I’ve been doing some all out workouts the past few days. Something I haven’t done in a very very long time. I’ve been walking and hiking, and occasionally running–but the past few days, I’ve worked muscles I never knew I had, and worked them repeatedly, through yoga, dance and step aerobics.
And the weirdest thing has happened. I keep having these dreams–these really painful horrible dreams involving classmates I haven’t seen in 16 years (there’s a reason I don’t go to school reunions, folks), incidences that I thought I had long since resolved, and people I’ve wanted to say things to but never really got around to it for one reason or another.
It’s not that these dreams are nightmares–it’s that they are ‘remembering’ things I have not really wanted to remember. And having all of these memories flood up on me at one time is a bit disconcerting to say the least.
I won’t bore you with my angsty past–but I will say that this is something that is rarely/never talked about by anybody who pushes ‘exercise’ as a ‘cure all’ for fat women.
Specifically: It’s been studied over and over again how so many fat women are survivors of sexual violence or other physical trauma. They use fatness as a way to protect their bodies, their minds, their souls from continued assaults.
So, if women are using fatness as a way to protect their mental (and as such, physical and emotional) well beings, does it really make sense for doctors to randomly prescribe ‘exercise’ to women/girls without simultaneously prescribing therapy and/or counseling? Or to prescribe ‘exercise’ without at least warning that woman/girl that she may be visited by memories she may have a hard time dealing with by herself?
Which, of course, all begs the question that so many fat acceptance folks have centered in their work–should “good health’ be reduced to a number on a scale?
And logically, if that number on a scale is so integrally important to the health of women/girls, shouldn’t doctors be advocating against rape, much in the same way they’ve advocated against not just smoking, but second hand smoke as well?
Will rape (and all forms of sexualized violence) ever be considered a public health hazard?
I know that in pointing to the high rates of obesity among rape survivors and wondering about the implications to health there is the danger of 1. presenting fat women/girls in particular as ‘victims’ (which is loaded terminology anyway) rather than assertive or actively protecting themselves in the best way they know how and 2. further demonizing fat women who are *not* survivors, because “what is their ‘excuse’?”
In wondering about the connections between fatness, rape, and health, I support neither of those assumptions. Rather instead, I am wondering how radical health paradigms that honor and respect women’s full bodies (which includes mental, physical and emotional well being) can reconsider how fatness is approached in various ‘healing’ spaces in the radical community (for example, healing circles at conferences).
How can fatness be acknowledged as a necessary form of protection for many women, while at the same time, not have it cast into “the ultimate problem” of women of color and people of color in general (think Bill Cosby et al)?
And how can women who are ready to do deeply intensive work on their muscles/body be supported emotionally and mentally through the many issues that work may bring up in them–without demonizing women who aren’t ready, feel no need to ever be ready, or whom this situation simply doesn’t apply to?
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December 30th, 2008 at 11:47 am #
I’m not sure this gets at your question, but one thought I had was how many spaces that are provided for exercise focus on “fitness”, which to me is separate from overall health. I think of being “fit” as being concerned about body appearance and competition (like having muscles or toned abs or being sports-oriented). None of that applies to the overall well-being that you write about. To shift the focus, you’d have to create exercise spaces outside of the fitness industry.
In writing that, I think I may be repeating what you already said. But the other thing that struck me was how you wrote about using muscles that you didn’t know you had and being unexpectedly confronted with memories or emotions. I’ve practiced yoga on-and-off over the years, and to me yoga isn’t exercise. You’re definitely putting a lot of work into moving and holding your body in certain ways. But in my best yoga moments, I feel like I’m meditating, and it’s usually at that point that something hits me out of nowhere.
Sorry if this isn’t quite on-topic.
December 30th, 2008 at 11:50 am #
Thank you for writing this. I want to have something really smart or insightful to say about it, but still sleepy and pre-coffee, I’m coming up short. So just: thank you.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:34 pm #
Hear hear! How can we complicate fatness, move it beyond simplistic definitions of willpower and morality into one aspect of women’s whole selves? This, it seems to me, is the crux: how do we value the whole selves of women and people of color?
Great post.
December 30th, 2008 at 1:42 pm #
Hmm…
As a public health professional who reads you blog regularly… I am totally mystified by your seeming criticism (which I don’t understand.)
Sexual violence has been understood through the framework of public health many times in many different ways.
“Fatness” is not necessarily the same as “obesity”
Victims of sexual abuse use a million different ways of surviving and healing. Including eating too much, and eating not at all. I am pretty skeptical of these studies that show “how so many fat women are survivors of sexual violence or other physical trauma.” It doesn’t help anyone to simply assume that women who are overweight are also victims of abuse. As you yourself point out.
