The Post Bag: Letters To Squall

Fat, Proud & Angry

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 61.

Dear Squall

I read your paper because, unlike most publications, you present news in such a way that is relevant to my life. However, I was dismayed by a couple of things in the Autumn ’95 edition, and I’m writing to encourage you to sort out your heads.

Firstly, in the story “Britain Gets Fatter” (p 11), I was disappointed to read the same old journalistic scare stories about “an explosion in obesity”. Writing about a government paper tempered to appease the profits-at-any-cost food industry is one thing, but pinning it on people’s fears and prejudices about fat people is quite another.

Let’s start at the beginning: fat people are part of the glorious diversity of the spectrum of human body shapes. Fatness is ordinary. Our bodies have less to do with greed and lack of exercise than a genetic predisposition towards fatness. Different cultures also have varying standards of body size acceptability. Because almost all fat people in Western cultures, especially women, live in a society which loathes our bodies, there is a lot of pressure on us to lose weight. Many of us are constantly on diets, some experience eating disorders, and some of us are considering weight-loss surgery, such as stomach stapling. In recent years medical research, but more significantly grass-roots organisations, have shown that a prolonged history of dieting, and the stress of living in a fat-phobic culture, are the signifiers of ill-health in fat people, not fatness itself.

People who are fat often grow up with low self-esteem. My mum put me on my first diet when I was seven, it taught me that I was unacceptable. Mum felt the same way and in my teens we dieted together, a fucked-up mother/daughter alliance. As adults we have to contend with a lot of stuff that is invisible to thinner people, for example it is not unusual for people to shout at me in public, and the reason I look daggy is that your cool clothes stop at size 14. Fat people are getting really angry about this sort of treatment, and we are beginning to organise. You might like to contact The Fat Women’s Newsgroup at the WHEEL, 4 Wild Court, London WC2B 5AU, who produce an excellent newsletter, Fat News. In the States there is a lot more going on, particularly through zine culture and the Internet. Check out the excellent Fat Girl, a zine for fat dykes and the women who want them at 2215-R Market St. 193, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA. (email: airborn@sirius.com).

Having to educate people about fat politics is a real drag, especially those in the counter-culture who should know better. There are Squall stories throughout this issue. Perhaps you’d like to commission something about how the Health of Nations task force for eradicating obesity (whose members include prominent weight-loss proponents who are often representatives of commercial dieting corporations) have affected fat people. How we are afraid that healthcare may be withheld from us unless we lose weight (but then again this already happens). Or you could mention that dieting industries in Britain are big business, and are motivated more by profit than by by the good health of their clients, or that some of the artificial sweeteners in low calorie foods available in Britain have been banned in other countries or appear with warnings because they are thought to be carcinogenic? Work it out for yourselves.

Secondly, being portrayed as ugly and lazy is one thing, but if I see another satirical cartoon which depicts fat people as evil, rich, scheming, greedy capitalists I’m going to scream. Uh oh, I’ve just turned to page 45. AAAAAH! Oh look, there’s another one on page 70 AAAAAAAAAARGH! Cut it out right now. Fat people are amongst the poorest socio-economic demographic, the fattest social group in Britain being older black women. Go to a rich area of town and count how many fat people you see, then hang round Archway, or Stratford where I live, and compare your findings. Rich scumbags and rip-off McBastards spend their lunch hours working out at expensive exercise clubs. The body of corporate greed these days is aerobicised and liposuctioned. Stop misrepresenting people like me.

Charlotte Cooper
Stratford
London E15