The Fat Lady Sings

A Psychological Exploration of the Cultural Fat Complex and its Effects

Cheryl Fuller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781782204978
• eBook ISBN: 9780429920745
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the so-called War on Obesity as an example of a cultural complex, how that complex shapes the way fat is treated in psychotherapy, including the classical Jungian approach to fat, as written by Marion Woodman. It looks at the experience of being fat as an ongoing trauma.

CHAPTER ONE
Life in the panopticon

Panopticon:

1. An area where everything is visible.
2. A circular prison with cells distributed around a central surveillance station; proposed by Jeremy Bentham in 1791.
3. A prison so constructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen.

I am a fat woman. I have been fat since I was five. As a young child, I used to hide from my uncle who would poke me and laugh and call me “Fatty” while singing “The Too Fat Polka”—how I hate that song. Too many times my mother told me I was “as big as the side of a house.” From early on I felt the sting and shame of being too big, too much. The humiliation of being weighed in gym class. The blind date that told his friend, within my earshot, that I was a “dog.” Knowing I was different and feeling shame for not being slender like other girls, like my mother. And being told too many times, “But you have such a pretty face” as if my body were an aesthetic crime.

An introvert, I am also shy, always a bit ill at ease in large groups or with strangers. Being fat only magnified that shyness. In my early thirties after years of dieting and battling against my weight, I tired of it all. I could not do one more diet, spend one more day obsessing about what I could and could not eat, one more night going to bed feeling an utter failure because I was hungry, because I was losing so slowly or not at all. Perpetually being on a diet meant that my days were filled with obsessing about what I could eat, what was forbidden, mentally calculating the calorie count of every food. And as I slept, dreaming of banquets I could never enjoy. There was only one thing left that I could do—the hard work to stop hating my body, to become able to look at and feel myself without cringing or eviscerating myself with insults and criticism. Simply put I had to give up the endless and fruitless effort to starve my wayward body into submission. The work I did to learn not to loathe my fat body enabled me to go places, to meet people without constantly worrying about how they saw me. I learned a cheery, warm, and pleasant persona for public spaces, because somewhere inside I believed that if I made myself pleasant and easy to be around then at least I could avoid hearing the negative judgments about my body. I was careful to dress nicely, to try to act like I felt pretty. And as long as I didn’t think about it, didn’t start looking at myself from outside myself, I believed in my own magical powers and I could be out and about and forget about the shame I wear in my flesh. I learned to pull myself way inside my body, away from my skin, away from the surface where I could be hurt, and I could become this sparkling personality and be unaware of my physical self. I could be like the nymph Echo, a voice without a body. The price? Become a body condemned to echo what she hears but not speak her own experience. I could wrap myself in my invisibility cloak of charm and move through the world insulated from the judgments and scrutiny of others. In order to move around in the world, I had to protect myself this way or risk being crushed by the weight and sharpness of looks and judgments I encountered and the shame I pushed down inside. I had to maintain silence.

For almost all of my adult life, I have wanted desperately to find a reason for this fat I carry, some explanation that I could rest on. There had to be some reason that I have this body that everything around me tells me is wrong, is bad, is a mistake or mark of weakness and disease. At times I told myself it is all about biology and genetics, an inevitable outcome of being my father’s daughter, like his sisters and mother, all of them fat women who lived long lives. There is comfort in that explanation because if the reason for my fat is genetic, then it is not my fault any more than my eye color or height is my fault; it is just the way I was made.

Other times I would fall to the other side of the coin and believe the cause lay in my troubled relationship with my mother. I read Hilda Bruch, Marion Woodman, Geneen Roth, Kim Chernin, and all those others who led me to believe that if I could just work my way through those issues, then everything would change and I would be normal, I would become thin and stay that way. So I talked and wrote endlessly about my mother and my relationship with her. I told the stories of my childhood with her so many times that they almost seemed no longer mine.

