After being surrounded by women who constantly complained about how “fat” they felt, Jacqueline Barco found herself joining the club. She discusses how women can stop spreading the “fat talk” and move forward.
In Kerry Cohen’s Why Can’t We Talk About Our Own Body Hatred? article published here, she talks about the issue of women who express their body self-hatred through “fat talk.” She questions the value of the movement toward silencing women who fat talk about their own bodies, for example, by posting signs on mirrors that say, “No negative body talk allowed.”
One of the criticisms of anti-fat talk that Cohen suggests is that women’s voices of body hatred are silenced in fear of judgment from critics who say that fat talk reinforces the objectification of women’s bodies. She gives an example from xojane.com, a blog that received negative feedback after an author posted about how images of Olympic athletes made her feel fat. The feedback suggested that the post was impacting other bloggers’ space by encouraging the objectification of women’s bodies through the support of fat talk. Yet Cohen suggests that silencing women’s expression of body hatred is not the answer and that, in fact, many women experienced the same feelings but were afraid to speak up.
Cohen brings up an important point. Silencing women who fat talk and discounting their feelings only stagnates our process toward liberation. How can we move forward if we cannot first acknowledge true oppression, even when that oppression is downright harsh and ugly? The fact that women feel imperfect and devalued based on media portrayal of Olympic athletes supports the contention that patriarchy has traumatized women to believe that their worth is based upon how others perceive them and that they are inherently not good enough; this is the first lesson of female love that is discussed in bell hooks’ book, Communion: The Female Search for Love.
While I agree with the point that silencing women’s voices of oppression expressed as fat talk is not the answer, I also believe that continuing to allow women to fat talk without promoting change of this type of body-self-hatred only perpetuates fat talk and its consequences.
Recently, I have experienced working with women whose daily lives were impacted by their own body-self-hatred, and much of that manifested by and was fueled through fat talk (including weight loss, feelings of fatness in body movement, clothing disgust, hatred of images of themselves through pictures and mirrors, etc.). What I also noticed after working with women who engaged in body-self-hatred and fat talk was that I, too, began to succumb to its power. I began to walk around feeling the “fat” of my body, feeling unloved in my own clothes, engaging in fat talk, and telling myself how much I hated my body as I looked in the mirror. Thus, this personal experience in which others have engaged in fat talk about themselves has indirectly communicated to me that I am not good enough either, and that lack of worth is stained on my body as “fat.” This discounts Cohen’s argument suggesting that when women engage in fat talk about themselves, it does not communicate to other women that their worth amounts to their bodies; in fact, it suggests that fat talk is a contagion and perpetuates the trauma of female body-self-hatred to others.
Coming to this awareness within myself and through my feminist lens, I made a conscious decision to change. I have reflected on this question: “What does ‘fat’ mean?” My friend once told me that she believed “fat” was a word that represented the way your body is perceived by others. In connection to the female’s first lesson of love discussed by hooks, this suggests that “fat” is inherently oppressive in that the word represents a way that we are valued and devalued through the perception of others. We are not in control.
Although I do not have an answer to the question of what “fat” truly represents, I do recognize the trauma that fat talk creates in me and in other women in my life. I do not want to silence these women. I want to encourage them to voice their experiences and voice their pain. However, I want to re-learn what it is that I want. What is it that my body is saying? Where is my authentic voice in this?
Perhaps what I need is to feel in control of my body, to feel powerful in my own body. Perhaps what I want is to fuel my body with foods that serve to empower it. Perhaps instead of “fat talk,” we can engage in “power talk.” I recall looking in the mirror one day after doing physical rehab exercises for my knee, saying to myself, “I am powerful.”
Fat talk and internalized self-hatred are lies that were created and passed down from patriarchy. Sister women, seek your power and if you do not feel powerful, build it. Then, live in your power, unrelentingly and without apology.
Jacqueline Barco is a Ph.D. student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Utah who integrates feminist multicultural theory into her orientation as a counselor trainee. Her research and teaching interests include gender, race, ethnicity, trauma, and psychotherapy outcomes. She is the primary author of an article in preparation for publication entitled, A Meta-analysis of Women’s Self-defense Programs. She is an avid martial artist and has a black belt in Goshin Jutsu Karate and cross-trains in other martial arts.
Related Links: