Apology
I don’t mean to be in the way. I really don’t.
When you take your seat on the subway, or in an airplane, I don’t want to crowd you. I don’t want to press my body against yours, to force contact, to ooze into your space.
I don’t want to feel the hot insistent pressure of your thigh against mine, or the jostle of your shoulder as you fumble with your newspaper, your iPod, your purse. I don’t want to feel your elbow dig into my belly as you jockey for space.
I don’t want to be in your way. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I don’t want to TAKE UP SPACE.
Do you know how terrified fat people are of taking up space? Of moving, slow and huge, like glaciers, through a crowd of nimble forest animals? Of bumping someone with our “monstrous” asses? Of being wedged, uncomfortably, into too-small movie theatre seats and after that, having to clamp our thighs together and cross our arms over our chests for two hours to avoid encroaching upon our neighbor’s space?
I guess I can’t really can’t speak for all fat people. But I can speak for me. I am terrified of taking up space.
That’s why I don’t sit on the subway when there’s one seat (three quarters of a seat!) wedged between two normal or even small-sized people. That’s why I stop and let you pass, the two of you chatting arm in arm, hogging the sidewalk at twice my width and then glancing pityingly sideways when you see I’ve waited for you to go by. That’s why I request a window seat on the airplane… so that I can lean away from you, so that I won’t offend you with my bulk (or be noticed by a cranky flight attendant who’s just dying to power-trip and happens to hate fat people.)
And I’m sorry. I am sorry that I take up extra space.
But.
The thing is this: I’m not THAT much bigger than you.
I don’t take up two airplane seats. I can buckle that belt and put the armrests down just fine, thank you. I shouldn’t be kicked off an airplane, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be. I don’t take up two subway seats, either, OR the entirety of the sidewalk. I shouldn’t be subjected to dirty looks or pitying frowns, but that doesn’t mean I’m not.
I’m really not that much bigger than you are. I’m just an easier target.
It’s acceptable to publicly shame fat people. People don’t think twice about exchanging meaningful glances and raised eyebrows when I have to scoot past their table in a tiny New York restaurant. (For every person who thinks strippers don’t have ears, there’s one who thinks fat people don’t have eyeballs.) It’s fine to make a big show of squeezing past that huge guy on the stairs and saying “Ex-CUSE me” loudly, because he’s disgusting, his fat is disgusting, his size is disgusting. No one blames you for your impatience or your lack of decency. We’re all in agreement that fatso over there doesn’t deserve patience or decency.
And when you’re seventeen subway stops from home after a long day of work, it’s fine to slump against the subway pole and roll your eyes and glare at the fat bitch taking up a seat that she could share with you if she’d just lose seventy-five pounds. It’s also easy to squish yourself into a spot next to the fat bitch
(next to ME)
when I’m already sitting on a bench, my belongings stacked neatly on my lap. And you ever feel justified in sighing dramatically and re-adjusting in your seat every twelve seconds because you lack the elbow room to dig around in your giant fake designer bag.
I get it. You’ve been taught that it’s okay to hate fat people. And there’s no guilt, because we all know fat is unhealthy, and we all know that fat people could get rid of our fat, if we’d only get off our asses and take a walk every once in awhile. But we CHOOSE not to (because everyone knows that fat people don’t exercise, and that none of us ever struggle to lose weight!).
We all make choices. And this is a free country, dammit. Our forefathers laid down our lives so that we could Buy Things and Do Stuff and Be Normal. Normal is the American birthright*!
(*if you’re white, healthy and rich!)
But we the fatties, we’ve CHOSEN to be part of the leper colony. We signed up for this when we crammed all those Twinkies down our throats. We’ve failed you, and we’ve failed ourselves, and we’ve failed society in general, and it’s gone this way because we’re weak and lazy and stupid. And who doesn’t hate the weak and lazy and stupid, and what’s fat but the outward manifestation of those characteristics?
Except.
The people who told you that my fat is a failing on my part? They were lying.
The people who told you that fat is the same thing as weak and lazy and stupid? They were lying.
The people who told you that morality has a place in conversations about mass? They were lying, too.
And the people who told you my size is your business, that you have the god-given right to judge me based on my shape, my dimensions? Liars.
All of these people lying to you… about me.
It’s weird, right? It’s strange to think that someone would lie to you, about my body, about my shape? I mean, what’s the point?
The point is money. The point is power.
They lie because they wanted you to buy things.
They lie to you, about me, about what fat means, because they want you to be scared of becoming me.
They want you to feel loathing and disgust for what I am, because that creates a hole in you, and then they can promise to fill it with lip plumper and thigh cream and slippery-sexy women’s magazines.
