Pride Body

There is never a good year to be fat, but even by the usual standards of societal fatphobia, 2023 has really taken the proverbial cake right out of our chubby hands with a healthy dose of fat-shaming “for our own good,” shares James O’Hagan.

With ‘heroin chic’ back on the runway, one of award season’s most celebrated movies features a fat-suit encased George of The Jungle having a heart attack while masturbating to gay porn, while non-binary performer Sam Smith was widely condemned as “morally debased” and “perverted” for daring to wear a sparkly jumpsuit on stage while not having Harry Styles’ body. “Fashion’s biggest night” aka the MET Gala chose to glorify the legacy of a man who, among many other deeply problematic opinions, once suggested that being overweight was more dangerous than anorexia, and it also felt like the entire world was in a frenzy to get its hands on a diabetes medication turned weight-losswonder-drug. This is a ‘wonder drug’, by the way, which has dedicated subreddits filled with real-life horror stories of side effects including “projectile vomiting,” “sulphur burps” and “uncontrollable diarrhoea”.

Fatphobia runs so deep in our society that, for some, experiencing the grotesque side effects of an unnecessary medication is preferable to just existing in their own bodies. I recently had an acquaintance offer their commiserations to me when blood test results came back entirely normal, it was a pity that my blood glucose levels hadn’t just been higher so a diagnosis of diabetes could have prompted me to change my lifestyle and lose the weight. They were genuinely and compassionately sorry for me that I hadn’t been diagnosed with a chronic, metabolic disease and would instead, remain medically healthy, but fat.

Now, we find ourselves in the midst of “Pride Body” season, a time when alongside impassioned declarations of community solidarity, queer social media is awash with fitness journeys, summer bodies and #ProgressPics from gay folk determined to be as socially and sexually desirable as possible, reinforcing the impossible pressure to attain the ‘perfect’ body in search of status and self-worth.

This background hum of toxic body appearance talk moralising the food we eat and memes and viral content that perpetuate weight stigma and harmful stereotypes that make fatness a subject of ridicule and mockery not only leads to surging body dissatisfaction and poor self-esteem, but also serves as a reminder to fat people that, much like the size ranges of the many Pride capsule collections adorning the high street during the summer months, LGBTQ+ Pride does not offer a plus-size range.

We have created a community where our bodies define our worth, pressure to attain the slim athletic idealised physique is all consuming for many, with stark implications for our mental health. One study undertaken by the Mental Health Foundation in the UK found that 33 percent of LGBTQ+ adults have experienced suicidal thoughts or feelings because of their body image. Social media creates an impression of a world where Marvel superhero physiques are the norm and opening dating apps can be like a grim alternate version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s Hall of Gratuitous praise where instead of rapturous applause, it’s faceless profiles declaring the exact specifications of the sort of body they deem acceptable to communicate with screaming into the abyss. The constant scrutiny of our diets, negative assumptions about our character or lifestyles and thinly veiled prejudices set out as “preferences” are just the price of admission to exist as a fat person in our community.

About five years ago I matched with someone on Tinder -I had adhered to Fat Guy on Dating App best practice of having multiple recent full body photos and including a disclaimer that I was a bit chubby in my profile, so I assumed when he suggested we meet for a drink that he had factored this in. I can tell you reader, he had not. I arrived at the bar and was met with a gape mouthed gawk. Within minutes of sitting down he was interrogating me about the timeline of when exactly each of my profile photos had been taken – Were they from a long time ago? What were the angles like? Had they been photoshopped? There was a clear implication that he perceived himself to have been catfished. After about 45 minutes he told me he was very sorry and that he needed to leave unexpectedly to meet a friend. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. To my surprise as I got to my bus stop, a message from the date deserter popped up on my phone. I opened it anticipating a polite goodbye message or perhaps some further excuses for his hurried exit, but instead it was a link to a 30 day weight loss diet and exercise plan and a note to say that he thought I would find it useful.

The messages are clear- we must never accept our bodies as they are, fatness is a place you ended up as a result of personal failure or tragic circumstances beyond your control, and to gain societal acceptance we must be striving to escape it. Instead of just being allowed to love the body we have, we are pushed to ignore the abundant research which tells us that diets don’t work and those who manage to sustain weight loss are the rare exception.

We must ignore the consistent evidence of weight discrimination in employment, in healthcare and in education, and are told to blame ourselves for our fatness and accept other people’s judgements of us as lazy, unhygienic, unintelligent or lacking in will power as being in our best interest as we refuse to care for ourselves.

I have been fat all my adult life, I’ve been a yoyo dieter since I was in my late teens, spiralling through cycles of disordered weight loss and shame-filled weight gain with the only consistency being a certainty that my body makes me stand out for the wrong reasons. The shame of my body’s sin was so baked in that it made me hate myself. My fatness made me a target for bullying, for ridicule and for disdain. I was disgusted by the way my body curved, how stretch marks lined across my stomach and I despised how my soft, rounded, belly would reveal itself from underneath my clothes when I moved.

About two years ago, helped along by podcasts, books and content creators who took joy in their bodies (bodies just like mine), I realised that ‘my fatness’ caused none of these things, these feelings were built in by a society that needs fat people to hate themselves to continue to perpetuate a culture that equates thinness with worth and happiness and where all of us, regardless of what our bodies look like, are pushed to only see the flaws and failings when we look in the mirror.

With this toxic culture surrounding us I can fully understand people rushing to a new weight loss medication regardless of the side effects, or following the leader on weight loss TV shows which provide little-to-no evidence of success, or indeed choosing to eliminate any joy which food may bring to their lives. Being aware of the fallacy of diet culture doesn’t stop you living in a world governed by it, a world where fat bodies aren’t deemed worthy of respect, and the promise of a community and a life full of joy, dignity and tinder matches exist just a belt buckle notch away.

In these past years, since I first realised that I don’t have to be at war with my fatness, I have put a lot of work into repairing my relationship with my body. I’ve journaled, I’ve meditated, I’ve had counselling, I’ve free-trialled my way through a whole Goop’s worth of wellness trends, and the most important thing it has taught me is that it takes much more than an epiphany to learn to love a body you’ve been conditioned to loath. It is a long journey, one which I’m not sure I’ll ever fully finish, but it is one on which the rewards are transformative. I am happier and more confident than I have ever been before, I have better healthier relationships and I can look at myself in the mirror, stretch marks and belly included, and feel genuine love for my body.

After a lifelong journey with fatness, I have learned that repairing our relationship with our bodies takes time and effort and requires unlearning deeply ingrained fatphobic beliefs which we all hold. And within the LGBTQ+ community, it’s only through collective effort that we can dismantle diet culture and create a Pride where every body is celebrated and respected.