Workplace Food Police

When I was in college, I had a co-op position at a local engineering firm where I worked in their marketing department. The head of the department was a large, loud man who generally rubbed me the wrong way. But there was one day of that 6-month job that still stands out to me, 20+ years later. Someone brought in donuts or something for the department and all of us, including him, gleefully enjoyed them. Though during our enjoyment, he turned to me and said something about how I shouldn’t enjoy them too much. I think he actually nudged me with his elbow to show that he was being kindly and just giving me good advice. I felt the shame wash over me as I looked down at my plate. I held back tears as I went back to my desk and looked loathingly at the food I had just been enjoying.

All of 20 years old at most, I had no idea how to deal with this food shaming by someone who was in power over me, much less an older man commenting on my body. Somehow, I found the courage to confront him about it later that day, no longer able to hold back my tears. His excuse was that he was just joking with me, in solidarity, because hey, he’s large, too, and he shouldn’t be eating that stuff either. It was a perfect experience of internalized fat hatred and misogyny rolled into one awful experience.

Today, I know better how to handle these kinds of things, but as this article in the Atlantic points out, workplace food policing is still an “acceptable” form of workplace bonding.

Source: Atlantic Article

It’s not unusual for conversations about food to take place, especially when the only time coworkers often get a chance to socialize is during lunch. Noting what your fellow coworkers are eating, especially if it smells particularly good, is a normal human interaction. But it too often veers into commenting on one another’s diet and food choices, up to and including making judgements about the kinds of food they’re eating.

“I really ought to be eating a salad today because last night I was so tired that we just ordered some pizzas. I ate four whole pieces myself and now I feel totally bloated.”

How often have you heard a conversation starter like that as the same person eats a slice of leftover pizza in front of you? Moreover, how often has that conversation then devolved into rounds and rounds of self-deprecating commiseration over their own poor food choices or lack of exercise? It’s practically inescapable on a normal day, but then there’s the dreaded “workplace health challenge.” Then these conversations are completely unavoidable.

Source: The Atlantic.

My current workplace has the “Chubber Club,” an annual weight-loss challenge that takes place in the new year to shed the holiday weight after all that indulgence. The best thing I can say about it is that the weigh-ins are done in private and only the people who choose to participate get the updates/information/etc. But you can always tell who is involved because everyone is suddenly talking about “what they are doing” to lose the weight and “win.” Oh, and the scale is in a prominent public area that also holds our snacks, just in case you might want to check your weight before you decide what to eat.

It’s so disheartening to come up against it every year, especially when I’m trying to fight my own body-positive fight from my tiny little corner of the office. I don’t think the conversations about food and diet are ever going away, but if we can all recognize some of the basic facts, I think we can keep these conversations from being toxic:

• Weight is not an indicator of health

• Weight loss is not always desirable or an indicator of good health (see those with eating disorders or extreme health issues)

• Fat shaming is harmful to fat people’s health

• Disordered eating is widespread and dangerous (in fact, it’s possible we don’t even know how widespread disordered eating actually is)

The most important thing that everyone can do—coworkers, friends, family, everyone—is mind your damn business. If you can’t do that, at least be kind. You might not know what someone is struggling with on any given day.

When Fat-Shaming Gets a Presidential Platform

I had no idea who Marianne Williamson was until I started hearing her name in a positive light after the first set of Democratic Presidential debates. Mostly people seemed to consider her a joke, but apparently she had scored some points during that first debate. So as the second debates grew closer, I started paying closer attention to the people further afield from my chosen favorites. That’s where I came across this opinion article from MSNBC and learned that Marianne Williamson isn’t just far afield in political polls; in my opinion she’s far afield from reality.

