A lengthy paper published five years ago discusses fatphobia from many angles, beginning with its progenitor and birthplace, which the authors identify as “diet culture.” In their view, fatphobia is a form of systemic oppression, known by its tendency to condemn the extra-large body as unaesthetic, unattractive, shameful, and even pathological.
The diet culture enthusiasts might even be regarded as cruel liars, who continue to insist that “health, happiness and moral virtue” can only exist in a slender body, and who aim to embarrass, shame, and even demonize their fellow humans by insisting on an ideal vision of beauty that can realistically be attained by only a lucky few.
For some reason unfathomable to many others, these harsh masters reserve their most severe criticism for women who have the nerve to violate the arbitrary rules of bodily perfection. Meanwhile, men do not come in for even a fraction of the condemnation heaped on their sisters, mothers, daughters and wives.
Now, here comes the cringe part…
Fingers are pointed where?
Authors Camille Cottais, Jeanne Pavard, and Marion Sanchez make the following observation:
Medical fatphobia is particularly widespread, discouraging or even preventing fat people from accessing health care.
The illustration on this page represents a quotation from an obese young man who said the worst thing that had happened to him in the past year was when his old physician retired and he suffered great dread about starting over with a new one.
Many doctors have been criticized for participating in the spread of the diet culture, about which these authors refer us to the work of “anti-diet dietician” Christy Harrison. She characterizes diet culture as a “belief system.” This means in practical terms that the active imagination can spin off into reflection on certain antiquated religious practices which still persist in some corners of the world. On holy days of atonement, believers demonstrate regret for their sins by flogging themselves or dragging heavy wooden crosses through the streets.
In the diet culture, we exhibit our faith by jogging along the boulevards or exercising in gyms with big windows at street level. In other words, we feel a need not only to obey the admonitions of proper behavior for the faith, but a compulsion to be seen doing that. And like religions (Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, etc.), the diet culture has subdivisions: ketogenic, paleo, intermittent fasting, and so forth:
Examples of diet culture include labelling food as good or bad, promoting various kinds of restrictive diets, praising weight loss or eating, not allowing oneself to eat more than a certain number of calories, feeling guilty for eating “too much,” or exercising to punish oneself or to compensate for eating.
Various types of food are assigned moral values, just like the different degrees of respect shown to the housewife who scrubs the floor on her knees after the rest of the family are asleep, and another sort of woman, also up after midnight, who hangs out near the saloon. Some foods are demonized for containing too many calories, or the wrong kind. Meanwhile, a fresh fruit or vegetable is privileged to wear a halo — at least until a cyclosporiasis outbreak comes along and ruins everything.
We all live in this diet culture, existing in a constant state of awareness that even if we have — so far — managed to avoid being labeled fat, that horrid condition could very possibly be our fate next year. From then until forever, we will be punished by having our food choices condemned by the establishment, and possibly also by developing anorexia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, or worse.
And yet, the medical professionals who hope to prevent or reverse obesity in children cannot possibly all be repressive tyrants who anticipate punishing people with too many numerals in their waistlines. They did not make the time investment or endure the workload and expense of medical education only to acquire the privilege of looking down with scorn on overweight people.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Fatphobia: a pervasive and socially accepted discrimination,” GrowThinkTank.org, 07/19/21
Images by lapinvert and geralt/Pixabay
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