The F word

Heads up: This is slightly rambly and personal but something which I've wanted to write about.

(TW: body image, ed, fat shaming)

People cannot say the F word.

Fat.

Which, of course, is entirely understandable. We have built a culture where the word 'fat' holds 
such a huge negative weight  around it, that if  we are to associate somebody with being fat, we are insulting them in the worst possible way.  But why is it insulting? Because nobody wants to be a Fat Person™ .

Fat Person™ is a overweight person who lives a terrible life because of their weight. They are undateable,  can't achieve any forms of success, unhealthy, dumb, not interesting, and unattractive.  This trademark has been perpetuated in educational systems, by the media, in workplace environments, by cultural perceptions - etc etc. Our foundations, our whole empire, consists of fat hating and fat phobia..We equate thin with a semantic field of positivity: attractive, healthy, successful, and have now internalized such a deep stigma around fat people and fat people's lives that we are now so unbelievably uncomfortable in associating people with it.  

It's such extreme bullshit.  A) We need to expel the myth that our body is only healthy when our body is thin.  We also need to expel the myth that our health is only connected to our appearance. Health is personal. Something which needs to be individually defined for each human being, it is not defined by a waist size. Also, unhealthy people, whether thin or fat, deserve respect and kindness too. You have no fucking idea what someone might have gone through for their health to be a certain way and it's not your concern. Your concern is to support them mentally.  B) Fat people are allowed to be sex positive and date whoever the fuck they want, just like everyone else. Regardless of what Cosmo magazine tries to tell you. C) Fat people can act and be whoever they want period. Their weight is never an indicator of their identity. 

As a chubby girl, I am constantly reminded by my peers that I am not chubby. No doubt they do this in order to not harm my self esteem,  so I  know they don't think I am a Fat Person™.  But really, it is ten times more harmful.  It is hard to accept your  body when people are constantly in denial of it even existing. ''You're not fat'', ''You're not big at all!'', ''Your weight doesn't even matter''. I can't even begin to count how many times this all has been said to me. I know my weight; I feel my stomach rolls when I sit down, my huge thunder thighs when I walk, my body has been with me all my life. I know it.  But  when people are constantly trying to comfort me by making me not accept it, it makes me feel confused and panicked. 

It upsets me to think people don't think I'm conscious of my weight. It upsets me that people don't think I want to be conscious of my weight. It affects how I get dressed on the morning - I can't wear that skirt because my stomach is visible, that skirt will make my hips look wider, those will make my legs look stumpy, ETC ETC.  

But it shouldn't do. I should be able to live my life in a fat body and fucking rock that fat body. If I look fat one day, I want someone to come up to me and be like, ''your pudge is on show and it looks fucking awesome''.

 I want to reclaim being a Fat Person™.

As a particularly chubby girl, I go through phases of questioning, worrying about, agonizing over this very state. It seems regardless to how far away I can distance myself from thinking about it and diverting my mind to more important or sentimental things, the negative connotations of being ”chubby” just creak back in my life one way or another.

It is hard to be fat and to like yourself. Or, at least, it is hard to be yourself and truly like your fat. Fatphobia, fat-shaming and plain old fat hate are so, so ingrained in our culture that people don’t even think twice about the fact they, instinctively, attach a lower value to ‘fat’ than ‘thin’. 

The problem with our media is that it trains people to love things like curves, hips,  big breasts and bums, but it doesn’t train you to love your double chin or your stomach roll or your chubby cheeks or even see being ”overweight” as desirable. You should only love the ”desirable” things, apparently. Not the whole of your appearance, just these things alone.

There seems to be a real hypocritical attitude of ”Yes, embrace your curves! But get rid of those thunder thighs, they chaff when you walk.” Not too mention that magazines will talk about the ”real woman” that has curves and belittle other women of different sizes who naturally do not have curves, and very thin frames and no chest at all, claiming that these are not ”real woman” and imply they are ghosts, or creatures of some sort?  Belittling this type of woman does not make girls of a bigger weight feel any better, either. If anything, it just makes a large proportion of people feel bad - because there are many a girl who have  sizes that means they have no cleavage or they have a big stomach, but not many girls with hourglass bodies and a slender yet voluminous physique.

We are not told to love our body, but to love only some parts of it. We are told what is desirable, and that we should accept what is desirable and what isn’t it. But then we are told to see ourselves as desirable - even after all this confidence crushing bullshit.

  I don’t want to make anyone feel bad about their body, I don’t want to pronounce on what is, in general, an ‘acceptable’ size or shape. I want everyone and anyone, (and their aunt and their puppy) to feel like it’s ok to be the way they are, and if they’re already happy with it, then that’s even more ok. 

 I am not advocating unhealthy diets, whether it be starving yourself or piling in excessive junk food - But I will advocate a healthy mindset before anything else. It doesn’t matter if you have a little bit of fat where you shouldn’t, or have flat out cleavage, you don’t have to go about forcing yourself to change. Sure, eat better, exercise, try be healthy but don’t do it to improve your body’s physical look but the way it will make you feel in your brain, the more healthier of a person you will be. 

A healthier mindset/happier person is always more important, always.