Newsflash: hate is not helpful

I’ve not had a lot of writing hours to tell you about the breastfeeding counsellor training weekend I just attended. But I will mention one thing that happened: I sat next to a fat woman in a workshop, and she mentioned out loud that she is ‘obese’ (it was, in a roundabout way, relevant to our discussion of attitudes towards the known risks of formula milk). The response in the room to her dropping the ‘o’ word? Masses of nervous laughter. We knew she was obese. It’s not like when you’re rather fat you can keep it a secret from people who can see you. There’s no surprise, I’m fat! But a fatty opening her mouth and declaring herself to be fat? Drawing attention to it? That’s just, like, so socially awkward, y’know? And because of that social awkwardness, caused by an underlying assumption that ‘obesity’ is negative and shameful, the voices of actual fat people are so often not heard when public health issues are discussed. That woman was my hero of the afternoon.

There is a lot of cognitive dissonance going on when non-fat people talk about ‘the obesity crisis.’ On one hand, I’ve observed that social awkwardness – not wishing to draw attention towards someone’s weight, feeling uncomfortable around the ‘f’ word – is pretty universal in polite company. Yet, on the other hand, many thin people seem to still labour under the false assumption that we fatties just don’t know we’re fat. That’s the ridiculous notion underpinning an article that appeared on The Punch on Monday (no, I’m not linking, but if you have plenty of spare sanity points feel free to search for it.) In the article, Rachel Corbett argued that ‘overweight’ people who are told by doctors to lose weight as a first line of treatment should be grateful for the advice, without which they may well drop dead any moment. In other words, Corbett thinks that fat people just don’t know that they’re fat and, incredibly, also don’t know that the conventional wisdom is that being fat is bad for your health. She also seems to think that fat people aren’t entitled to the same access to health care as everyone else until they heed sage doctor’s advice and ‘drop the kilos’.*

It’s unfortunate that Corbett was paid to write such a spiteful piece of un-researched drivel. But putting that aside: her argument, even if one accepts that we are in the midst of a health crisis caused by obesity**, is so poorly reasoned it makes my brain hurt. It’s based solely on the obesity strawman: a fat person who eats Drive Thru fast food three times a day and gets no more exercise than moving between the couch and the fridge. I actually don’t know, and have never known, anyone like that. Have you? And, more to the point, if these mythical lazy-gluttonous-omgdeathfatties did exist in large numbers, they would not do so in a vacuum. They would not do so without knowing that everything about their life is anathema to the kind of ‘health’ that people like Corbett believe we should all strive for. In other words, if they go to a doctor for a health complaint, a lecture about their lifestyle is a) not going to fix that health complaint and b) will contain no new information.

Corbett – and, okay, not just her but an apparent majority of people – seem to live in a fantasy world where all doctors have the appropriate knowledge and training, and the time, to give sound and effective advice about exercise and nutrition in a sensitive way on an ongoing basis. Readers of this post by me and this post at Fat Lot of Good and this whole site, and those who can exercise their common sense, know that that is blatantly false. I wish it were the case that all doctors had the time and resources and care to help all their patients achieve and maintain optimal wellness and that all doctors were able to wade through the masses of biased information coming from the multi-billion dollar weight-loss industry to find only the current, evidence-based best practice on nutrition and “weight management” (Health At Every Size). Saying that they don’t doesn’t mean I’m anti-health professional. I’m just anti-bullshit.

I’m also well and truly tired of the same old stereotypes about fat people being used to justify the stigmatisation of a whole group of people. There are thin people who behave in the sedentary, nutritionally reckless way that Corbett describes: where is the shame heaped on them? Do their doctors get a free pass to abuse, ignore and coerce them too? Or, does Corbett accept the reality that in fact their doctors probably ask very little about their lifestyle because they are not visibly fat?

But there’s much more to say against stigmatisation than the fact that it hurts me personally (although, let’s be really clear, it DOES hurt me and some of my friends and untold numbers of other people). Stigmatising fat people – especially when doctors or health spokespeople do it, damages the health of individuals and therefore the health of the population.

Advocating for hatred in a nasty little piece in an online magazine as Rachel Corbett has done was unkind, and intellectually lazy, and the opposite of healthy. Like a lot of ugly things in this world, I can live with it. I don’t have to read it, or the comments (trust me, I’m staying well away from the comments!). But when health authorities or the First Lady of the United States or my own family doctor stigmatise my body, our bodies? That’s not so easy to ignore. That’s not so healthy.

* Anyone who uses the term ‘drop the kilos’ clearly knows virtually nothing about the physiology of weight: because, I could totally just be thin if I simply let go of all this fat I’m carrying around and let it fall on the floor! Der!
**I don’t accept this, by the way, but you know that already.