Public Bodies By Adrienne of No Points for Style

I’m grateful to Maura Kelly for her piece yesterday on Marie Claire Magazine’s website.

Seriously.

For one thing, the response to her piece from the blogosphere and the twitterverse have been balm for my soul. The pleas for acceptance, kindness, understanding, and love have given me new hope.

For another thing, I am reminded to re-engage in this conversation, this discussion of bodies and weight and the acceptance or judgment of them.

I am fat. Obese. Not plump or overweight; I’m not plus-sized or a big girl, but genuinely fat. The body I live in, this person who I am, this body that is me, takes up a lot of space.

The jumping-off place for Ms. Kelly’s piece is the sitcom Mike & Molly and whether or not it is distasteful for fat people – “[B]eing overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese!” – to kiss each other on television.

I’ve only watched a few minutes of the show and those few minutes were full enough of fat jokes to turn me off for good (“It’s like hugging a futon!”), but whether or not public kissing by obese people is OK never crossed my mind. It begs a whole lot of questions about who should kiss on television. Should middle-aged or elderly people kiss? What about non-white or interracial couples? How about gay men, lesbians, or trans people? Is it OK for people with disabilities to kiss?

Whose sexuality is acceptable? Whose bodies are worthy to be seen in public and who among us should stay home and hide? Whose personal ick factor should we not cross?

Lean in close because I want to tell you a secret: I am a fat person, married to a fat person, and sometimes we take off our clothes and enjoy private, grown-up activities. Neither of us is much of a fan of the PDA, but the physical aspect of our relationship sometimes shows up a little bit in public such that we can be seen holding hands, hugging, or sharing a brief kiss.

Ms. Kelly goes so, so much further, though, when she says that “even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room…”

My body is not about you. My body is my own and not subject to your standards or your judgment. If my body is offensive to you, I invite you to examine the fears and false assumptions that are driving that feeling. The causes of obesity are complex and individual. They are medical, hormonal, behavioral, emotional, habitual, economic, mental, spiritual, hereditary, and social.

What they are not is moral. No one is fat because he or she is a bad person. I would like very much to have a smaller body because it is physically uncomfortable to be the size that I am, but being thinner will not make me more worthy. Weighing less will not make me a better person or cause my husband or anyone else to love me more.

Losing weight would cause some fearful, sad, judgmental people to feel more comfortable in my presence, but that is not a goal worthy of organizing my life around.

And just to be very clear: not all people whose bodies are obese want to lose weight. As a group, we fat people are no more homogeneous than any other group of people.

Finally, Ms. Kelly brought out this little gem: “[b]ut … I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It’s something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.”

In Rethinking Thin, Gina Kolata, science writer for the New York Times, discusses this very common belief. Many thin or average-sized people believe that their bodies are the size they are because they are exerting personal control where fat people are not.

Again, the causes of obesity are complex and varied and a belief that “willpower” or the lack thereof is the only factor is the height of oversimplification.

“[I]f only they put their minds to it…”

I was pretending to be a weather forecaster at the Seattle Science Museum. This was just a few months before I went on my first diet and started the cycle of losing and gaining.

I can only give the roughest of estimates, but I’ve lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 pounds since I first began dieting when I was 11 years old.  I have tried all of the popular diets and programs, twice getting so thin that I stopped menstruating. I am the poster girl for the phenomenon known as “dieting yourself fat.”

No, my obesity is not caused by lack of effort or will. From the time I went on my first diet as a pre-teen until I went on my last diet four years ago, I fought against that reality, believing that if I would just try, really really try, I would wear a size 6 forever and ever amen.

What a terrible thing to say to each other: you are flawed and you don’t even care enough to try!

Ms. Kelly wraps up her piece with some diet and exercise advice. This is the part where it gets hardest for me to avoid sarcasm because if there’s anything I hate, it’s condescension.

As briefly as possible: I’m not fat because I’m unaware that whole grain bread is a better choice than a donut.

My body is large. Fat. Offensive to some and wildly sexy to one. I have awesome hair and big feet. I am unusually strong and my skin is extremely sensitive. I have nurtured, birthed, and nourished three children with this body. I love the feel of a tightly-made bed and hate to wear a jacket.

My body is not about you.

Adrienne Jones lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband and their four children – two of hers, one of his, and one they share. She blogs about family life, pediatric mental illness, health care, special education, and all kinds of other things at No Points for Style. You can also find her at Hopeful Parents where she is a regular contributor, Band Back Together where she is an editor and moderator, and Twitter where she’s known as @NoStylePoints.

Link up your response to the Marie Claire post. Not only to express outrage but to remind everyone that we are not a magazine. We are people who care about each other and not each others’ weight.

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