I don’t understand the suggestion that “exercise” should come with warning labels. Any activity one engages in could trigger any number of emotions.
December 30th, 2008 at 2:10 pm #
sonia–thanks so much for your comment. I appreciate your willingness to engage. As somebody who is fat (and I think you’ll find many people who would disagree that within the eyes of many many doctors, there is a difference between fat and obese, simply because the level of shame that comes with *both* of those is the same and many times traumatic for the women who are subjected to the shame)–I don’t think I was offering a criticism as so much a hope that fatness can be reevaluated. That there are multiple reasons for fatness–and just as you suggest that it does no one any good to simply assume that women who are overweight are victims of abuse, it does no one any good to assume that women who are overwieght are lazy, passive, unconcerned about their health, lack control, etc. I’ve *never* *ever* been told ever by a doctor that wieght is in anyway connected to *anything* besides ‘calorie control’ and exercise. And I’m pointing to the fact that *many* women have never been told that weight is connected to anything other than slovenly natures, lack of control, etc–which is absolutely a horrible horrible situation–as I know *tons* of women who will never and *have never* gone to a doctor who desperately NEED to go to a doctor because they are scared of being shamed–or are waiting until the time comes “after they lose 15 pounds, then they’ll go.”
and when so many women out there may indeed be holding on to their weight as a form of protection–do they deserve to be shamed for weighing what they do? do they deserve to not have professional medical help because doctors are taking a one fit for all approach to weight loss?
Again, I’m not asking doctors by any stretch of the imagination to assume that all women who are overweight are survivors–I’m just saying that many many *are*–which means that discussions around weightloss need to be handled much differently than simply “watch the calories you eat and exercise three times a week” sort of thing.
And I have to also say, that i’ve talked before about how ‘have you been raped/sexually abused’ is rarely, if *ever* asked by doctors…again, not so much as a critique, but as a contemplation–why are so few doctors asking about sexual abuse/violence? at the same time, just to go to the smoking example, I’ve been asked by every doctor I’ve ever seen if I was a smoker–which leads me to believe that although sexual violence may have been discussed/dealt with/understood by public health officials in many different ways–when it comes to something like a doctor patient relationship, it’s rarely a part of the discussion, if ever–but shouldn’t it be at least *present* in the relationship? where the choice is there for a patient to disclose if s/he feels it’s important to her health?
I hope that clarifies wehre I’m coming from!
December 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm #
this is really interesting question. i think what it points to is a vast systemic divide between the physical and the mental. medical doctors treat physical symptoms, mental health professionals treat psychological symptoms, and never the twain shall meet.
getting medical doctors to treat sexual assault as a public health issue would require some softening of those boundaries.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:08 pm #
(let me preface this by saying you don’t have to read it all. i needed to get it out, and i don’t feel comfortable sharing it on my blog just yet. i need an “audience,” though, because that’s sometimes how we need to process our shit. as i begin to type it, i don’t feel like it’s necessary for you to approve this comment. it’s up to you. i apologize for the fact that i am writing you a book, but since you’re not a big emailer and i can’t possibly tweet this, here i am. in humility & sisterhood, i give thanks for the inspiration you give me each time i read your blog.)
okay. i’m fat. not sick fat, just fat. probably need to drop 4 pant sizes, 1 dress size, and get back into dancing or walking or whatever. and i distinctly recall, at around age 7 or so i got fat, seemingly out of nowhere. i just remember feeling my body bigger. as i got older, i got bigger. food was the salve. but i never had any recollection of an impetus. i still don’t. i started sucking my thumb at 5, didn’t stop until i was a teenager, and had really serious problems with regular teenage stuff. i feared ridicule (fat, skin issues, a lisp, etc.) so i just decided to be as smart as i possibly could. i slowly grew out of my bashfulness, but am now, at 28, wondering WHERE THE FUCK did the fat come from?
i think i know now. looking back on my life, i was hypersexual as a child. of course, some things are intuitive and the product of exploring one’s body, but i know someone taught me some of these things. how to perform oral sex, for instance, was like instinct to me when i was 10 and found myself bargaining with my cousin so he’d leave my baby sister alone. i knew what i was doing, i found myself enjoying it, and knew that my reward wasn’t going to be love or acceptance. it was, essentially, blackmail. “do it again or i’ll tell that you did it in the first place. because nana [my paternal grandmother] doesn’t like y’all anyway.”