They lie because it’s important to them that we live in perpetual suspicion that we are unlovable. And they lie about what fat means, about how fat people should be treated, because if they make it okay to treat fat women like dirt, it will motivate the hell out of you to scurry around and do whatever it takes – whatever they tell you it takes – to avoid becoming one of us.
They lie to you because they want you — they NEED you– to believe that it’s okay for women to turn and snap and gnaw on one another like ravenous wolves.
They lie to you because fear is a multi-billion dollar business.
They lie to you because they need their women starving.
They lie to you, they tell you that my fat is a failing, because they need you terrified, ALWAYS terrified, that you might become me.
So.
I am sorry that you believe being me would be so terrible. (It isn’t.)
I am sorry that we live in a world of small seats that get smaller every day.
I am sorry that the North American standard for public transit is on par with the way we might treat cattle on their way to slaughter.
And, yes, I am sorry for crowding you. I truly am. I hate it when others encroach upon my space, too. When I see that my size is inconveniencing someone else, it’s one of the only times that I wish I could instantly become smaller.
And I think, in those moments, about seriously trying to become smaller, about losing weight and avoiding this awkward set of situations entirely. I daydream about not being judged for my bulk, about never being glared at for my choice to sit or lean or move.
But in those moments, I can’t change my size. And I can’t change the tight quarters, either. So I make a choice. I try to avoid inconveniencing you in whatever way I CAN control.
You have a choice to make, too. You can choose to be polite and cooperative, and make the best of a situation that is uncomfortable for everyone. Or you can choose to act, out of ill temper, out of prejudice, out of fear, like I’m less than you. You can act like I’m unworthy of your regard or decency or respect.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and the truth is this:
I am a human being who has a body, and I manage that body the absolute best way I know how.
I’m sorry they’ve made that so very easy for you to forget.
I love you and the way you are able to form thoughts so eloquently to explain how so many of us, anyone who doesn’t fit that “image”. It was really awesome.
Hey Jez,
I really enjoy your blog and I think you’re a terrific writer. I disagree with a few points in this post and I hope I can state my case in a way that is respectful and positive in discussion, considering this is such a personal topic to you.
I study a lot of evolutionary psychology due to my work. And I think it’s a common and easy mistake to blame the media for our society’s prejudice toward the standard of being thin. Really, human beings, throughout all time, have conformed to a standard of beauty that is designed to help human beings select a partner well-suited to carry on their genes to the next generation. Almost ALL of our drives in life, even if we don’t want kids, even if we’re gay/lesbian, are based on the need we have to find a suitable partner and to be a suitable partner.
For men, evolutionarily speaking, a suitable partner is going to be a woman who is best suited to pass on their genes, who shows qualities of apparent reproductive fitness: someone who can go through a healthy childbirth, who can bear a healthy child, and who can even bear a child who is going to be considered a suitable partner to the NEXT generation (so that it in turn can pass on its genes even further). It used to be, thousands of years ago, that the standard of beauty in women was largeness, because men “thought” (evolutionarily speaking) that wide hips were the best trait to have in a partner they wanted to bear healthy children. Then they realized that largeness didn’t necessarily mean wide hipbones; it could mean just more fat. And they “learned” (evolutionarily speaking) to seek women who had wide hips (for birthing) and large breasts (for breastfeeding) but who had slimmer waists (so they could tell that the hips and breasts weren’t large just because of allover fat). Well guess what. Women “learned” on the other hand to grow more fat on their hips and breasts over time to conform to the standard — and by “learned,” I mean that over the hundreds of years, women of that body type were chosen as partners more and their genes were passed on to subsequent generations, so more women began to be born who looked that way.
Now, especially with the advent of plastic surgery, I think we’re at a place where men are “learning” to distrust the evolutionary utility of large breasts and hips and are looking for a partner who displays different signs of health.
And that’s what it comes down to in women, and always has, long before the media even existed — reproductive fitness. Health. And the standard for health today is thinness.
Here’s where the media’s role comes in: The commercial media wants you to buy things, so it exploits your basic human drives to BE a suitable partner. It tells you to buy lip plumpers (plump red lips are a sign of youth and also a mimic of sexual arousal, signaling your ability to have sex, i.e., your reproductive fitness), high heeled shoes (the illusion of longer legs signals sexual maturity; a pointed foot mimics the pose it assumes during orgasm, again reproductive fitness), diet programs (again lack of fat, today’s standard of health, reproductive fitness), acne medications (again, clear skin = standard of health), crockpots (you and your partner have to be able to feed yourselves and your offspring in order to survive and pass on your genes), cars (the things you own reflect your social status, which reflects your alphaness, which reflects your ability to provide for your offspring), and so on and so on.
