With this article Alanna Fero is as publicly vulnerable as she’s ever been. The only thing scarier? Being thin.
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Dear ‘Dear Fatty’ Writer:
I’ve come across your viral Facebook post about the woman running at your track and read several of the responses celebrating you for encouraging her. I can see how you’d believe that your “You Rock!” is inspirational and intended to keep her running when you say that she is ‘paying off the debt of another midnight snack, another beer, another dessert.” And I get it that, at this time in our cultural history, most people are reading it that way.
I have another view, shaped by my own experiences of weight and size as a different kind of effect than the simple ‘lack of willpower’ one you espouse, and affirmed by the many men and women with life experiences closer to my own with whom I have been blessed to share in healing dialogue.
We’re getting rather tired of being targets of ever more hateful scorn as the world speaks of an “obesity epidemic,” when what we really have is a stress- and trauma-related illness epidemic, within which obesity is just one manifestation.
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I feel you striving to mean it when you say to her “I’ve got nothing but respect for you.” And yet I still feel called to express my felt sense that it is an imposition of your values to assume she is wanting to lose weight, to assume we all want to be thinner, to assume you have the right to comment on her lack of grace or skill as she lumbers around the track – and it is an erosion of whatever kindness you may be intending to extend when you make sure to also include the assessment that her size makes her “two of you.”
The story you tell yourself about your body – or about larger bodies – might be truthfully rooted in snacks and beer and their relative correlation to laps around tracks or miles ticked off on treadmills for you. But that is not my story or the story of most people I know who carry the weight of shame we shouldn’t have to feel and protection we often desperately need. And we’re getting rather tired of being targets of ever more hateful scorn as the world speaks of an “obesity epidemic,” when what we really have is a stress- and trauma-related illness epidemic, within which obesity is just one manifestation.
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You open your post with “To the Fatty on the track this afternoon.” I get it that, in some cultural groups, certain terms of degradation have been reappropriated and transformed to have positive meaning – Queer, Dyke, and the N word among them – when spoken or written by someone with the ethos to use the word that way, and still not without some controversy. It is possible for those words to be redefined because those minority cultural groups have made some headway on the path to being treated with respect by the majority, and because some of them have come together in mutually supportive groups to say “We All Deserve Respect.”
Obesity and fat-shaming in our culture have been rising together in direct correlation to rises in trauma and dramatic decreases in personal safety, community connectedness and expressions of lovingkindness.
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Sadly, that’s just not so with those of us who carry more weight – not in terms of broader social respect and even less so in terms of looking out for one another. Though we are actually now the majority in North America and could perhaps wield some power or influence, as a social class we are very much isolated individuals, all too busy trying to hide and protect ourselves to collectively demand there be no more shame for anyone at all. That you can write what you did, that you can use the language you chose, that you can imagine we owe some “debt” because of our size, and that so many people dealing with food or weight or self image issues can buy into your article and say thank you (a page right out of Internalized Oppression 101) makes that point for me.
Obesity and fat-shaming in our culture have been rising together in direct correlation to rises in trauma and dramatic decreases in personal safety, community connectedness and expressions of lovingkindness.
The worldview-shaping trifecta of tv, magazines and web tell us in a million ways every day that there are only two kinds of people in the world:
1. Those who have the self respect, self discipline and education to keep themselves thin or fit.
2. Those who want to be thinner or fitter but just aren’t working at it.
In this paradigm, there is no third option and neither is there a more nuanced, complex or compassionate rendition of 1 or 2.
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I offer my own story by way of expanding the paradigm above because the “Dear Fatty” narrative and its viral responses are themselves personal narratives, and my own experience is naturally what I know best. I do so also because, while it is far from a cross-referenced longitudinal study, the elements of my experience are all too common – across gender, cultural and socio-economic lines.
I had been leered at, groped and/or forcibly kissed by as many as a dozen older men by the time I was 14.
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Simply: my suburban Canadian home was a battle ground. I don’t remember a time when people weren’t yelling, throwing things or hitting, and even my toddler self was not spared whacks or head shakings, which soon grew into scenes from age 4 on where all of my dresser drawers would be dumped out on the floor, closet torn apart, sometimes even bed tipped over with a screaming command to clean it up or I would be sent to Foster Care.