It’s true that she says some things that make sense regarding social, cultural, and racial justice, including advocating for slavery reparations, which her fellow candidates seem hesitant to do. But the MSNBC article does a very good job of taking apart her dangerous rhetoric that centers all bad things on the individual for not “loving” themselves or their enemies or apparently anything enough. In Williamson’s world, depression can be cured by increasing spiritual wellness, so that antidepressants aren’t necessary and patients with HIV can cure themselves by trusting in God.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/marianne-williamson-s-democratic-debate-performance-raised-eyebrows-she-s-ncna1035956

There’s really no better example of her toxic rhetoric than her approach to fat people. Williamson has written several self-help books, and of course one of them is geared solely to women on losing weight.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/marianne-williamson-s-democratic-debate-performance-raised-eyebrows-she-s-ncna1035956

The article provides a link to Williamson’s book on Google books, so you can poke around it for yourself. I thought that it couldn’t possibly be this bad, but it is. This is just from the first few pages of the first chapter:

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=9QCpUYKTwKwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+course+in+weight+loss&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihip-457njAhXSK80KHcGJDYkQ6wEIMDAB#v=onepage&q&f=false

This is abhorrent and the implications of it make me want to vomit. On the surface, Williamson’s beliefs are all about “love”, but dig just a little bit and it’s the gaslighting “you’re this way because you don’t love yourself enough” kind of love. It’s hate masquerading as love and concern, which is something that fat people have had more than their fill of.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/marianne-williamson-s-democratic-debate-performance-raised-eyebrows-she-s-ncna1035956

It’s not a leap to think that people who believe in Williamson’s way of thinking would feel free to stigmatize fat people, to their faces, which as I previously wrote, is actually more harmful than the fat we carry around.

There has always been a fat-shaming problem, and politics is certainly no exception. The rhetoric on the left about Trump’s body has shown that over and over again. Williamson is certainly not the first person to be running for president that hates fat people, but to have someone running for president who has written a whole book on how fat people are just full of twisted and disordered thinking is just another symptom of this weird political time that we are in.

Never Nothing to Write

Every time I think I’m going to run out of things to write, something happens to remind me that this work is hard and ongoing and there are too many assholes out there to name. Forever 21 will decide to start sending diet bars to their online customers or there’ll be another awesome t-shirt that doesn’t come in anything like my size or one of a thousand other microaggressions that might come our way. As of this writing, I have been doing this blog twice a week for 3 months and I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the things there are to talk about. I am so, so grateful to everyone who has shared and commented and encouraged me so far.

Being in a fat body is hard work, and sometimes it gets the better of the best of us. Today was a hard day for me. One knee in particular decided to be problematic and cause me lots of pain. I didn’t manage to accomplish everything I wanted to and it left me feeling defeated.

Body positivity doesn’t mean you are going to love your body all the time. Sometimes it is enough to get through a day with your soul and spirit intact and you need to celebrate that. And when you can’t is when you need the members of your fat community to step in and help lift you up, remind you that there are too many assholes in the world, and give you the strength to face tomorrow. Because if you can celebrate your body each day, even a little (even when everything hurts), it makes the world so much easier to take.

Fat Stigma Stokes Paralyzing Fear

Anyone who does work in the body positive and fat acceptance space will eventually have the same epithet hurled at their feet: You’re glorifying obesity!

What people really mean is they can’t understand how anyone would want to live in a fat body. It sounds like a nightmare to them. A guarantee for a loveless, sexless life full of disease and a premature death.

THAT is the stigma that a person in a fat body has to fight against Every. Single. Day. And over the last several months, I have read more than one article that says it’s not the fat that’s killing us… it’s the stigma. The stigma against our bodies, the hatred—internal and external—of our bodies is harming us more than our fat ever will.

Take this article from January in FiveThirtyEight:

“Even perceiving yourself as overweight when you aren’t is linked to poorer health down the line.” The PERCEPTION of being fat is harmful to your health. Because “beauty standards” are impossible to meet and yet we as a group hold people to them until they are literally dying because of it. The rest of the article veers off into a ham-fisted discussion of weight loss and personal responsibility and how science is JUST NOW figuring out that weight is not as simple as calories in and calories out (though everyone in HAES could have told you that a long time ago), but the main topic remains: “If the public health goal is to curb obesity and improve health, stigma just makes everything worse.”

A recent entry in the Scientific American blog takes it a step further:

This gets directly to the core of the issue. Fat hatred has it’s roots deep in discriminatory and bigoted behavior and it does nothing but harm people.

