Behind enemy lines in the ‘War on Obesity’ by Christina O’Sullivan
Growing up many of us are told ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.’ I think as a fat kid I clung on to that mantra more than most, but the reality is words have power and they hurt. In 2020, Boris Johnson launched a ‘War on Obesity’ to apparently save the NHS and fight Covid19. As someone who has worked in food policy circles for years I could not get behind the rallying cry of some of my colleagues when I myself am fat, have been for most my life and realistically will be forever – if the war is on fat bodies, am I now behind enemy lines?
My own war on obesity, started when I was 11; I begun to hate my body and started monitoring my food intake – it peaked in my mid-teens when I essentially starved myself to thinness. I was deeply miserable but rewarded with compliments as our society has always valued thinness over wellbeing.
The War on Obesity; the importance of language
It is notable that Johnson uses the term ‘War’ to describe his initiative – a violent crusade against unruly bodies. The term war is notable yet unsurprising from a country where progress has forever been represented through colonialism which is in its essence violence in an attempt to mould your subjects into your own idealised vision. It is also noticeable that Johnson is not waging war on inadequate access to nourishing food or low wages that make implementing his own government’s guidelines impossible for many people. Stress is a major factor in ill health, but Johnson is not mandating mindfulness for stressed bankers or concerned about the stress or mental wellbeing of those living below the poverty line in the current pandemic. Fat people are the easy target (insert shit joke here).
A tactic in war is to dehumanise people, terms such as the ‘obesity epidemic’ have a distancing and dehumanising effect, making it all too easy to remember that we are real people living in these bodies. I can remember a friend once making a derogatory comment about fat people, I quietly mustered up the courage to reply, ‘I am fat’. They tried to reassure me this was not true, but I am fat enough for every GP I see to comment on my weight regardless of the reason of my visit. I am fat enough to feel a painful twinge in my stomach every time I see an article on obesity accompanied with a picture of a fat body from behind spilling out of a too small chair. That is the painful paradox of being fat in this society; you are too big yet never really seen. For me, it has felt like I was too much but never enough. In the UK around 64% of people do not live in state sanctioned healthy bodies i.e. are overweight or obese. We are the majority, yet rarely are we given a space at the table.
Expanding our aspirations; thinking beyond thinness
We have subscribed to a cult of thinness and if losing weight is the ultimate goal, I believe any health policy will ultimately fail. Research suggests that 95% of diets to lose weight don’t work as people regain the weight in the long run. I was going to list various other arguments and statistics to challenge perceptions of obesity, but I am done debating my right to exist in my body without prejudice. I am not asking for sympathy but empathy. I am asking you to see the fat person in the aeroplane seat next to you as a human rather than an inconvenience. To make space for all bodies be they fat, disabled, queer, non-binary etc.
For most of my life I have aspired to be smaller, but I no longer want to shrink myself - to endlessly count calories on a relentless treadmill to nowhere. I don’t want to have achieve thinness for my life to start; the hereafter doesn’t exist – I only have this body now. The goal of my life is not simply to extend it but to enrich it – to allow myself to enjoy food and all the pleasure it can bring; an ice cream on the first day of summer, fresh tomatoes kissed with salt, toast performing a perfect slow dance with butter.
As the poet Maggie Smith puts it “Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill- advised ways.” and I will continue to do so. To eat and breathe and be in my body, this fat body that despite all the hate I fed it has gotten me this far.