so i ate a LOT more when i was there, until i was scolded for being greedy. i ate even more when i came home from those trips. i never did anything except write fiction about the life i wish i had, mixed w/ episodes of ghostwriter and baby sitters club books. i was seeking escape but never really knew from what. by the time i was 12, there was no more hoping i’d get skinny magically. my family — each adult member embroiled in his or her own shit, and much later my grandmother’s terminal illness — gave up on me, and focused on my being a brainiac.
i was fat in college. i let myself get felt up by someone whom i knew to be a date rapist because i didn’t know that fat girls could be loved by men outside of perfunctory kinship love, or ten thousand favors and hook ups love. so i let it be.
and i gained.
and i gained.
and i gained.
through an abortion, emotionally damaging relationships, fighting with my mother, and all the other things that had to do with being the walking wounded, i gained.
then one day i moved out and it got better
and it’s 3 years later
and i’ve been going to healing circles… & now i know.
somebody violated me for the first time when i was a little girl, and i don’t remember one bit of it.
so that’s where the fat came from. i had to make myself unattractive, unappealing, something other than available, easy, or desirable. in short, i didn’t want to be able to be violated. so when i had a zit, i’d do fucked up things to it. and if i had more, i’d do fucked up things to them. and i’ve gotten better as i’ve gotten older — because i know what foods i’m allergic/ sensitive to, and because i know when it’s about mutilation and when it’s about my ridiculous compulsions. (sometimes i wonder if it might have been easier for me to become an alcoholic or other substance abuser instead, but i know it wouldn’t have; my shit is way more tangible to me.)
exhaling.
i said all of that to say that i now understand.
i am not fat because of laziness alone (i’m active, just not active enough to change my body in relation to my eating patterns, which were never really bad to begin with).
this is my armor
like a million and one scary tats or odd-ball facial piercings
like purple mohawks and chains and vests and ripped jeans
like the clothes that our WOC who identify as studs wear
this is my way of presenting a “do not trespass” over my body
because somebody already has.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:27 pm #
That’s interesting. I think I get where you are coming from. I do agree that it would be infinitely more useful for doctors to be more cognizant of mental health when trying to understand physical health issues (especially issues of weight loss.)
I think the analogy with smoking and sexual violence threw me off. Unlike smoking, I don’t think sexual abuse should simply be part of standard questions that a doctor asks his or her patient. A doctor should ideally strive to be someone with whom ALL health issues can be shared (and sexual violence is part of sexual health). But surely we don’t want it to be a question a survivor has to face (like the smoking question)every time she or he visits their doctor.
Anyway,an interesting post. To start thinking about ways to marry mental and physical health more meaningfully in our health care system.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:35 pm #
to dope girl sparkly fresh:
Wow. I have never read anything more heart-wrenching in a comments scroll (which makes somehow a million times more poignant). I wish you love and peace.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:47 pm #
I agree sonia–I read Dope girls words and ached and smiled and got teary eyed–I smiled because it’s always a beautiful thing to see/read women coming to their own through words–and I ached and got teary eyed cuz, dang, girl–NO girl, NO woman–NO person should ever ever ever be subjected to what you have been. I hold that little girl, tenderly in my arms, and whisper to her to stay strong, we all love her and admire her deep fierceness. xoxoxoxo
December 30th, 2008 at 4:54 pm #
yeah, totally get that. And I understand why it is something doctors want to tread very carefully around. But at the same time, I also think that rape needs to become an every day part of our vocabulary, just like “smoking” has become. I mean, we all get that smoking and second hand smoking is bad–where not more than what, 30 years ago, nobody had any clue? We understand that it has long term implications, it affects everything from our breathing to our reproductive capabilities–and I have to wonder–if “rape” becomes such an integral part of our health paradigm–if people start to understand that rape has consequences that extend well beyond “you’re going to wind up in jail”–that rape is something that physically stays with survivors (whether male or female) for decades (and some might argue, forever)–will there be less of this “gray rape” thing? where men thing “oh, it’s just once” or “it wasn’t that bad” or whatever? I’m not saying by any stretch of the imagination that doctors education the population on rape will ‘solve’ rape–but I have to wonder if health professionals creating ‘space’ whereby rape at least gets put on the table of ‘health’–what might happen. How might things change?
I know that organizations like the new orleans women’s health clinic is taking a perspective along the lines that community health is connected to individual health–and I’d love to see/read in ten years how their work around rape and with survivors has changed things in the community….