I really want to quote the ENTIRE blog post because so, so much of it is on point. But this is really the crux of the issue:

Linda Bacon and Amee Severson correctly place the blame at the feet of systemic injustice. Because hatred is intersectional. These issues are not just about fat people, but queer people, people of color, and every other marginalized group. An inclusive society helps EVERYONE be healthier.

Fear is a paralytic. It keeps people where they are and doing the things they have always done. I am part of a community of fat people who encourage healthy and joyful movement and day after day I read their stories about going to the gym to celebrate what their bodies can do only to be used as some thin-person’s “inspiration” or to be “congratulated” for doing something to be healthier. Or, worst, to be made fun of for being fat while at the simple act of exercising.

No one can be healthier until this kind of shit doesn’t happen. Until we can all get clothes we are comfortable in and can move in without a major sports brand being taken to task for “glorifying obesity.”

Every day that I step out of my door challenges the agenda of fat hatred. Every day that I put on clothes that I like, that complement my body, is a radical act of fat acceptance. And I long for the day that it isn’t.

Corporate Complicity in Fat Phobia

As anyone who walks through the world in a fat body knows, fat phobia and fat hatred are EVERYWHERE. It’s a systemic problem that manifests in ways big and small but always results in the same message: Your body is wrong the way it is and needs to be changed to fit our arbitrary standards.

All sorts of companies and industries support this message. Some of them are obvious tools of the diet industry and can be more or less avoided. Which makes it especially jarring when fat phobia is encountered in an unexpected place, like Macy’s.

Source: https://twitter.com/alieward

According to this article in USA Today Macy’s has already responded and removed the plates from the single store where they were located in NYC. The plates were created by a company called Pourtions, which created the product to center on the “important issue of portion control.” Which is just a euphemism for restrictive and disordered eating. The implicit message, peddled exclusively to women in the case of the larger plate, is eat less.

"It’s about using shame to peddle products to women who are all too aware of what parameters society wants for our bodies: not too matronly, not too large, not too fit or then they’re vain (expletive)," Ward said." It’s all a mind game to steal our attention and once you’re aware of that machine, you can’t unsee it."

I first came across these when Jameela Jamil retweeted Alie Ward’s tweet. And the horror and revulsion at them was almost overwhelming. I’m fortunate to not have struggled with an eating disorder, but can you imagine someone who has coming across these while on a shopping trip? Can you imagine having your self-worth attacked out of nowhere by a set of plates??

How about when you open up a shipment of clothes from a store and find an Atkins “snack bar” inside? Well, that’s what’s happened to people who bought clothes online from Forever 21. It was initially reported that Forever 21 was only putting the diet bars inside orders of plus size clothes, which is truly horrifying, but a statement from the company asserts that all customers received the diet product as a “free test product” that has since been removed.

Look, eating disorders are real, and getting an unsolicited diet product sent to you out of nowhere I imagine would be extremely triggering, like ordering food delivery and getting a dick pick inside. I don’t have a lot to add to Jezebel’s commentary on the issue.

In both cases, WHAT THE FUCK were they thinking? This kind of corporate complicity in proliferating fat phobia is, on the face of it, unwitting. In which case, how can that possibly be? Body positivity isn’t new, it isn’t a fad, and it isn’t going away. Fat people are tired as fuck of this shit and we’re getting louder and louder about it. It’s time for everyone to pay attention.

Taking Up Space with Joy

I’m an occasional soccer fan, but like most people, I followed the US Women’s National Team during their run and ultimate win of the Women’s World Cup earlier this month. A hero to me quickly emerged in the form of Megan Rapinoe and her purple-haired brashness. Seeing someone be the best at what they do is intoxicating, and Rapinoe is arguably the best of the best in her sport. Best of all, she made lots and lots of people who think that she’s “too much” or “arrogant” really, really angry. I enjoyed watching their apoplexy as she just destroyed them over and over.

Source: Getty images.

One of the things that made people so angry was her celebratory pose. I wondered what about this stance was creating this reaction, and then I read this article by Alison Reiheld in the International Journal of Feminist Approach to Bioethics blog that talks about how women, maybe especially women athletes, are affected by the social norms of being constrained and encouraged to remain small. To not get too big. To not take up too much space. In this pose, Rapinoe makes herself big, standing up and opening her arms wide, welcoming the absolutely deserved adoration of the crowd. It’s not what a woman is “supposed” to do, and people stuck in antiquated social norms get angry about it.