Then I read Fat is a Feminist Issue and once more it all became muddled, this time in feminist politics and the tyranny of the patriarchy. I began to consider again that maybe this fat body is my normal, maybe this is the body I am meant to have and that trying to make it smaller is to be in a constant state of war with myself. Without realizing it, I became part of the fat acceptance movement. Identity politics gave me a new way to experience my self and my fat. I could think about this body, my fat body, being the right one for me. I could connect myself with a primal round earthy feminine, an earlier and more generous version of beauty, fertility, and womanliness. If I did not press too hard nor look too deeply, I could see that. I dreamed of a fat woman with colored ribbons for hair who danced naked with delight in her own fleshy abundance. I painted her. There were even moments when I felt her.

But I could not escape the hatred for fat that was all around me. On the internet, where anyone can hide behind a pseudonym, trolls feel free to vent their fat hatred as in the following left in anonymous comments on various blogs:

But fat really is gross and ugly. It’s a sign of indulgence, lack of exercise, poor life choices. Yuck. I wouldn’t date a fat person if we were the last two people on earth.

The last thing we need is another whining class of victims. Most of the time, fat people are victims of only one thing: their own appetites.

Fat people are ugly and they stink. I don’t like looking at them. I like looking at athletic bodies, both male and female. They are works of art (and whoever defiles the body, defiles the soul). I like the beauty of such a bio-machine in motion. It is ART. I like the shadows cast by the muscles; I like when I see the tendons push out the skin. When I see this, I want to go up to that person and strum the tendons like a violin. I don’t see any of that with fat people. But I smell fat people when they spill over into my seat.

Read the comments to almost any article that relates to fat people, especially fat women, and the bile spills out. There seems to be no barrier to expressing such bigotry. And though it is usually unspoken, nearly every fat person has seen or heard enough similar judgment to be aware that any time she walks down the street, someone is thinking or saying things like that. Fat people swim in a sea of toxic prejudice.

It is a battle on multiple fronts, this trying to come to terms with, to understand and be conscious about fat. First is the battle with the prejudice and condemnation of the culture, the hatred and disgust directed at fat people. How do I make my way in a world in which my very body is seen as too much, as emblematic of appetite run amok? A world in which even strangers feel it is helpful to me to call my attention to my size and/or to offer “helpful” suggestions on what I should do to become smaller, to take up less of their precious space? A world in which any time I enter an airplane, I know that there are passengers already on board praying I won’t take the seat next to them because I might encroach upon their space, because I might somehow touch them with the curse of my fat.

Then there is the battle within, the struggle to discern the meaning of my fat without taking on blame. How do I not feel crushed by the weight of blame for my own body, the blame that comes with the belief that all I had to do to be “normal” was to eat less and move more? The struggle is to find my way through the judgment and shame that blame brings with it.

Finally is the battle with the introjected judgments that surround me, that voice that echoes the judgments around me and attacks me viciously for being out of bounds, for being too much. Telling me, in every kind of entertainment I seek out, every advertisement to which I am exposed, every newspaper or magazine I read, every form of media I consume that bodies like mine are bad, take up too much space. That I am undisciplined, ugly, lazy, stupid. That my body is offensive.

Lester Spence, a African-American political scientist, writes about the freedom of being in “black space” where he can be fully himself, where he knows the people there have visceral understanding of what it is to be a black man, where there is a shared cultural background and where “I can, in those spaces, breathe” (Spence, “Black Space”, n.d.). Contrast this with what he calls “white spaces” where he must “consciously be aware of what I am saying, of who is around me, of what I am wearing, of what I am doing, of what others are saying and doing. In critical ways, I cannot let my guard down for a moment” (Spence).

