I’ve been in plenty of liberation spaces and recovery spaces with fat people and the stories I’ve heard make me angry and heartbroken and determined to keep working. The one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget is when someone told me how they are careful exerting themselves in public because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves by breathing heavy and face the “recommendations” from strangers about their exercise routines. The everyday personal freedoms that people lose to these gatekeepers is a tragedy.
Why do so many of us do it? Why do we feel so smugly entitled to police each other’s bodies by appearance or a snap judgment?
The two justifications I hear are: 1)humans are visual creatures and 2)concern for health.
Here’s the thing: 1) humans do process a lot of stimulus visually. That’s not the same as making value judgements about it. 2)How much research will be necessary before people believe health is not tied to appearance? How much evidence in your own life will you keep ignoring to preserve that myth? I guarantee you have known an elderly fat person, and that you’ve known a thin person that died tragically despite their habits. I guarantee you know someone who has been full-time dedicated to a weight loss program who has not lost weight. It’s all a lie. The stress of being targeted for your body is far, far, more dangerous to our health than any personal choice we could make.
People who critique strangers aren’t concerned over health, they’re concerned over power. They are concerned about performing the role that grants them access to power. They assign themselves the role of gatekeeper because that gets them in the door. They tell themselves that as long as they are enforcing these rules, they mitigate how much they themselves are harmed by them. They enforce a hierarchy that keeps them near the top and they tell themselves they are good as they harass strangers, provoke disordered eating, and make another generation of people believe that love and acceptance are only possible in one kind of body.
I think for people close to us, there’s more nuance. Family members might have more specific information they’re reacting to. They might be aware of family medical history they’re worried about. They might be projecting their own traumatic experiences they think they can prevent by enforcing thinness. I don’t think this makes it acceptable, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge as we’re looking for solutions.
We really have a cultural approach to parenting that views children as property that belongs to the parents. Many parents – particularly of the Baby Boom generation – were taught to believe that the way to measure their success as a parent was through the status a child acquires. Particularly for mothers. It is a mark of status to have a child who is popular and successful in school, who gets into a prestigious educational program, who becomes a lawyer, doctor, or other professional. If a child is admired, a parent is admired. There are a lot of parents who believe that your body is their performance review.
If that’s what they believe, they can’t grant you autonomy over your body. Your autonomy would put them out of a job.
There are other parents who do recognize that our bodies are our own, but that knowledge fills them with the fear that comes from not having control. They fear because they can’t stop the world from abusing us over our bodies, and they decide the best approach is to make the body less unruly. For safety. Or maybe to keep access to a level of status that provides some safety. Or a little of both. Even when I can understand what is motivating a parent who puts their child on a restrictive diet, I still want to shake them and say “You’re not saving her from the bullies! You’re just bringing the bullies home!”
Policing each other this way does not bring us closer to health, safety, more adaptive choices, or connection in our relationships. It is destructive to every good thing we tell ourselves it does. It is rude, and presumptive, and cruel, whether we’re doing it to a stranger, a family member, and even ourselves.
The Body Cop that lives in your head deserves to be fired. It is not bringing you the safety it advertises, it is a trick. It’s like a superstitious ritual that says if we abuse ourselves first it will prevent the abuse from someone else. It doesn’t inspire healthy choices, it inspires shame. It pushes you into that shame spiral where the same choices you’re trying to change are the only ones you have to cope.
Nobody hired us. We can stop doing their work for free.