A Few Thoughts On Weight And Class

(Reposted from Tumblr)

I think that we see that manifested in a lot of the FA/HAES movement. I did grow up in a rural, poor community, and the issues facing men and women there are not the result of a fat shaming society. there is, weirdly, more pressure there to eat poorly and not exercise than there is pressure to conform to mainstream standards of beauty, if that makes sense: men and women generally accept that it’s no big deal if you become obese, and that those things are generally beyond your control. (i often run and walk when i go home and people go crazy because they think it’s so weird. people stop their cars and ask if i need a ride. The response is often, too, “you weren’t athletic in high school!” in other words, active is something you are or aren’t, and it’s not something you can urge yourself to be.) that community suffers the opposite problem of upper-middle class America, and I think the FA/HAES community doesn’t see themselves as coming from a privileged place in this regard. -- quadmoniker from PostBourgie

I’m almost hesitant to quote this given that the author of this quote is the same person who penned the “Fat and Health” post at Feministe last year which resulted in a shitstorm of epic proportions, but there’s a lot here that really resonates with me. I also grew up in an environment where there was a lot of disdain toward “healthy” food. Too often, it’s argued that not everyone has access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which is true, and that poor or working-class people just don’t know how to choose the right foods; ergo, we must teach them. Which is false. We know very well that broccoli is a “better choice” than a piece of candy — and yeah, I’m using scare quotes because there actually are times when calorie-laden, full-fat foods are the better choice, like, when you don’t have enough food. That these are presented as the only obstacles that prevent people from making better food choices bugs the hell out of me. The latter is unbelievably patronizing, and why should what I eat be of any concern to you in the first place? 

I never got the message from my family that I needed to be thin. If anything, I got the opposite message that I was “too skinny” (I wasn’t), and needed to eat more. I have a somewhat unusual situation that one side of my family recently immigrated to the US and the other rural, poor Midwesterners. I’m not saying this to paint myself as a special snowflake, but I never feel like my experience fits the narrative, so I usually keep my mouth shut. Food was something you had the money for, or didn’t. 

Truth is, I practice sort of a HAES-like program. I don’t own a scale (I’m a tallish, sturdy person, and that number on the scale would never be “small” anyway), I try to focus on how I feel and I don’t label foods bad or good, but I feel like any criticism of HAES is anathema to being a good ally.