These things existed long before the media existed. When large breasts and hips and small waists were the standard, women squeezed themselves into corsets to the point of fainting and breaking ribs. Today’s crazy diets and eating disorders are just a more modern incarnation of those same basic drives to be considered a suitable partner, and therefore to be selected by someone who is a suitable partner.
But what about men? you say. Why aren’t they held to the same standard? Well, they are, it’s just a bit different. Men are judged on their ability to provide for the offspring who are going to be passing on a woman’s genes. Childbirth is a woman’s job, but providing for an incapacitated pregnant woman and her offspring is the man’s job. This is why the media sells cars (see above). A man’s attractiveness is judged by his alphaness, his ability to be the best provider/protector amongst his peers. This means he is judged on height (argue all you want about not being able to change your weight, there is not a diet in the world that will make a guy taller), physical strength/agility, resources (wealth), resourcefulness (ability to acquire wealth), and status amongst his peers.
So it’s really not the media’s fault. Truth be told, it’s not even humanity’s fault — we’d be facing the same issues if we were beta fish, competing on who was more colorful and had bigger and more beautiful fins, or if we were wild turkeys, competing on our abilities to build a bigger and more attractive nest for a pretty turkey to lay eggs in.
The world isn’t fair, but it is the way it is so that the species, so that ALL species, can evolve and continue to populate the planet. And it sucks that humanity is not a level playing field — some people are born with an ability to be thin, some have to work harder at it. Some people are born with clear skin, some have to spend thousands at the dermatologists. Some people are tall, some people are short. Some people are born into wealth, some people are born with the ability to acquire wealth, some people have to work as hard as they can just to put a roof over their heads.
I didn’t create the world, I just live in it.
Hey Arden!
Thanks for commenting. I’m always down for some respectful discussion. The evolutionary psych you cited is interesting in its own right, but I’m not sure any of it convinced me that I’ve made the “common and easy” mistake of “blaming the media”.
You suggest that the media doesn’t create desire for specific features, but merely supports and exploits pre-existing desires. I’m familiar with biological indicators of arousal and mate suitability, and I agree that there’s some solid science suggesting that we’ve evolved to like certain traits. I’d never argue that biology doesn’t play a part in what we desire, but I absolutely REFUSE to believe that our media culture plays no part in how we negotiate both our biological and culturally-imprinted urges.
The media does not just serviceably sell us what we (evolutionarily, you argue) desire. The media also reports our culture back to us and reflects imperfect copies of our desires. In helping us create our idea of ourselves, it also shapes us.
Our current media culture is absolutely one of fear, paranoia and moralizing. The drive to be an acceptable partner may deter people from becoming fat, but so does the fear of being removed from an airplane by a snarky flight attendant or being mocked in public for their size. How we’ve evolved to like thin more than fat is really sort of a sidecar to the main thrust of what I’m saying, which is that people have LEARNED – culturally, not biologically – that it’s acceptable to treat certain kinds of people like shit. That’s behavior that is reinforced on the personal and cultural level. Kids aren’t born knowing to sneer at fat people. They’re taught that, by their parents, their friends, and –yes— by the media.
Awesome entry!! Hear fucking hear!!!
Hey Jez!
Arden is making a strong, highly contentious claim, equating social processes so strongly with traditional evolutionary biology. From what I understand, one of the essential pivot points of natural selection is that it happens over millions of years, as a very gradual statistical function. The changes in behavior that he’s talking about — from era to era and generation to generation — aren’t mere statistical trends, they’re functions of very complex cultural developments that can be influenced intentionally, both by institutions and by individuals.
For instance, why is there a tension between the fashion image of the extremely thin supermodel, the Hollywood image of the busty celebrity bombshell, and the actual healthy image of a woman with an appropriate BMI? This sweeping evolutionary explanation can’t account for the variations in media image, mate selection, and those other culturally- and individually-dependent factors. It’s my intuition that the economic substructure is far more relevant to these cultural trends than some abstraction of “evolution” applied to social behavior, and that it’s better-suited to explain the various impulses that drive individuals, and allow their behavior to cohere into social patterns.
This, among other reasons, is why evolutionary psychology is incredibly controversial when applied to humans.
Anyway, on the post itself: as an extension of your anxiety, I’d like to lament the fact that all of us, whatever our size, are often driven to avoid physical contact. Even I avoid seats that look a little crowded, and naturally recoil a bit if I accidentally touch someone else’s hand on a subway pole. Is it just a fact of social life for highly socialized Americans? Or is it a pathology? I don’t have a good answer at the moment.
Awesome entry!! Hear fucking hear!!!