If a fat person dies and one more person says to me, “Fat Person died because s/he was FAT!” I’m gonna sit my fat behind on that person’s unfat face.
If you must be a condescending pseudo doctor know-it-all fuckwad, please, let’s be more appropriate about diagnosing.
Try: That Fat Person died because s/he was eating poisonous garbage that our food system has passed off as food for the past 40 years!
Or: That Fat Person died because there were no grocery stores or running public transportation in her neighborhood!
Or: That Fat Person died because soceity treats obesity as if it were a personal choice rather than a reflection of the addictive additive ingredients in our food chain that have been present for the past 40 years.
Or: That Fat Person died because she worked three jobs and never had time to prepare her own meals!
Or: That Fat Person died because she went to a school that got it’s funding from soda corporations and was blasted with Coca Cola advertising from the time she was in middle school until the time she graduated!
Or: That Fat Person died because she went to a school that stopped offering gym classes and lived with working class parents that had no choice but to sit her in front of a t.v. after school so she would stay out of trouble and off the streets.
Or: That Fat Person died because I’m an asshole and made her feel like shit about herself, so she did the only thing that kept her safe and made her feel good.
Or: That Fat Person died because seven of her friends died after being shot at walking to/from school/the store/etc and it was safer for her to stay inside watching t.v. than “go for a walk.”
Or: That Fat Person died because she grew up being told that “Princesses” must always stay clean, wear pretty clothes, be little ladies, etc. And she’s a princess, right?
Or: That Fat Person died because s/he couldn’t afford high quality food and even if she could, I’m too big of an asshole to show stupid Fat People how to cook high quality food!
Or: That Fat Person died because she was black, and racism is a motherfucker on the body.
Rant Finished
Kaithnxbai!
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December 26th, 2009 at 5:27 pm #
Right on. thank you for posting this. so true.
December 26th, 2009 at 7:40 pm #
Or: That fat person died because her doctor ignored her symptoms and blamed them on fat.
Or: That fat person died because she has been doctor-shamed so many times she put off going to the ER until it was too late.
Or: That fat person died because the ambulance staff spent two hours laughing at her and mocking her size instead of getting on with transporting her to hospital.
Or: That fat person died for reasons that have nothing to do with either nutrition or exercise. People die; some people are fat; therefore fat people die.
December 27th, 2009 at 6:03 am #
I second lauredhel “people die. some people are fat. therefore fat people die.”
I was born before the “obesity epidimic” and the media “public service campaign” around it, & I remember a world where very few people would say out loud “fat person” with the freedom of contempt and condemnation they do today. Fatphobia has become we can hide alll out fears, and as you pt out, mask all our inequalities.
Oh, and there was a real “fat person who died” b/c the paramedica sat around making fun of how fat she was while she stroked out in front of them. I wrote abt it on my blog abt 1.5 years ago.
December 27th, 2009 at 9:13 am #
Or “That fat person died because the paramedics didn’t think that a fat wheelchair user in an untidy house had a life worth trying to save.”
http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2009/01/emergency-workers-accused-of-letting.html
Or, yes, what lauredhel said. Everybody dies. Thin, fat, in between, we all die sometime.
December 27th, 2009 at 10:38 am #
yeah, that’s what I was trying to get at with pointing to racism in the last one–that sometimes people die because they get hit by cars, or because they’re black or because they’re old, etc…and i remember that susurro…i can think of two cases since then that have happened….
December 27th, 2009 at 10:42 am #
and i was more thinking here of less obvious fatphobic incidences–because even assholes can see that a paramedic making fun of a fat person is hateful and systematically biased against fat people–what people have a harder time recognizing is that fatness is as susurro so succinctly put it–a place where we can hide all the structural and social inequalities and violences. if we can just say “s/he died because s/he was fat” then we don’t have to ever do anything about the two grocery stores in the entire city of detroit. or that Coke is sponsering our children’s education. etc.
because that structural corporate shit is not the problem, the real problem is that s/he couldn’t stop stuffing her face, right?
December 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am #
or, that fatness acts very much like queerness does here in the states. because of the supposed “choice” people have in being queer or not (or, in this case, being fat), queerness has been kept off of hate crimes legistlation/etc because it’s a “lifestyle choice” and if you protect a lifestyle choice with legistlation, hardline christians might not have the right to protest teh homosexuals any more. and thus you’d be infringing on a persecuted groups rights.
fatphobia acts in a very similar way–people are making the *choice* to be fat, right? so if you legislate things like “no fast food restaurants within three miles of any school” or “no soda advertising directed at children under 18″ then that means there are *repercussions* for the *real* persecuted group–the corporations that are losing out on their god given right to promote their product.
because it’s all a choice, right? and you have the choice to be fat or not to be. there are no structural inequalities that fatness is used to hide.
and isn’t it swell that fatness is a choice–unlike, say, blackness. social inequalities based on something that you can’t do anything about (like skin color) are a sin and should be legislated against, right?
December 27th, 2009 at 11:36 am #
in other words, maybe being fat is not a choice? but it’s not a choice in a “not a choice because I’m big boned” or “I have thyroidism” or “that’s just the way my family is” sort of way (although I am in no way disaparging any of those realities)–but in a structural reality way. In a “our bodies will show us the truth even if our mouths and fingers aren’t allowed to” sort of way.
December 27th, 2009 at 3:46 pm #
you wrote:
“That Fat Person died because s/he was eating poisonous garbage that our food system has passed off as food for the past 40 years!”
