this was to write.
She was raw and honest, saying “this is what I feel,” without metering out her worst tendencies between excuses and appologies and sadness like every other piece I’ve read about being overweight. She’s just like “Fuck it, I’m a whale. And by the way, I hope you all get to be whales, too!”
She isn’t right or wrong, she is just ridiculously herself.
Yes, I think that’s exactly it, she’s just ridiculously herself, vulnerable, unfiltered 💜
And thank you for the kind words of support for my journey! At least I’m in a much better headspace than I used to be, learning how to be more me has really helped with that.
you’re giving me too many good articles to read 😭
I love to hear this, thank you.
I do a lot of research for work/fun, so I made two coms just for the shit I find and read.
I used to joke with people that I was my mother’s before picture, in the ubiquitous and devastating tradition of photos taken to reveal dramatic weight loss, the punchline for every ad that sells weight loss to women.
the brutality of this sentence …
The fat people who become obsessed with counting calories and steps, the ones who try to vacate their bodies a little at a time . . . I don’t worry about them. They’ll never make it. Sooner or later they all come back.
jfc, as someone who is counting calories and fasting to lose weight (and have already lost 40+ lbs), this is so disturbing to read 💀
I mean, she’s right - most people do regain the weight, but I have to believe I can be an exception and form healthier long term behaviors, otherwise there is no point in trying (and I wouldn’t have lost all the weight I have already lost by trying - even if I have still more to lose).
Honestly, this essay functioned as a kind of advertisement for weight loss surgery, I never seriously considered surgery before but now she has me looking into it, lol
Compared to the other surgeries, it looks like gastric banding is fairly reasonable tbh
anyway - yes, what a great writer, “cautionary whale” is just pure gold
She does make a pretty good case for weight loss surgery.
Not to say it’s a bad thing, but the one person I know who did it and lost a whole lot of weight, she had to get it undone when she couldn’t follow the specific diet. She had a year of miserable thinness before gaining it back.
She seems happier now.
yeah, I don’t think I will pursue surgery - but I’m much more open to it now than I was before I read that essay, lol
the main reason I wouldn’t consider surgery right now is that I have preferable alternatives - counting calories works for me, and I am losing weight just by paying more attention
This woman comes across as a bitter crab in a bucket, making the struggles of others all about herself. Who passive-aggressively eats an entire bag of Halloween candy just because their friend is talking about the “evils” of white rice?
Honestly I hate to be rude but this woman sounds unbearable.
Did you read the concluding paragraph about how she learned perspective and stopped thinking about herself?
I did read it, but I don’t really buy it. She pays lip service to perspective but then says:
She’s doing the thing that everyone but me will understand.
which just brings it back to herself again. Plus, her concluding lines in which she considers sending her post-bypass friend a dozen donuts but then decides not to are weirdly snarky and self-congratulatory. I don’t believe that she’s really achieved perspective and empathy.
Different strokes for different folks - and thank you for sharing this! - but in my personal opinion, this essay is full of super toxic, overly dramatic HAES rhetoric that can be really harmful.
Really? I found the conclusion pretty brilliant. She’s saying she understands her friends decisions aren’t about her, but she still doesn’t believe in it.
The part about the dozen donuts I took to be the antithesis of her earlier selfishness. In the first half she describes eating candy in front of her friends while they’re dieting, only supporting her mom for the free clothes, taking everything personally.
At the end she says “There are worse things a person can be than fat,” which has two meanings here. The first, that weight gets a disproportionate amount of attention compared to other issues. The second, unlike her friends who experienced a weight loss journey, her change came from within. Basically “Being an asshole is worse than being fat, so I’m gonna try not to be an asshole.”*
I definitely took it that she realized being an asshole is worse than being fat - I loved this article, thank you for sharing!
I can see where you’re coming from, that’s a fair interpretation!