December 30th, 2008 at 5:02 pm #
which is all to say–I think that issues like rape and sexual assault could more effectively be brought out into the public health domain if issues connected to rape, such as fatness, alcoholism, anorexia, etc–were treated less as a stigma or a personal foilby that a person can’t seem to figure out, and more as a potential symptom of other deeper issues. But at the same time–(this is where I get myself worked into a connundrum that I don’t know what to do with)–I think it would be essential to avoid what we’ve already mentioned–the assumption that every fat woman is fat because she’s a survivor–and the idea that ‘fatness’ (or obesity or overweight or whatever it presents itself as), is some sort of problem to be cured–or that it is a problem to be cured on the doctors schedule rather than at the pace that is most health for the woman’s mental health.
I mean, if fatness is the only thing that is getting a woman through an abusive relationship–or helping her to cope with incest or any other trauma–is it really ethical to push ‘lose weight’ on her?
just randomly–it makes me wonder how many women don’t go to doctors because they know that they can not tolerating having their one form of protection taken from them or delegitimized…
December 30th, 2008 at 6:14 pm #
Hello BFP,
I just had to respond to this. Over the past 6 years, I have put on a lot of weight. 6 years ago I was sexually assaulted. I have never known a healthy sexual relationship. It was planted in my mind (by myself) that the part of the reason I am fat is because of my sexual assault. This year more than ever, I have actively faced what happened. This means really understanding what ‘it’s not my fault’ means, my ideas around sexuality, how I think about my body in relation to sexuality – it is SO EASY to think that because you were *slim* and *attractive*, that that is why this happened to us. And living in fucked up misogynist societies where we have to look a certain way, where our desires are crushed as women and as women of color, where we live in a rape culture, where certain women of color are fat whores anyway…we do survive – yet all this is interconnected.
I can’t answer your questions but it is amazing to be reading this so close to the new year, and for that I thank you…and I love you.
Best of luck.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:50 pm #
I think for me, I’ve been very happy being fat, simply because it takes people’s eyes off me. It takes me ‘out of the market’–of course, none of that really matters when it comes to rape–as power is the issue there. but I’ve felt very *safe* being fat, like, i don’t have to deal with the bullshit of unwanted attention, and as a consequence, nobody could ‘get me’. I still have the feeling that my own assault happened because I was ‘stupid’ or ‘naive’–and being fat keeps me out of situations where I could possibly be ‘stupid’ or ‘naive’ again. It’s a buffer against my own stupidity, if you will.
Of course, the rational me realizes that 1. that is not true, rape happens whether you are smart or stupid, and 2. I wasn’t stupid,–but that inner self–the nagging one that never lets you feel *quite* sure–that little snot just won’t shut up.
thank you soo much, I love you too, and best of luck backatcha!
December 30th, 2008 at 7:55 pm #
Bfp – thank you for writing this. I’ve been thinking for a long time about how fatness/thinness and sexual violence are tangled up together. I hadn’t heard the statistic before that many fat women are survivors – that gives me some more food for thought.
I think you’re right that we should be careful about not pathologizing fatness… Even talking about it, I feel a little nervous, because it makes me think a little of how people used to (and lots probably still do) say that queerness was caused by childhood sexual abuse because lots of queer folks were abused as children. It’s not exactly analogous, still, I feel like there’s danger of slipping into that territory or of oversimplified versions of what you’re saying getting co-opted by people who want to go there…
I’m both a fat woman and a survivor…but I was fat long before I was assaulted – and for me personally, I don’t think my fat is a symptom of anything. I believe, for lots of reasons, that my fat body is the shape that is the most healthy and natural for it. But it took me a loooong time to come to terms with the fact that this is what my body looks like when I’m healthy. I’m still working on it, and I’ve still got lots of trauma both around growing up fat and around the rape that happened later in my life, and they roll into and overlap each other in so many places… There are so many different, unique, individual bodies and circumstances… and even being “naturally fat,” it totally makes sense to me that fatness can be a survival skill and a coping mechanism for all kinds of stuff, especially sexual violence.
Like most other commenters here, I don’t have any answers to your questions…but I feel like they’re such important questions to ask. For so many fat women, it’s a lifelong struggle for us to love and take care of our bodies the way they need to be taken care of, to feel like we even have the right to do that. Even fat women who’ve never been raped, or who are survivors but whose fatness maybe didn’t come out of that but is now tangled up with it, may have many issues come up when we decide that we’re allowed to value our own health… It seems like tenderness and support is important for everybody who is doing that work…and some even more than others…
I need to think on this more…thank you for letting me think outloud in your comment thread – and again, thanks for posting this. Happy New Year.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:26 pm #
Thank you, thank you and thank you. The post and the thread below are powerful.