As a person just trying to exist in a fat body, let alone a woman in said fat body, I am all too familiar with the pathology of not wanting to take up too much space. I try not to make contact with people as I slide past them in a restaurant (despite the fact that the tables are too close together for anyone to realistically achieve that goal). I hold my legs, knees, and elbows in on public transportation or an airplane lest someone complain about all of my fat getting into their personal space.

I went on a family vacation recently, and the one thing I wanted to do more than anything was get in the outdoor pool. I love to be in the water and I haven’t had regular access to a pool for a few years. I’m not sure I even realized how much I missed it until my wife took a picture of me in the water and I saw the unrestrained joy on my face. That is a joy that comes from being able to move my body exactly the way I wanted to, from being able to take up space in the water. Even there, though, I was driven out of my joy by too many people near me and not feeling comfortable in what felt like their space.

I don’t want to let my fear of taking up space rob me from joyful movement anymore. Reiheld says in her post that in Rapinoe’s victory pose she also sees women like fat yoga teacher and body positivity advocate Jessamyn Stanley, among others. Reiheld says, “They are all taking up space and claiming the right to exist without being made small.” Rapinoe is my hero for her refusal to be made small, among so, so many other things. I found a pool not too far from me that has hours that will fit my life, and I intend to go find my joy again, to take up space.

“But joy in one’s own body and what this actual body can do in this actual world? That’s well-being. That’s flourishing,” Reiheld says. And I intend to flourish.

Fat and Disabled and Not Alone

This weekend I was reminded why I like going to cons and why especially a small con is a wonderful place to be. These are new friends waiting to be made and old friends that you might see once a year, and there’s few places where I feel so completely that I belong. Even in my fat, disabled body.

I’ve been going to Shore Leave regularly for well over a decade. It’s how I met my best friend in the entire world. Over the years, we’ve seen it grow, shrink, change, stay the same, and kind of everything in between. One thing that hasn’t changed, and I hope will never change, is the basic decency of the people who attend. I used my rollator (a rolling walker with a seat) for the first time at Shore Leave. Using an assistive device in a crowded place is always anxiety-producing, so I was naturally concerned about being able to get around okay. Especially in the dealer’s room, which is always packed and has pretty narrow walkways. I was afraid of having to confront annoyance or hostility as I got in people’s way with my fat body and my rollator. But all I got was understanding and accommodation. As best as people could, they tried to make room for me to get through the aisles and hallways, always apologetic if they didn’t realize they were in my way. Even when someone tripped over my wheels, they apologized to me for bumping into me instead of being upset that I was in their way.

As I looked around the con from the vantage point of my rollator seat, I realized that I was not alone. First, I was with my people. And second, there are many of us who need help and accommodation and devices to get around. We were all there for each other in some small way, through the chaos of the photo op lines and the getting in and out of doors. I know fandom spaces are not always so kind and welcoming. There are plenty of stories of people with scooters or wheelchairs or assistive devices being demeaned and vilified for getting “special treatment” or harassed because they are not perceived as “needing” a wheelchair or scooter. And I was prepared to deal with that. And I was so, so pleased that I didn’t have to.

The end result was that I had an awesome weekend with my best friends, the three I traveled there with and the other couple thousand that were around. And I got to do the things I wanted to do, mainly have my picture taken with a Star Trek icon, and two awesome humans who also happen to be pretty good actors in Star Trek: Discovery. I’m a fan, and I’m fat and disabled, and I am so, so not alone.

Ethan Peck (Spock), me, and Anson Mount (Captain Pike), Star Trek: Discovery. Photo copyright Maggie Birge-Caracappa. Do not use without permission.

Tips for Soothing a Hostile World

The world is terrifying. There are so many things wrong and it feels like things are spiraling out of control. Going through the world in a fat body adds layers of complexity and anxiety to just existing. But this article of 51 Ways to Make the World Less Hostile to Fat People offers some good points. I recommend it to everyone who needs a little encouragement and maybe needs a little help feeling like they’re not imagining the way the world is against them.

