Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You

by Sofie Hagen

Fat is not an inherently negative word. Fat is, if anything, neutral. But it can be beautiful, it can be loved, it can be absolutely magnificent. You can be fat and sexy, fat and healthy, fat and happy

‘If you trace it back,’ Andrea would tell me, ‘every self-hating thought, every fat-hating feeling – it stems from somewhere. An advert, a character on a TV show, a fashion magazine, a weight-loss product. It’s not something you read in The Great Book Full of Facts. It always stems from an individual or a system. And often from an individual with a product to sell. You can see it happen – the worse you feel about yourself, the more money you throw at the problem. The more people doing this, the richer these companies will get. So they keep spreading the idea that you are not allowed to be fat, that fat is the worst thing you can be – so that you will throw even more money at them.’

Representation is directly connected to self-esteem – one of the most important traits to possess when asserting yourself in the world. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you believe that you matter more than others, you will place yourself in that position.

Then there would of course be all-men-are-jailed-Tuesdays. Men are allowed to talk but they can only talk to each other, because they are all in the same jail. Meanwhile, we would have a day where we did not consider the length of our skirts and where we did not need to place keys between our fingers on our way home at night. If a white van drove past us, we would just shout ‘Hi Betsy’ because it would probably just be Betsy in her white van again.

A lot of people tend to see social media as nothing but a platform for teenage girls to post selfies. But even if that’s the case, to me that is still inherently positive. A platform just for young women to decide exactly how the world gets to see them, instead of only seeing themselves portrayed on television mostly through the male gaze,fn11 often as nothing but a virtually mute sex symbol. We are so used to seeing women as objects through a man’s lens. When the woman holds the lens herself and directs it at her, that is powerful, regardless of filters and amounts of make-up. They use Photoshop to make us look the way they want us to look, so there is no reason why we cannot do the same.

Yet there is nothing revolutionary about a woman reacting to abuse with kindness. We are taught to step down, to be polite, to assist men and to make them feel better. We do not dare to say ‘no’ too many times because then we will be branded a ‘bitch’ and we apologise more frequently than men.

My fatness has always been met with either, ‘Do you know you are fat?’ or, ‘What are you doing about it?’ as if it is not even an option to just be fat. We are desperate to lose weight – and for people around us to lose weight too. It’s the reason it’s called diet culture. It’s the all-encompassing obsession with weight loss in an entire society. We live in a culture that praises weight loss and punishes weight gain, regardless of the reasons behind it.

We constantly have to reach an impossible standard in order to just be taken a little bit seriously, and you can’t help but wonder if it’s all a trick. If we are meant to be too busy applying lipstick to get involved with politics, business decisions and activism. When women are given the impossible task of having to ‘get thin and stay thin’, and when this is made the very minimum requirement to receive basic respect, we can see that this is less of a focus on beauty and more of a way of controlling women.

So maybe what you need to hold on to is right now. I know I am being very fridge magnet-y right now, but just like the magnet that says FRIENDS ARE THE FAMILY YOU CHOOSE FOR YOURSELF, it’s tacky and nauseating but true. The present. You cannot control what happens tomorrow and no amount of yoga or starvation can change that. We need right now to take a deep breath and exist. And do what makes us happy right now. Instead of trying to make things seemingly better for whatever fictional person we imagine we will be in five years, we can focus on who we are now.

It’s worth thinking about. That there are people and companies financially benefiting from the idea that there is an ‘obesity epidemic’ which is going to kill us all. And that the truth is, actually, it’s not that bad. The truth is it’s not as simple as equating ‘fat’ with ‘unhealthy’. That you can’t just look at another human

The lack of genuine concern here is obvious: people don’t interrogate thin people about their health in the same way. People don’t ask ‘but what about your health?’ under the photos of people going bungee jumping. There is not a moral outrage when a thin person posts a photo of them eating a burger or drinking a beer. There is actually a whole trend on YouTube of small, beautiful, cis women eating large amounts of food. It’s celebrated. When fat people eat food, it’s demonised. ‘You shouldn’t be eating – think of your health.’ These people are not concerned about our wellbeing. They don’t want us to be happy. They want us to not exist.

People who care listen. And if they will only listen, they will understand that shaming and discriminating against fat people is as damaging as they claim being fat is. If people actually listened, they would notice that Fat Liberation is about fat people’s right to live without being discriminated against. In the Fat Liberation Manifesto, published in 1973, which I’ve placed in the back of this book, two of the seven points are: ‘WE believe that fat people are fully entitled to human respect and recognition’, and ‘WE demand equal rights for fat people in all aspects of life … We demand equal access to goods and services in the public domain, and an end to discrimination against us in the areas of employment, education, public facilities and health services.’ These are our basic rights. Even if we were all unhealthy, that would be beside the point.

When we glorify health, we demonise and marginalise disease and disability. We cannot allow for the healthy to be seen as superior to those who are not healthy. We are all worthy of respect, regardless of what we eat or how much we exercise or whether or not we bother to make a smoothie in the morning.

If you continue to believe that fat is inherently a bad thing, you will spend the rest of your life fearing it. Each meal can become a threat. A life full of limitations, restrictions and negativity. All in order to become or stay thin. Most people live like this – because we have been taught that thin means happy. Look at those beautiful and thin women in the diet ads, laughing at salads. Who would not want to be so happy that they find themselves erupting into laughter over lettuce?

You do not have to be thin to be happy. You do not have to be thin to feel good about yourself. You do not have to be thin to be loved and wanted. You do not have to be thin to think you are sexy and beautiful. You do not have to be thin to do yoga or to go swimming, to wear a bathing suit or a crop top, you do not have to be thin to follow your dreams.fn11 You do not have to be thin.

Body currency goes a little something like this: Through mainstream media and advertising, we are all being sold this idea, that if only we work hard enough and spend enough money, we will achieve happiness. If only we go to the gym, shave our woman legs, put make-up on our faces, get muscly man arms, get a tan, a nose job, a tight butt, I mean: fill in the gaps yourself. Every single one of these cost you so much time and so much money, so you can put an actual price on your ‘looks’. The reward for this expense is supposed to be happiness, freedom. So when people see someone fat – or someone not conventionally attractive, someone not following the rules – someone fat with hairy legs, wearing no make-up in a crop top, someone living an unapologetic and happy life – people lose their shit.

As long as ‘thin you’ is a possibility, a goal, something that could be reality one day, it is difficult to accept and embrace your fatness. Killing your inner thinnie does not have to mean that you are not allowed to ever lose weight. It means that you choose yourself and who you are now. Look at your body right now. Imagine that this is it. This is you for the rest of your life. That there will never be a thinner version. Even if you have decided to embark on a diet, if you have just started a new sport, if you feel absolutely confident that you will definitely be thin one day: imagine that you will not. Insert your fat self into those future situations in which you imagine yourself being thin. Your wedding day, the beach in the summer, the date with that cute person. Throw out the jeans that are too small, and stop using photos of yourself as motivation to starve yourself. Live your life as if you will have this body forever – because then you start living for you and not for an imaginary version of you in the future.

Fat people deserve to be treated better. Even those who stubbornly insist that fatphobia only stems from the desire to help people to be healthy and feel good about themselves, must admit that this has not helped so far – in fact, it has only made it worse. If they are truly in the business of making life better for fat people then surely they will have to be open to the idea that maybe treating fat people well would be something worth trying.