I was sexually assaulted by four teenage boys when I was 6; lived under literal house arrest for over a year with my Dad carrying a gun everywhere we went to protect us from the creep boyfriend of a workmate of my sister who had raped her and threatened to kidnap me when I was 7 and 8, this meaning no recess, no play time, no respite from the bunker mentality that danger lurked everywhere. I had been leered at, groped and/or forcibly kissed by as many as a dozen older men by the time I was 14; and had the upstanding President of the Red Cross (writer of reference letters for scholarships I badly needed to afford university) try to take my clothes off after I volunteered at a blood donor clinic with him at 17.
By then I’d had enough. I turned my German Shepherd, Thunder, loose on this pillar of the community. He told everyone he’d nicked his hand on a wood fence, but we both know what really happened. Score one for Team Vulnerable. Problem is, one is not enough. I couldn’t sick my dog on everyone, and home hadn’t gotten any safer: it was filled with the chaos of verbal and physical violence and life-threatening illness on a daily basis, and there was no way out that was going to get me an education and a better life. Lowering my metabolism so that I kept an extra layer of buffer between me and a hostile world was a logical – indeed I’d say brilliant – biological response, and had not one damn thing to do with midnight desserts.
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As for the second act, well, here is where it can be a little more puzzling to people. If you get out of that house, away from that town, out on your own, educated and self-supporting, many people would even say inspiring, the ‘logical’ conclusion is the first thing you’d want to do is drop the weight for its associations with all the pain. You can have a fresh start now – new home, new body. You can be accepted.
They don’t know that shame is how I got here and being judged as not making healthy choices, being evaluated for the size of my hips instead of the warmth of my heart, is just another layer of shame.
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That’s certainly what I think people mean when they routinely offer me astonishingly non-sequitered tips on everything from hot yoga and pole walking to spirulina smoothies and colon cleanses. They mean to give me something they can sense I didn’t have growing up: support to live a healthier life. They don’t know that shame is how I got here and being judged as not making healthy choices, being evaluated for the size of my hips instead of the warmth of my heart, is just another layer of shame. They can’t imagine that I fundamentally don’t want their acceptance on those terms.
Whenever I lose 30 or more pounds, which I have done at least a dozen times in quarter century between the ages of 22 and 46, I start to feel like I am abandoning my solidarity with my younger self, and with all the wounded kids in the world, with everyone who has ever lived in that bunker state. I feel like I am selling out the kid still inside every adult who has ever been attacked for the way they were born, or for the way they choose to make themselves feel safe in an unsafe reality.
When people who literally can not see me at a size 14-16, those of both genders for whom I am rendered invisible because I am not ‘hot’ or ‘fabulous,’ start to notice me, make eye contact, give me a more genuine smile, strike up a conversation, and when the men among these formerly-blind-to-me invite me to join their table, offer to buy me a drink, or do that delicious ‘hand in the small of my back’ thing when they hold a door… I feel welcome or noticed or sexy for a split second before crashing into the sense I have become a war-time Collaborator.
Sometimes, when I lose enough weight that it feels like everyone I know is talking about it, I experience a panic not unlike when I was pushed to the ground or a wall or a couch as a young girl – and I am so fucking scared and angry, I just wish I had a German Shepherd handy.
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When I hit the magic size 12 or the rarer 10, and the usual compliments I receive along the lines of “You have such a great energy” or “Gorgeous jacket!” morph into “Have you been working out?” and “Damn girl, you gettin’ skiiiiiiiiin-yyy!!!” (these usually women colleagues), I feel like a traitor to some of my most cherished values. It’s as if I’m a light-skinned black woman passing as white or a prototypically masculine gay man passing as straight and I cannot, will not, betray them or myself by enjoying benefits that would not be coming my way if people knew I am still a fat girl on the inside, that I have never been part of the mainstream and that I wouldn’t want to be.
Sometimes, when I lose enough weight that it feels like everyone I know is talking about it, I experience a panic not unlike when I was pushed to the ground or a wall or a couch as a young girl – and I am so fucking scared and angry, I just wish I had a German Shepherd handy.
