Don’t read the comments: A fat girl’s audacity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is a story about my experience of delivering messages of health in a fat body. Of course, there’s a breadth of experience of feeling the world’s resistance to this, both from a fat prejudice and shaming perspective, and because it’s destabilizing for people. Me standing at a microphone in this body talking about what healthy food is and how people should eat creates lots of dissonance in people’s minds, as it challenges their existing notions of good health, and who the experts are. What grows from this though, is the idea of my own internal conflict, the disconnect between the inside and outside versions of me, and the fact that my personal is inextricably political. And even further, there was a moment a few years ago when I realized that my hesitation about not feeling entitled to have an opinion about healthy eating (and share it publicly), was actually standing in the way of the growth of the revolution that I’m trying to wage. If I absorbed all of everyone else’s opinions about being a fat person talking about health, I’d likely retreat, and cash in my chips. I had to reconcile the versions of me that exist here, and reject the hateful shame that this world constantly dumps on me. I had to decide to choose my own truth over other people’s bullshit, and the terrible ways that they decide to lay it on me.