Celebrating Fatness

Revolting Bodies By Kathleen LeBesco is ambitious; LeBasco endeavors to cram very complex problems into very short chapters. What’s more within these short chapters she has provoking and involved questions and observations. One idea that stuck with me was in chapter one, when she is discussing why it was that societies idolized fatness in the past. Ultimately the conclusion LeBesco reaches is that fat bodies were idolized because they were hard to attain. She says, “… values aligned with different body sizes largely depend on what is difficult to attain in a given sociocultural and historical context” (LeBesco 21-22). The obvious question I asked myself was why? Today it is easy enough to say that we want bodies that are difficult to obtain because the culture of getting these bodies encouraged consumerism. There are so many different products one can buy to get thinner and fitter. Not only are there products to make yourself thinner but there are also products to make yourself appear thinner. There is an industry that directly benefits from us feeling bad about our bodies and trying to change them. So of course the body that is the hardest to attain is the one that we are socialized to want. But what about in the past?

I suppose there has always been some form of consumerism but it was less prevalent in the time of ancient Greece. The answer to this, I think, is that what is hardest to obtain is scarce, and because it is scarce it is special. It is also worth noting that in both today and in the past the people who most often possess this type of body are wealthy, and are central figures in society because of their wealth. LeBesco’s observation also asserts that we have always wanted what we can’t have. I think this is an important observation because it asserts that for a large part of human history we have been taught to work towards and idolize an image of ourselves that is very hard to obtain. Meaning that it is perhaps time we tired to fight back against this trend. It is about time we tried to change the societal pressure to look like a certain minority of people. But how do we do this? I think one way is by breaking down the stigma that fatness has around it. Mainly the connotations that fat people are unhappy, unhealthy, gluttonous, and bad people. We fight back against this connotation by using representation, and showing fat people who are happy, healthy, and unashamed of their fatness.

In chapter three LeBesco talks a lot about the difference between embracing and celebrating fatness and just admitting that the fat is there. She points out that fat people are often only seen in a positive light if they admit that their fatness is a problem and something they are ashamed of. Only a fat person who dislikes that they’re fat is seen as moral. Fat people who are happy, not in spite of, but because of their fat are seen as incorrect and immoral. On page 47 LeBesco says “Fat moves beyond something we must learn to cope with to something we delight in” she is directly referring to Stinson’s Belly Songs: in Celebration of Fat Women in this section, but this quote is applicable to how we can change the stigma of being fat. Like I said earlier I believe one way we can do this is by showing fat women who celebrate their fatness. But this is something so rarely represented in mainstream media so we must search for it other places.

For me personally my search has mostly been limited to blogs, specifically blogs on the blogging site Tumblr. There are many different body-positivity blogs on Tumblr where users can submit photos of themselves to the blog. I’ll link to a blog that Ifollow on the tumblr that overall celebrates and embraces fatness. [Disclaimer: this blog contains a lot of nudity and some swear words in different descriptions of photos]. 

From body-posi.tumblr.com

What I think is important about this blog is not just that is shows fat bodies, and not just that is shows fat people, but that they are put on display by their own choice. What’s more that they are so unique and different and diverse. There are bodies of different genders, sizes, races; the photos range from high quality to low quality and from fashion level magazine composition to mirror selfies. Another really important part of this blog is not just the diversity but also the happiness and contentment that most of the photos show either through the photo itself or the accompanying description.

Having representation opens up the possibility of identification, or seeing someone and feeling less alone because they look like you. It helps change your mindset when you see someone who looks like you celebrating their body. The first step to changing our views on bodies is to allow ourselves to see different types of bodies, and also to separate our connotations of what kind of people have what kinds of body. We should allow people to celebrate their bodies regardless of their size; and we can start doing this by celebrating our own bodies.