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Does this reveal some pathology about me? Of course. I have absolutely no memories of ever feeling completely safe or unguarded and I don’t imagine I’ll be creating very many with my background – if I feel 90% safe and only 10% on alert, I can call that utopia and feel very grateful.
I have done more than my share of traditional counselling, meditation, shamanic healing and somatic experiencing work and, yes, I’ve grown to enjoy a healthy and spicy sex life, too – with an equal quantity of opportunities coming my way across my full size spectrum, though epically better quality after I turned 40. I’ve been witnessed and held and loved by some remarkably good men and women, and created spaces where others like me can experience the same. I’ve done my work and come a long way, especially when you consider that someone with my start in life is statistically more likely to become a runaway, drug addict or suicide than a college professor, social entrepreneur and community builder. But there is no way to spend the first 10-20 years of life under constant threat and escape the issues that come with that.
I claim my right to be shatteringly dismayed by a culture that deems “You’ve lost weight!” to be the highest form of compliment it can give.
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There are also gifts from suffering, one of them being keen awareness, and it is with that awareness that I claim my right to be shatteringly dismayed by a culture that deems “You’ve lost weight!” to be the highest form of compliment it can give, and to call out those members of my society who can applaud a letter which opens with “Dear Fatty” and argues that an overweight runner has a “debt to pay” for what she eats or how she looks.
I owe no debt to exercise for the food I have eaten. I owe no debt to the health care system in my country for having my ways of coping with pain show up for all to see while others who are poisoning themselves with cigarettes, aspartame, alcohol, pot, skinny lattes, Xenical, Hydroxycut, Red Bull, amphetamines, endless television, video games, porn or pernicious gossip are somehow off the hook along with being off the media radar. As I’ve said, the real medical epidemic of our time isn’t obesity: it’s stress- and trauma-related illness, of which most kinds of obesity are just one example. Nobody gets through life in a body without suffering. We’re ALL in some kind of pain in this world, and most of us are easing it in a way that brings illusory relief today and consequences down the line.
When the words we write and speak can travel so far, be seen by so many and last indefinitely, when Facebook posts can ‘go viral’ and voicemail messages can find their way to the evening news, there has never been a more important time to be a person of compassion. And somehow, while I know it’s a twisted up kind, I feel more connected to my compassion in my thicker skin than in my thinner one.
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The timing of the “Dear Fatty” story and its surrounding response is serendipitously significant in my life, as I’ve been shopping for a new dress and looking in a lot of 3-way mirrors to see what I will look like from all sides as I take to a stage.
I know every time I walk across a stage to take a microphone, in the first few minutes before my gift for the spoken word starts to win people over…there is a whole lot of “Fatty” in the gazes cast upon me.
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I am celebrating 2 years of creating a compassionate, loving Conscious Network called Copia next week. We have a lot to be proud of – 150 events, 1000s if people inspired, hundreds of thousands of dollars changing hands in Conscious Consumerism with one another, dozens of new jobs for those on the path of Conscious Career, and my expansion plans make my heart sing. I should be loving every minute of planning and then basking in my little party.
But I know every time I walk across a stage to take a microphone, in the first few minutes before my gift for the spoken word starts to win people over – which it has never failed to do at any of my sizes, not once since my linguistic ability leapt from single words straight to paragraphs and never looked back – there is a whole lot of “Fatty” in the gazes cast upon me.
I could change that. I can drop the weight. Maybe putting this article out there will feel like enough of an expression of being ‘on-side’ with my people for me to tip first my psychic and then physical scale. Maybe once I have taken enough stages at a larger size I will feel like I have done my part for the cause and it will be okay to be lighter on a whole host of levels. Or maybe, given that I push myself outside my comfort zone about 14 ways every day in a body that never had its time in Eden, never knew attachment, safety and nurturing, it’s more likely I will keep bouncing around from being a size 10 to a size 18 and everything in between til the end of my days in this life. I don’t know.
What I do know is that, in any of those outcomes, I am living a life of meaningful service, generous compassion and uproarious laughter. In any of them I am deserving of love, joy, community and pleasure. And in all of them I pray for a society in which a word like “Fatty” would just never get published as the title of anything, and a woman running her ass off at the track would be noticed only for her running and not for the size of her ass. She’s carrying a heavy load to be sure. But so is everyone looking at her.
