Saturday 13 February 2016

Fat Shame, Fat Solidarity, and The 'You Should Message Me If' Box on OKCupid

Content note: This post is about fatness, about love, and about eating disorders. It made me sad and angry to write it, but it has a happy ending, so I hope you can read through to it.

For years as a teenager I struggled with bulimia. In my early twenties, I stopped making myself sick. As a consequence, I put on three stone or so. Being twenty-one and weighing fourteen stone, is, to put it mildly, Not Very Nice. I couldn't buy clothes that fitted me. I got abuse in the street. I was ignored waiting to buy drinks at bars. My sexuality was a joke. Fucking me was embarrassing: people did, but they definitely didn't talk about it afterwards.

It was shit. And because of this shitness, I worked on the assumption that everything bad that happened to me was because of my weight. If people didn't want to be my friend, it was because I was too fat. If people didn't want to go out with me, it was for the same reason. Ditto jobs: I considered applying to work as a teacher, but thought that I wouldn't be able to deal with kids taunting me for my body.

I'm sure that often this wasn't true. I'm sure that many of the people that I thought looked down on me because I was fat were often simply responding to the fact that I behaved like a puppy that had just been kicked in the teeth, and was waiting for the next blow to fall. Looking back on that time, one of the things that saddens me most is not the shitty treatment (that just makes me angry), but all the friendships that I missed out on; all the nights out that ended in me sobbing hysterically into my pillow because I thought no one would ever love me; all the relationships that I might have had, if I hadn't been convinced that my weight meant that there was something wrong with me.

Fast forward 9 years, and I don't know where I stand on the fat-to-not-fat-scale (where 'fat' is equivalent to 'unacceptable, unloveable, unfuckable'). Weight loss and age have blurred these distinctions. I have worked, long and hard, not to care about this. I have worked, long and hard, to feel in my bones that I am not the problem. I have worked, long and hard, to believe that the problem is people who don't want to fuck women because they're too fat. Whether I weigh 11 stone or 14 does not make any palpable difference to this position.

However, there is now some ambiguity about whether I count as fat or not (where 'not-fat' is equivalent to 'acceptable, loveable, fuckable'), and the space in which this most clearly plays out is on dating websites, one of which I have recently rejoined. However, despite all the things I have mentioned above, I still get The Fear. Do my photos accurately represent what I look like? Will I go on a date with someone only to see their face fall as I walk over to them? It doesn't matter how much I weigh: this anxiety is always with me. Always with many, if not most of us. To constantly be aware that you might accidnetally be arranging to go on a date with a person who believes that they are capable of loving someone who weights 8 stone, or 9 or 10, but not someone who weighs 12, or 13, or 20, is bullshit, full stop.

It's time to SHAME THE SHAME, PEOPLE. It's time to make it perfectly clear that there are many men in the world for whom being fat or not-fat is not a fucking issue. It's time to show that it's not shameful to be fat, but it is shameful to believe that your sexual status is determined by what size clothes your girlfriend wears. Because that belief - you know, the one which says that fat people might be fine, but they'd just be a bit better if they weighed less; that there's always room for improvement - where 'improvement' means 'being a more not-fat' - is what leads to the abuse and the crying and the sense of loss, of a life not properly lived, on the one hand. It leads to the self-starvation, and the sleepless nights, and the hospitalisation on the other. It leads to every kind of heartbreak in between.

We can all do without that. It's time to get these men to question their assumptions, to ask themselves what kind of person they want to be, and which side they're on. So, BIG U.S.A style rant over: what to do? What steps can we take to turn the tables? I've had an idea. It's not a very big one; I don't expect it to dismantle all of patriarchy in one fell swoop, but it might go somewhere. My idea is this:

In the 'You Should Message Me If' box on my OKCupid profile, I have written this: 'You should message me if it hasn't crossed your mind that these photos might be 'deceptive', or that I might be 'tricking' you into wasting your time by going out for a drink with someone who's slightly fatter, or slightly less fat, than these photos suggest.This is not to do with how 'accurate' or not the photos are. It's not to do with how fat or thin I am. It's because if that's how you think, then I don't want to hear from you. It's because I don't want to talk to, or fuck, or be in a relationship with, someone who is a waste of time.'

I want the people who look at my profile to know that regardless of whether they think that I, personally, have an acceptably shaped human body, if they think that way, they can Fuck. Right. Off. I urge you to do the same, whatever your size, whatever your gender. This horseshit affects all of us, and good God, I am bored of it.

Solidarity for ever! Shame to the Shamers! Thanks and goodnight!

1 comment:

  1. Wow, just wow. Geo this is such a moving blog, and I totally agree with you. I love the concept that this superficial and image concious world of online dating we've evolved into should come with a disclaimer. If you're not worth my time you should just fuck off.
    You're an incredible, strong and lovely person, one day someone who deserves you will see this.
    Mish xx

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