There is nothing like Spence’s black space for most of us who are fat except perhaps at gatherings of fat acceptance activists. There are few places where I can just breathe, not have to explain myself or watch myself or work to ignore the looks of disapproval. Places where I fit in, where I can be, do, and move without being subject to scrutiny and silent, or usually silent, judgment. It is only when I am at home, with the people who love me, or with my friends or family that I can approximate that kind of space, where I feel no need to excuse or pretend to agree with the general attitude about fat. Every place else is like Spence’s “white space,” space where my fat reveals what must be my shame, my laziness, my self-indulgence, my gluttony, my too-muchness. When my friend, my very fat friend died a few years ago, I heard people, people who were her friends, attributing her death to her weight and during the long days before her death, as she lay in the ICU on a respirator, some of those friends of hers said that maybe now, when she recovered, she would lose weight as if she were choosing to be fat. I imagine that morbid obesity is listed in her hospital records as a contributor to her death. The truth is that she died of a virulent infection she acquired in the hospital, a hospital with the worst infection rate in the state. The truth is that for years she received less than adequate medical care because her doctors saw fat and failed to see her illnesses or to treat her with dignity or listen to her respectfully.

It’s not much space, fat space. It is a few rooms in the whole of my world where, like Lester Spence in black space, I can be fully myself. With a few people that I trust don’t judge me or find me disgusting or believe my body is an indicator of my character or my health. When I am in thin space and I enter a room where there are other people, without thinking, I scan the room to see if there are other fat people there. To be the only fat person is to stand out in an uncomfortable way. I find relief when there is someone else as fat or fatter than I am.

If I am in thin space and I go out to eat with others, say for lunch during a workshop, I am aware of what everyone eats. Notice how often women apologize to each other for eating—“I didn’t’t eat breakfast so I need a big lunch.” or “I should just have a salad.”—there seems to be an unwritten rule that it is gauche to enjoy eating, to eat whatever and as much as one wants. So I am careful to eat sparingly and never have dessert. I don’t feel free to eat freely, enthusiastically. I know if I have French fries with my sandwich, there will be little mental cluckings over that.

I don’t go shopping with other women. We can’t shop in the same stores. There is no store in my town where I can buy clothes. I can’t exchange clothes with other women. None of my friends wears my size.

In thin space I am always on guard. Even as I work to maintain my cloak of invisibility, I am hyper-aware of my behavior—my voice, how I move. I made myself learn to walk lightly. I am vigilant. Always aware of the others. In thin space, I am thin-skinned.

Sometimes I am physically very self-conscious. At those times it is harder for me not to look at me from outside myself. I “see” myself when I think about going someplace new and outside of my fat space and I can be flooded with an uncomfortable sense of self-consciousness. I feel inhibited and reluctant to go. I make myself go, but it is an act of brute force and I am unable to “forget” about the judgments and looks that I am usually able to make myself oblivious to. At those times I can’t find my invisibility cloak. I feel naked and exposed. How to be in thin space without being thin-skinned, without being angry, without my invisibility cloak? I cling to my tiny fat space. And try to breathe.

If I want to be perceived as compliant, I know how to present myself as the Good Fatty, the fat person who believes in the socially dominant viewpoint that her number one goal in life should be losing weight (Bias, 2014). All I have to do is talk about trying to lose weight, about my desire to be thin. I can say I have lost ten, or fifteen, or thirty pounds and I will be praised for my efforts, even if it is a lie. The Good Fatty is apologetic for being fat and is in a perpetual state of trying to become thin. The Good Fatty doesn’t threaten thin people because she tells them she is engaged in the same struggle to subdue her body that they are. The Good Fatty is apologetic for her fat, as if she must ask forgiveness for committing an aesthetic crime with her too-muchness or must do penance for taking up too much space. She doesn’t complain about the relative lack of variety in clothing available to her and accepts that she should wear shapeless cover-ups, preferably in dark colors. She accepts as just that she pays more for her clothing, health care, and seats on airplanes. Because she knows she deserves it. She accepts without protest the “helpful” advice and criticism she receives from others because she is trying to become better, to become thin. She swallows her anger because she knows it is all her fault, that she has failed, and is getting what she deserves.

No matter where I go or what I do, I am almost always surrounded by messages about the unacceptability of my body. The constant examination of the fat body by doctors, social workers, and psychiatrists, teachers, lay people, comedians, journalists, even First Lady Michelle Obama (Welsh, 2011), are in effect attempts to exert a societal discipline to make “docile bodies” (Foucault, 1995, p. 136). In the prison designed by Benthem, the panopticon, the power over the prisoners arose from their ignorance about whether they were being observed. The discipline came through their self-monitoring more than through external force. We fat people are meant to feel shame, to feel we are responsible for our weight. We internalize the judgments and endless indictments for our failure to have become slender, for being too lazy or hungry or weak to bring our wayward bodies under control. In this way we exert self-discipline over our bodies. As with the prisoners, monitoring is internalised and self-imposed.