Here are a few that particularly resonated with me:

This. THIS THIS THIS shit right here. From October right through to New Year’s Eve, everything is about parties and food and indulging with family and friends. And then BOOM. January 1 and its diet industry palooza. We must now attempt to shrink ourselves down and then fail so that by October we can start the cycle all over again.

When fat people tell you that things are terrible for them, believe them. Commiserate with them. But don’t pretend you understand if you haven’t experienced systemic fatphobia and hatred yourself.

Every time my office asks for suggestions, I ask for visitor chairs without arm rests. Up until I asked for a new office chair, there wasn’t a single chair in the entire office that I could comfortably fit into. There’s also a really good Twitter feed called Can We All Go that points followers to inclusive and accessible stores, restaurants, etc. If thin people contribute to gathering this information, it helps make them aware of the lack of inclusivity that we face on a daily basis. I am so tired of squeezing my hips into chairs and finding bruises days later.

So boosting this article to other fat people feels a bit like preaching to the choir. But if you’re a thin person reading this blog, read the article. And then share it with your thin friends. Then put these 51 tips into practice. Unlearning fatphobic behaviors takes time, but these are a really, really good place to start.

The Radical Act of Seeking Medical Care While Fat

Most of the time, going to the doctor while fat feels a lot like this. You come in for a specific ailment or really just for a regular check up, and all the doctor wants to speak with you about is diet and weight loss.

There’s no really easy way to combat this, and it requires a lot of emotional energy to fight back against it. Even doing research and trying to find a HAES friendly doctor doesn’t get you 100% what you want all the time. If your ailment is commonly recognized in the medical community as having weight as a factor, such as diabetes or heart disease, then the conversation is almost impossible to avoid.

There are all kinds of resources out there for helping you know what to say when confronted with this situation such as, “What kind of intervention would you prescribe for a thin patient presenting with the same symptoms?” These tools are helpful, but do require the patient to have the emotional and mental energy to deal with confronting a person of power. Many times, it’s easier just to avoid going to the doctor at all.

I feel very lucky that a recent encounter with my doctor went the way it did. I have recently had to start medical intervention for my type 2 diabetes. We were managing it with lifestyle changes alone, but suddenly, as is the way with diabetes, things changed. I mentally steeled myself for having to confront my doctor about diet and weight loss and food restriction. I’m a diet survivor and leading with that is usually helpful. To my surprise, she never mentioned weight loss or changing my diet. She asked me to try to reduce my stress, take better care of myself, and start taking medicine, which is a reasonable medical request. Most of us aren’t so lucky.

What I want you to know is that you’re not alone. It can be so hard to find a community of like-minded fat people who also refuse to discuss intentional weight loss and only want to offer support for wherever you are with your journey of fat acceptance. But they are out there. I know it is tempting to just stop seeking medical care. It is a radical act of courage. If changing doctors to find someone more HAES focused isn’t possible, see if a friend or supportive family member can come with you to give you the emotional and mental boost you might need to make it through. We’re here for you. You’re not alone.

Summertime While Fat

Existing while fat is hard enough when it’s not 90-degrees Fahrenheit and 100% humidity out, but then when it is that hot and humid, it becomes a whole other minefield to negotiate.

Twitter user roo_jenna was followed into her church bathroom and berated by a church leader for the crime of wearing jean shorts while fat. The video is hard to watch, but kudos to Jenna for standing up for herself and recording this woman who wanted to forbid Jenna from singing and leading worship because of her fat hatred. Jenna lives in North Carolina, where it is hot approximately all the damn time.

And that’s just one instance that one person experienced in the last few days. This fat hatred is constant and it only gets amplified in the summer.

Look, it’s HOT out there. Being fat means sweat and sweat in places that are supremely uncomfortable. A body needs air flow so that the sweat can evaporate off of the skin. So sometimes we show our legs and our arms and (gasp) sometimes even our bellies. No one gets to shame another person for wanting to be comfortable, regardless of their size. So the next time you see a person (fat or not) wearing a short skirt, or a tank top, or a crop top, or a bikini, and you feel like offering your opinion on whether they can or should be wearing them, just keep it to yourself and mind your damn business. It’ll be better for everyone involved.