Bee Wilson’s Swindled is a great book that exposes how garbage has been passed off as food for a lot longer than 40 years. Highly recommended.
also, using the word “queer” tends to signify that the speaker rejects the language that people are “born gay” and have “no choice.” That doesn’t mean that it is wrong to think of oneself as “born gay”. Rather, it means that the political strategy is to de-emphasize the notion that people can’t help it and insist that there’s utterly nothing wrong or weird about a queer lifestyle since it isn’t any more or a less a lifestyle than a het lifestyle. http://www.queerbychoice.com/
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/queertheory.html
of course, the word’s been co-opted and is used by everyone now which is a shame. i preferred it when using it signified a particular political approach and rejection of the older gay / lesbian studies/theory approach which sought accomodation and assimilation. *sigh*
December 27th, 2009 at 5:26 pm #
Maybe she died because she was scared to sweat out her hair style.
Maybe she died because gym classes mostly serve to make everyone feel bad about sports and their body.
Of course, the maybe she just died, and was fat works too.
December 28th, 2009 at 3:42 am #
I can’t even wrap my mind around the fact that 1 woman died b/c of fatphobia let alone 3, & then I think abt that other pt “maybe she died b/c her health care provider wasn’t listening to her b/c she was fat” …
And I hear u on all the structural issues that we have built this whole “get fit” industry around to hide it. And that part of that industry is making “fat” a choice even as more and more prescription drugs include weight gain as a “minor” side-effect. But I’d also say the deaths sanabituranima and I mention aren’t as obvious as one might think. The whole thread on my post is a beat down between the “fat aint fit” folks (ie the ppl who hide behind health rhetoric to spread hatred of normal sized and large(r) women) and the women who love their bodies no matter what size; a woman died & ppl came by to make hamburger jokes. So it seems like all part of the same blindness & I think it is getting worse as a whole generation (or 2) have no grown up with this rhetorical blindness to oppressions written on our bodies.
FYI – Adios Barbie is looking to expand its writers/readers on the subject of healthy bodies no matter what size from intersectional perspectives.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:29 am #
oh, I don’t think it’s so much that it’s *obvious* why those people died, susurro–I think it’s more that—the *hate* that becomes so obvious when those deaths happen is obvious. You know what I mean? It’s more like–ok, a progressive that is interested in social justice (or even a liberal!) could read that hatered and see–aahhh, ok. That is hate. that is fat hate. there is no other word to use here.
but that same liberal/progressive will see Tim Russert die and go—ooooh, if only tim wasn’t so fat! We would still have him here with us! You know? And then maybe that progressive will start up a “anti-fat” campaign or 501c3 that works to end “youth obesity” by sending kids to camps. All so that Tim’s memory will be honored. and we’ll all know–you die from being fat.
So it’s not that I’m dismissing where you and sanabituranima are coming from by *any* means…I’m just thinking in a different direction, I think, than you two are–because I’ve been told once too often by people of color that “going to mc donalds’ is traitorous to ‘our cause’ even as the classism in that statement and every other ism in that statement. (think bill cosby here). i am thinking mostly of the horrific irony in the fact that it’s traitorous to ‘the cause’ for *esp* black folks but also other people of color to eat at fast food (mexican latinos have had huge issues with diabetes/high sugar related eating)—and yet–for so many of us, our bodies *are a symptom* of *being colored*–you know? diabetic overweight problems are happening *because we are Latino* and systematic racism is violating our bodies–
and when did any of us ever “have a choice* to not be subjected to racism?
December 28th, 2009 at 9:32 am #
oh, and I also want to complicate what I said about “our bodies as a symptom of being colored”–I say that without focusing exclusively on “fat” here (as in: it’s not just “fat” that is a “symptom”–and in fact, it’s probably one of the most unimportant “symptoms” if it even is a symptom for a particular body). and recognize the *complexity* of why different people are fat. and recognize that “losing weight” becomes a liberal (and even progressive and radical) way to address the *real* problem of diabetes which is the *real* symptom of racism–if we can just get them to lose weight (or, if we just cut off all women’s breasts, or, if we just force every woman to have a c-section, etc etc) then we don’t have address the *real* problem of the horrific state of our food chain, environmental pollution, colonial/imperial control of food, or or or or. you know?
December 28th, 2009 at 10:52 am #
reminds me very much of the language that was used to say that if NDNs just stopped eating fry bread… because it’s not the fry bread that is killing us. it’s the lack of anything other than fry bread. it’s the fact that fry bread – much as i love it & am proud to eat it – only came about because of colonialism to begin with.
reminds me of when i was first told that i was “borderline diabetic” and instructed that i could only have one carbohydrate item per meal. how i was told that means one tortilla and i gasped “it takes two tortillas to make one taco! and we eat three or four tacos!”. how it meant that i had to teach my Nicaraguan/Guatemalan/Mexican brothers i lived with to make a meal that didn’t include tortillas AND rice AND potatoes AND yucca AND corn on the cob… even though those things are a whole lot cheaper than the vegetables or meat – they are what stretches the meal. and at least we lived in walking distance of Dominican, Mexican & Korean owned stores that sold some fresh vegetables.
i’m sure that when i die it will be said that it’s because i’m fat. because all the yoga and walking and eating Lean Cuisine for lunch and dinner because it’s relatively cheap and low in calories and not buying chocolate and everything else has not caused me to lose one pound. on the contrary, no matter what i do i keep getting bigger. and it must be a choice, right? i must love that i have to buy new bras every three months and that i own only one pair of jeans and that all my dress pants for work that i already wear big are too tight. i must enjoy being called an “ugly fat b****” by kids on the bus. love being hit in the hips by the edges of people’s shopping carts and they look at me like how dare i take up so much space in the aisle. love being told that all the illnesses, including mental, are tied to being fat – even the illnesses that existed when i was a semi-starved 120 lbs. yep, i’m choosing this and loving every minute of it. being fat is a lot of fun, don’t you know?
December 29th, 2009 at 2:58 pm #
@Aaminah *hugs*
Wow. Sopme people really suck.