So am I. And so are you.
Image: Tumblr
Hi Chiara. I just saw your video on my lovely friend Lori’s post and just had to check out this article. So well written, and spot-on. As somebody who has lost weight several times, and in the end developed horrible autoimmunity, which, like your healing journey, I reversed without docs (and wrote a book about it), I have come to a slightly different conclusion. I take your points about armour (as we English spell it… ha ha), and very often this is the underlying case. However, as somebody who never fat shames anyone, I do like to shame those who perpetuate… Read more »
I’m sorry, Philip, but in my experience, that has been complete bullshit to me. I spent last year on a low carb, high (good) fat diet. I followed LCHF/Primal (basically Paleo plus dairy). I spent thousands of dollars on physiological testing (urine, blood, saliva), doctors and other professionals (such as a nutritionist/naturopath) who would be aligned with my plight. I spent way too much money on purchasing information, supplements, high-cost real foods that I didn’t even enjoy (coconut and all its presentations, be damned) and personal training. I would do 1hr personal training sessions, pretty hard core stuff, three times… Read more »
Hi Gina. I have discussed this in private with the author and I understand all your points and hers. I always did. I knew I was risking this when I made the comment and told her that I’d be totally happy for the comment to be taken down. It seems it wasn’t. I absolutely understand all of Alanna’s points and I agree with them. I have not cast them aside; I have just made the point that it takes a holistic approach, and for a long time that holistic approach has not been understood. It is far easier for a… Read more »
I absolutely loved this, and have struggled my whole life with eating disorders. Can you email or comment more info about the event or network mentioned in the article… Copia??
Thank you SO much!
This is absolutely brilliant!! “…the real medical epidemic of our time isn’t obesity: it’s stress- and trauma-related illness, of which most kinds of obesity are just one example. Nobody gets through life in a body without suffering. We’re ALL in some kind of pain in this world, and most of us are easing it in a way that brings illusory relief today and consequences down the line…” …maybe somebody somewhere has written about this before, but I’ve certainly never read or heard it stated so eloquently and with so much conviction. Bravo!!!
Wow, Sue! You must be a writer or editor – if you’re not, you could be, because that was an amazing work of pull-quotes! You have, indeed, nailed the central thesis for me. It’s not food or weight or shape or size or abuse or neglect or sexiness or gender politics that we really need to address. Those are all distractions. We are a species in a state of pain at this time in our evolution and we all need to get on board with the compassionate easement of suffering. Self acceptance is a start… and I am only a… Read more »
I generally don’t comment, but I had to say thank you for sharing your words. I felt as though I was reading my own thoughts, seeing my life as if in a movie. I’m working toward having the security and comfort of being in my own skin regardless of how much I weigh. Thank you again for being so candid. I look forward to seeing more of your writing.
Thank you Seleatha. (And what a beautiful name! Complete aside but I couldn’t help it!)
It is an honour to hear someone say they can feel their reflection in my words. To be mirrored when we have ever felt alone is a tremendous gift.
Thank you for reaching out and thank you for your encouragement. I am indeed writing more, on a number of topics. Fingers and keyboard can hardly keep up.
Til soon.
Thank you for your open and honest article. I’m a big man. But I somehow lost 90 pounds a couple years ago, and it was good. For a while. The smaller clothes, the feeling fitter, filling less of any given seat. It was all great. But then those feelings went away, and I only felt dread again. Of knowing I’d have to lose another 100 pounds to fit into my correct ‘box’ on the chart. Of feeling vulnerable, but not really knowing why. My weight gradually came back after that. Until two years later now, I’m back where I was.… Read more »
Thank YOU, Fred, for being the first good man here on the Good Man Project to reach out and comment. I know from my experiences with men in my life and work that many have walked this path for some distance or another, but you are the first to reach out and I so appreciate it. In many ways it might have been an odd choice for this column to find its first publication here, but this is where I read “Dear Fatty” and I came to GMP because of coming to know delightful and fiery Senior Editor @Lori Ann… Read more »
Commenting because there is no “love” button to check. Please keep writing your perspective because you do it so incredibly beautifully. it is the only way for change to persist- and for the many in your shoes to begin to understand themselves better.
