Articles
The damage done by a culture of fat loathing
By Maggie Millar
Monday 23 April 2001
A large woman is on holiday in Queensland. She is feeling happy and relaxed as she walks along the street - until she sees a car sticker that exhorts the reader to "Kill all fat chicks". Her holiday is ruined. A chubby 13-year-old girl in England is mercilessly teased about her weight and regularly followed home from school by a gang of teenage boys, who throw tubs of margarine at her; she is constantly called names and harassed; her life becomes intolerable. Unable to deal with this vicious persecution, she takes her own life. In June, 1999, the London Daily Mail runs an article entitled "It's time we taxed the fat of the land". Its author, Helena Fishlock-Lomax, founder of the Size 8 Club, suggests "we should tax those who are overweight through their own fault", and goes on: "Because of the greed and lack of control of unnecessarily overweight people, normal slim women are being bad-mouthed." These are just three examples of the fat loathing which is endemic in our society. It is the last socially acceptable form of bigotry. And it is often effectively disguised by the use of pseudo-medical terms such as overweight and obese.
In her article, "The message of misery" (on this page last Tuesday), Shane Watson states that girls and women are being given the messages that "the only thing worth being is a model or a pop star", and that in order to be these things one must be thin, because anything else looks "frankly, terrible".
But while exposing "the distorted world of [thin] celebrities", Watson neglects to mention the other side of the coin: the contempt and bigotry so often displayed towards fat people - especially fat women. It is these attitudes that contribute to the misery of so many women, ever younger girls and, increasingly, boys - along with the constant "fat is unhealthy" mantra, the moralistic overtones which now dominate popular thinking on these matters, and the relentless, misleading advertising by weight-loss companies. Watson asserts that "skinny looks better under lights, on the catwalk" and that "average looks fat" (i.e. really bad!). Fat used to be a descriptive term, and along with such words as large, chubby, round, big, heavy, plump, stout and voluptuous, depicted the marvellous diversity of body shapes we see all around us. It has now become purely pejorative, (fat slob, fat cow, etc).
Like many other people, Watson uses the word "obese" to describe any woman who isn't thin. Along with the almost interchangeable "overweight", this word has become an effective tool with which to punish those among us who raise the ire of the body police by not conforming to the current physically correct paradigm. Such labelling only reduces an already fragile sense of self-worth, adds to stress levels, and increases the likelihood of embarking on yet another diet - and we all know how effective that is in the long run. There is no universally accepted scientific definition of overweight or obesity. The BMI (Body Mass Index), often touted as the be-all and end-all measure of "healthy weight" was, according to nutritionist Alison Martin, never intended to be used in such a manner. But fat people are lazy, out-of-control, weak-willed, over-indulgent, unhealthy, and therefore deserve every thing they get - don't they? And their size has got nothing to do with genetic inheritance - has it? These beliefs still hold sway, despite an increasing body of opinion to the contrary, such as the surgeon on the SBS program Under the Knife who said he had come to believe, after many years of surgical experience, that heredity factors were the most significant contributor to a person's size. As for the "fat is unhealthy" dictum, the evidence is still confusing. Health is an extremely complex matter, and involves so much more than the size of one's waistline.
For example, the health food and dieting industries make millions of dollars because medical practitioners and dietitians constantly tell us to eat less fat. So, what are the benefits of the much-touted low-fat diet? A recent article in Science magazine entitled "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat" concluded: "Fifty years and hundreds of millions of research dollars have failed to establish the benefits of a low fat diet." The British Medical Journal recently published an article that reached a similar conclusion.
Sydney University academic and author Dr Dale Atrens, in his recent book The Power of Pleasure, states: "Most of the nutritional advice we receive from health authorities has more to do with puritanism than health. Food has replaced sex as the leading source of guilt in our society." He goes on: "Foods containing saturated fats are actually good for us. Without them our immune systems are weakened, and we have less resistance to illness."
Atrens "lays bare the minefield of unsubstantiated nutritional opinion", and extols the benefits of indulgence and delicious food. Pleasure is good for our health, he argues, and a healthy appetite is better for us than aspiring to join the ranks of the celebrities who resemble the celery sticks on which they apparently survive. Is fat the cause of disease? Do any thin people have diabetes? Heart disease? Stroke? Are there any health benefits associated with being fat? Some research suggests there are: that large people have fewer health problems and tend to live longer.
But, of course, in a culture such as ours, this is something we just never hear about.
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