As a thin woman it seems odd that I would
feel strongly about fatphobia to most people. For some reason people think it
odder than being straight and caring about LGBTQ oppression, being rich and
caring about poverty, or being white and caring about racism. So here I will
explain my personal encounters with fatphobia and fat resistance.
Like most women I’ve had to face criticism
directed at my body. At 11 years old my father saw my protruding stomach and
told me I must lose weight because he was worried about my health and the fact
that I wouldn’t be able share clothes with my thin cousins. I wasn’t even fat.
I’ve never been fat, but I feel as though I have. Despite never being larger
than a size 10 I have felt a sense of achievement when I’ve lost weight and a
sense of failure when I’ve gained weight. This is a common experience for most
people, and I was lucky enough to never develop an eating disorder. I believe I
didn’t because of the fat women around me.
My grandmother was fat. She was always fat.
She was also the person whom I loved most and who loved me most. When you love
someone, their body becomes yours and you love it the way you should love your
own. In every fold you find a warm place to hide, a place that is only love. I
knew she would eventually die, probably before me, but I never imagined it
would happen quite the way it did. So when in the last years of her life a
heart consultant told her to eat only one apple a day until she ‘looks like a
supermodel’ I was rightly enraged. Later a heart surgeon refused to operate on
her because she was obese. This led to irreparable damage that killed her a
year later. Not only did the consultant essentially ask her to starve herself,
he disregarded her diabetes, meaning if she didn’t eat often enough, her life
would be at risk. If she had listened to this respected doctor, she would’ve
accidentally killed herself very quickly. My overwhelming concern was for her
health but it seemed that those most qualified to save her hated her body
because it was fat. Of course the consultant’s advice was incredibly sexist
too, advising a woman to ‘look like a supermodel’. It seemed obvious it was her
appearance he wanted to fix and make acceptable, not her failing heart.
What I felt about her body was something I
hadn’t heard anywhere else and found hard to understand myself. I was horrified
by how they threatened her dignity, how they shamed her and how they made a
body which I so loved, seem like something wrong that needed to drastically
change. Was it perverse of me to love her softness, her round face, her strong
thick wrists? It was confusing to me that those who didn’t know her could ever
find anything wrong with the body that had fed me, protected me, held me. I
loved that she was fat. Why was it so hard to understand loving a fat body not
DESPITE its fatness but without conditions?
Recently I’ve discovered fat resistance,
fatshion and body positivism. They are a whole new space where there is no fear
of fat, no repulsion, no conditions for loving a body. Regardless of my
thinness, it has made me look at my body as something entirely different. I
smile at my tiger stripes (stretch marks), feel the comfort of my round belly,
and see the life in my jiggling flesh. Suddenly clothes aren’t there to be
‘flattering’ but to decorate and celebrate your body. Clothes that are bright
and cling to your round belly and let your fat be free and unbound by spanx.
Here I see bejeweled bodies that move, that sag, that take up space, and demand
attention.
So this is my thank you to fat women who
love their bodies and have taught me how to love mine in the face of violent
hatred and fear or fatness, internal and external.
Umber Ghauri, head of Courtauld Equality
Umber Ghauri, head of Courtauld Equality
