Day Four - Resolutions

The beginning of a new calendar year brings with it, for many, an urge to make resolutions for the year ahead. And for many, those resolutions involve losing weight. The weight loss industry is aware of this. Every January our TV screens, magazines, billboards, internet ads and radios are filled with advertising for organised diets, meal plans, exercise clothing and equipment, shakes, and all other manner of weight reduction propaganda in approximately double the usual prevalence. We are reminded of the value, and in contrast the worthlessness, of fat bodies.

I understand that for a lot of people they feel better when their weight is below a certain number or clothing size. I have been told by many friends, who are thoughtful and considerate people, keen to not perpetuate fatphobic societal attitudes, that their weight loss or maintenance efforts are less about not being fat, and more about feeling comfortable in their skin. Or about how their body functions. Or their gender identity. I can understand the function argument, I have always been fat, and never been very inclined to physical activities like running or playing sports, but even I can recognise that my body moved with greater ease when I weighed less. There was less effort, less pain, and greater freedom. I can also understand how extra weight, the curves and roundness of it, can negatively impact the dysmorphia of a transman. I can absolutely relate to a lower body weight meaning less pain and difficulty for someone with joint or back complaints. I'm also very conscious, as someone who has lived 40+ years as a fatty (of varying degrees), that these are not the reasons that the diet industry pushes the new years resolutioning of weight loss.

The fatphobia that is perpetuated by the media and the weight-loss industry is so pervasive that I can't help but wonder sometimes where the line is between weight-loss/maintenance for function, versus unconscious conformity to “acceptable” form. We're force-fed this ideal to aspire to, an ideal that relies on hunger for social acceptance and approval being greater than the hunger for food. An ideal that feeds, and feeds off, our insecurities. It's a common trope in body-positivity circles, and most minority communities, that being happy within yourself is key. That it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of your body (or clothing, or sexuality, or ethnicity etc) as long as you are happy with yourself. Humans are a herd animal, we crave acceptance, and one of the most reliable ways to gain that is by conforming to the dominant standards of the community we live in. Regardless of the alternate and subversive minority communities we build around ourselves, we all still live within the global community that is dominated by media and advertising that feeds us this aspirational ideal of thinness. To withstand that pressure requires a constant active assertion of will, but even that is not enough. It requires finding a community that provides not only the support and encouragement to reject the conformity pressure of the broader community, but also provides the approval and acceptance that fortifies us against insecurity. And it requires having people who love us exactly as we are. Right now.

I'm not one for making new years resolutions, but if I were going to, my resolutions would be:

1. To continue to love the people in my life, exactly as they are, and make sure that they know that, every single day.
2. Actively contribute to the building of communities that challenge, disrupt, and reject the dominant paradigm.

I really believe that this is the only way we will ever change the narrative of the global community from one of aspirational body shapes, to aspirational wellbeing.  And that's the world I want to live in. 

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