As someone who has very strong opinions about (her own) weight, I tend to follow weight-related media fairly assiduously. I'm a huge fan of the Biggest Loser (and the much more sordid UK Supersize vs. Superskinny), and I do get a kick out of good before and after photo compilations.
But recently, I started reading a fat empowerment blog. The writer is obviously very smart and talented, and I enjoy it, but it's produced a lot of mixed feelings. I agree with many of her points: fat bigotry is a real, awful thing; it is hard to maintain permanent weight loss; and fat people suffer the consequences of medical eye-rolling far too often. (I shadowed a neurologist in college who would manage to slip in "You really need to lose some weight" regardless of what the chief complaint was, and, to my eye, regardless of how heavy the patient was.)
But some of it bothers me in a way I was never quite able to put my finger on. So here is a letter to the author of the blog (that I will not send, because her blog is entirely her business).
Dear fat blogger,
I really enjoy reading your posts, and I think you've hit on a lot of important social issues. However, quite frequently I feel like you fall into the "SOCIETY!!?!?" trap. Which is to say, you argue that ideal body size is dictated by societal norms not rooted in fact or health, and because of this, we should fight against having our lives limited by it. I agree with the first, and disagree with the second. To illustrate my point, I'd like to set you up on a date with my autistic friend.
He is not a real person, but an amalgamation of several close friends and family members. Regardless of whether or not he exists in the flesh, I know him well enough to predict exactly how dinner will go down. His volume control is very poor, so you'll alternately have to lean in as he murmurs under his breath and back away as this progresses without warning to a shout. He'll snap the rubber bands around his wrists constantly. He'll slap the table top for no apparent reason, possibly causing your drink to fall into your lap. He'll laugh randomly. And I hope you like pharmacology, Chinese politics, cars, or roleplaying games, because I guarantee you he's not going to talk about anything else. If you try to change the subject, he'll either change it right back or nod in what is clearly a remote, practiced way. He won't care about your interests. And don't push him too hard, because he's got a very quick temper.
He's tall, handsome, and makes a good living, but I'm certain you'll find a way to end the date early and send me a long email chewing me out about setting you up with such a complete asshole. "I know he's autistic," you'll say, "but that's no excuse for being a jerk."
But you know what? He'll send me an email too. "I can't believe you set me up with such a fat person," he'll write. "She was ugly. It was really off-putting. I'm not looking for a perfect ten, but Jesus, I could have been smothered by her fat rolls."
Yes, he's blunt. I'll wince a little at reading this. I won't show it to you, because I know you'll take great offense. You've written about how you view the inability to find an entire class of people (eg, the super-obese) as attractive as a form of bigotry.
But wait--why he shouldn't be just as offended by your email?
"Because he was criticizing my body, and I was criticizing his personality. He was being a jerk--I was just looking at him." Well, he wasn't deliberately being a jerk. He's autistic. All social norms are going to feel foreign to him. He was born this way. He's not autistic out of spite or malice, he's not autistic because he doesn't care what you think. Why is your criticism any more meaningful than his?
"You can learn social skills. It takes practice, but everyone can do it." Why can't I replace "social skills" with "calorie counting"? Weight loss is hard, yes. But the laws of thermodynamics do not bend for you and you alone. Fat is energy. The fact that 95% of dieters fail to keep the weight off is a testament not to the inaccuracy of physics, but all of the other social and emotional factors that contribute to food and eating and emotion.
Social and emotional factors, I should note, that are foreign to your date. You might say, "Clearly, he's picked up on some of it, he's bought in to the social stereotype that thin is better!" Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. But clearly, you've picked up on some social and emotional factors yourself--ones that are so fundamental and basic you're not even recognizing them. Eye contact, for instance. It's rude in many Asian countries, but an absolute necessity here. And yet, when he was looking everyone in the room but you, I bet you weren't thinking, "Oh, well, it's just an arbitrary social norm." It's far more likely that you were thinking, "I know he's autistic, but he's not even looking at me! Is he not interested? What the hell! This is really off-putting."
"So his brain is wired wrong, he's an anomaly. Whatever. There's nothing biologically wrong with being fat." The "wired wrong" is a very slippery argument. You can apply it to basically anyone and any condition. Fat people are wired wrong--they don't know when to stop eating. Skinny people are wired wrong--evolution dictates we take in as much fat and sugar as possible, so they're they anomalous ones. Non-autistic people are wired wrong: autistic people are much better suited to handle the information overload and technical thinking required to succeed in this world.
In closing, I guess, I fall flat, because I'm not really sure what to conclude. I could tell you my personal views about autism and obesity, but I don't think they're relevant here (and this is your blog, after all). I would just recommend that you take a very close look at your restrictive societal norms: are they restrictive because they don't apply to you personally, or would everyone benefit if they'd go away? And once you do that, think about them from the perspective of my trim autistic friend. And once you do that, think about them from the perspective of...I don't know, somebody else.
We're all tethered by societal chains. Some of them chafe, some of them don't. The ones that you don't notice are the ones that drove my autistic friend to an anxiolytic addiction. Human rights are human rights, this is true. But making a large group of people feel guilty for wanting to look or act or dress a certain way that doesn't suit you can easily borderline on petty.
Sincerely,
IL-X