Every time I have hidden my eating from others, or felt too self-conscious to eat in public something that I want, like dessert, or have avoided eating altogether, I have eaten the disgust others feel for my body. I eat their disgust and it becomes part of me. Every time I buy my clothes from designated retailers, ones who deign to carry clothing in my size and I accept that I should pay more for clothing generally of lower quality than is available in so-called normal stores, I am buying and wearing the revulsion designers of clothing feel for my folds of flesh and billowing hips and thighs (Cunningham, 2014; Krupnik, 2013). I worked at making myself be less self-conscious. I can use the word “fat” with ease. I am able to talk about the assaults, large and small, to my dignity that I encounter every time I leave my house. I can do all of these things. But I can never escape the panopticon (Foucault, 1980, p. 155). I am always under scrutiny. Underneath it all, underneath the work I did to stop hating myself, underneath the pleasant persona, way down under there where I look at myself from outside and see myself with others’ eyes, in that place I judge myself as severely as they do, not always but it comes back more often than I like. And then I feel furious with myself for being fat. And with them for their disgust. Furious for being furious. I am furious. Underneath all of that I am furious. Which I dare not show. Fury. That I do not express. That I swallow.

This is the world I live in—constantly under scrutiny, contending with prejudice, experiencing on a daily basis the traumatic effects of being different, of not fitting in and yet striving to stay grounded in myself.

CHAPTER TWO
The war on obesity: a cultural complex at work

From the late 70s through the 80s and into the 90s, though of course many women struggled with their weight, the overall climate was not as harsh and punitive about fat as it is today. Susie Orbach published Fat is a Feminist Issue in 1978. William Bennett and Joel Guerin published The Dieter’s Dilemma, a book grounded in medical research, in 1983. Carol Shaw launched Big Beautiful Woman magazine in 1979. A flurry of books and pamphlets from what was called the Fat Liberation Movement began fat acceptance. All of these publications, and others, urged fat women to listen to their bodies, presented research showing that dieting is in fact a losing battle, one in which most will regain all weight lost and often more. The magazine gave fat women their first chance to see women like themselves modeling beautiful clothes, and even lingerie and bathing suits, images of women none of us ever saw in mainstream fashion magazines. It is no small matter to be able to see images in a glossy fashion magazine of fat women, women like me. By no means did these publications and others similar to them mean that there was no bias against fat or that it was a kind of Camelot for fat people, but there was nothing like a war being waged against fat and fat people like there is today. In the 90s something changed and any softening of the climate toward fat ended. By the beginning of this century war on fat was declared, a war that continues unabated. As Betty Meador tells us,

The influence of the culture is so great that the individual internalizes its precepts and expectations to such an extent that they become an unconscious and pervasive influence in everyday life, hidden like the blood in our veins, but shaping our identity, opinions, and behavior.

(Meador, 2004, p. 172)

In order to explore the development and intensity of what is now called the War on Obesity from a Jungian perspe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• INTRODUCTION The silent woman
• CHAPTER ONE Life in the panopticon
• CHAPTER TWO The war on obesity: a cultural complex at work
• CHAPTER THREE When a body meets a body: fat enters the consulting room
• CHAPTER FOUR Dancing with Marion Woodman: searching for meaning
• CHAPTER FIVE Woodman, my mother, and me
• CHAPTER SIX Woodman and anger, food, eating, and control
• CHAPTER SEVEN A last look at Woodman
• CHAPTER EIGHT Memory, shame, and the fat body—pulling it all together
• CHAPTER NINE My body, my self: toward a theory of fat and trauma
• CHAPTER TEN Back to the consulting room: blind spots and remedies
• CHAPTER ELEVEN Coming out as fat
• REFERENCES
• INDEX