I feel like my writing just hits the surface of my issues. That I can’t reach deeply yet, like you and so many writers in this thread. I am a survivor and I hope that I can write about these issues soon. I try to take care of myself through exercise and self-care. It keeps my depression at bay. After my assault I developed an eating disorder and am doing much much better. But I still struggle, everyday. Am I fat, thin, pretty? I don’t know. All I can do is try to accept myself as me and be okay with that.
I know healing from violence, and it’s aftermath, is a long process.
All of you give me hope. Thank you and I wish you a wonderful New Year.
December 31st, 2008 at 7:11 pm #
Very interesting. In the past year I realized part of the reason I wouldn’t wear things like dresses and skirts on a typical day was that I didn’t want people, particularly guys, to notice me. Unfortunate. I bought a couple dresses in the last year and love them though. Felt freeing.
Woman and child abuse definitely need to be talked about more in more places. Anyone working with the public including doctors, police officers and teachers should know more about talking to women about it than they currently do. I think people have difficulty making change for an issue that has different consequences (mental, physical…) and needs a multi-faceted approach to make change (we can’t just make shelters). As was said, doctors know a lot about the body and seem to know less about the mental even though I’ve read about how a bad mental state can influence the physical state. Hmm.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:57 am #
BFP – i started responding and just kept going on and on trying to work out what it is that makes me worry about moving these connections between health and sexual violence into the public health/doctors world. i don’t want to take up a lot of space on your blog – please, if this is too long/out of line, let me know and i’ll edit it down more.
this is an amazing conversation. again and again, i am humbled by the bravery it takes to survive, love, heal, and just find a way to be.
BFP – your post is so right on. so many of my friends have shared their experiences with me – making the same connection between various health issues and being attacked – and many specifically connecting their weight (over and under) to part of their coping or healing.
interestingly, the public health people seem to be catching on to these connections. one of the big studies the sexual violence prevention folks and the public health people (CDC) are looking at right now is called ACE. (i think it stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences.) The reason the doc (guy) who did the study did it was because it occurred to him that his patients that were struggling with on going and chronic health issues – including unhealthy weight – seemed to have deeper reasons than, impulse control for example. (what you are saying!) the study clearly showed a relationship between adverse childhood experiences, including sexual violence and witnessing/growing up with domestic violence, and health problems as an adult. (this study also documents 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually assaulted before turning 18.)
for people living this reality – this is not news. but i guess it is news that someone was paying enough attention to see this and now a lot of people are talking about it. the CDC now considers sexual violence/violence against women to be a national health epidemic.
i believe, that as this shift to understanding violence against women/sexual violence as public health issue and epidemic is happening in the halls of public health institutions, we need to be concerned about how that might limit an analysis of sexual violence.
a limited analysis of the problem – an analysis that doesn’t understand this violence as rooted in colonization of land, peoples and literally our bodies – its role in creating and upholding heterosexist binaries – its manifestations in racism – racism and gender and racist violence – its connection to LGBTQ oppression and violence directed at queer people – the ways it is deployed against differently-abled people in their systematic oppression – its place as a tool of wars of all kinds – can’t result in practices that will create liberation. anything short of that – and the violence won’t stop.
i want to know how we can build on the truth that we know – in our bones, muscles, and fat – that the violences we experience live in our bodies and shape our health, physically, mentally and emotionally as we journey through our healing in a world that doesn’t support us to heal. how to understand and create health practices based in this knowledge without the violence that comes with medicalization/pathologization? how can we be glad that someone is noticing that sexual violence is happening in epidemic proportions – and make sure that that recognition doesn’t result in further violence and oppression.
in my state, there are mandated reporting laws requiring that sexual assaults, rapes and physical abuse against differently-abled people and elders is reported. this is a public health response. an effort to stop the beyond epidemic levels of violence targeted at these two, sometimes overlapping communities/populations. and with statistics like 80%+ of disabled people are survivors of sexual attacks, i get why the state thought something needed to be done. but the method increases state control and is based on oppressing beliefs that the people in both of these groups are feeble, innocent, child-like and unable to control and make decision about their own lives. less than. isn’t that devaluing a central part of what make us – women, children, POC, those of us without enough, those of us with abilities that are maybe a little different – isn’t that what makes us disposable to this society?
so i am not so sure about this public health approach that i am part of in my job every day. am constantly wondering, how can that be rooted in an analysis that posits sexual violence as an expression of multiple forms of oppression? how is a public health model of prevention going to be anti-racist? anti-abilist? anti-agist? anti-capitalist? how is a public health model going to decolonize?