What a lovely comment, Hilary! Thank you! I’ve felt that often about something I have read but not always acted. Thank you for sharing your voice.
I hear you! You’re so right. Every time I have lost weight, I’ve been congratulated as if it’s a win over my mind and body and it has NEVER felt good to be treated like that. It’s actually a big rejection telling me somehow I’m better because I’m thinner..I’m now “worth” more?? No, thanks. You clearly don’t know me! For me, it absolutely has so much to do with stress and lack of safety/loving space. I am currently the biggest I’ve been in my life. Probably more than 90 kilos at the moment and my normal is about 60. Of… Read more »
Thanks for sharing your own experience, Eirini. It’s good for people to know that “layering up” is something many of us do – not stress eating, not binging, but the body actually holding on to everything that it takes in, holding tight, whether we see that metaphor as ‘armoring’ or ‘swaddling,’ it is still a form of protection when we do not feel safe. And in these times of instability all around the world – global shifts and community erosions all at the same time – who among us does not feel unsafe at least some of the time? Not… Read more »
I. LOVE. THIS.
I need to read more of your stuff.
We all do.
Thank you.
More stuff coming M! Thank you. I took a pause from writing after my first book but am now overcome by the pull of my keyboard and both the next book and several articles are percolating. I think what will be next is a piece on why I choose to create a mixed gender networking community in the Age of the Divine Feminine. Til soon. 🙂
Wow Alana, a brilliant piece of work!
I understood this piece perfectly and I thank you for writing it.
Understanding perfectly tells me there is some pain under there. I hope you’ve somewhere got a fraction of the support I’m now receiving. People have been so lovely. Take care.
Beautiful work. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks, Lasara. Your sharing back counts, too. 🙂
… yes 1,000 times on this. So glad you raised this conversation as a) I hated that “Dear Fatty” thing circulating … it was so patronizing and passive-aggressive I couldn’t believe people were celebrating it, like this dude was so noble for not FULLY hating on an overweight person. How merciful of him , and b) b/c as thin person, I can still very much relate to what you wrote here. Also having experienced a lot of harm/trauma at the hands of boys/men in my life from as early as I can remember, I feel this pressure to be thin/pretty… Read more »
Thanks, Cris, for the heat of your words (good to know we really reach someone) and for the care and thoroughness of your response. We humans have some work ahead of us to be truly loving and kind to ourselves and to see each other, for real, each day. The good news is the path ahead is starting to be well marked. 🙂
Beautiful, inspiring thankyou.
You’re most welcome, Kelly. May I ask what is the inspiring part? It’s coming from many different directions for people – the chutzpah, the similar childhoods, the curvy-girls-unite, the cultural commentary… sincerely, not fishing for compliments but really trying to understand where this is resonating for people, and where the next piece might go.
Thank you so much. As a bigger individual who goes to the gym, I do it for my health, not to see the scale go down. I love myself in every aspect, but it puts a damper on things when people ask me ‘ what’s my goal weight’ or ‘ you’re cheekbones would look amazing if you just dropped a few pounds’. Anyhow, when I am driving home from work, and I see someone running on the side of the road, no matter what size, I will salute them, for getting out being active, but not because I believe they… Read more »
This is so, so eloquent and insightful. Thank you for putting it out there. I plan to share it with a therapy client tomorrow.
Thanks, D.J. How lovely to know my words will be going to work so soon. The eloquent word is a lovely thing but the practical word moves me more. Thanks for reaching out.
Alanna,
Your writing is amazing and I am speechless!
I can 100% relate.
I think a lot of us can relate. It’s just not talked about. Time for change. And thank you – wordsmithing is a compulsion. It’s lovely to have it appreciated.
Thank you.
You are most welcome. And thank you for not just reading but responding. Most people don’t take the time. Even short phrases – kind ones – mean a lot. 🙂
Brilliant. Just…brilliant. Thank you.
Thanks, Carol. That’s a pretty good word to feel in connection to one’s work. 🙂