Why Are Some Fat Bodies Better Than Others?
by Caitlin White
Warning: This article contains details about eating disorders.
Measuring around my middle, keeping the band just even with my belly button, I read the number off the pink, flexible tape aloud: 47.5 inches. According to the standard measurement for waistline health from the CDC, I’m 12.5 inches above the target for women, 35 inches. I’m a 5’8, 31-year-old who moves between sizes 12 and 14, practices hot yoga 4-5 times a week, and is, according to this chart, something called “centrally obese.” Looking at my mid-size body, that’s probably not the term most people would go for, but the BMI chart and the CDC’s guidelines made it clear: I’m not just overweight. I’m obese.
Wow.
I’ve never had a flat stomach, but spent most of my teens and early twenties as a long distance runner, using overexercise and disordered eating to hover around certain numbers — whether it was weight or clothing sizes — that society deemed acceptable. I always ate something and I never made myself throw up, so, I told myself for years I didn’t have an eating disorder.
Finally reaching a breaking point in my mid-twenties, I let it all go. I let myself eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and removed all sense of restriction; I completely stopped exercising, because running was a site of so much toxic behavior around food and my weight. After years of strictly monitoring everything I consumed, and exercising every day — sometimes twice a day — this felt like the only true release.
Now, I’m fat. And I carry most of my fat in my belly. It took me a while to get used to my new size, and I started avoiding taking photos of myself, hoping that I’d one day get back to my “real weight” of a thinner body type. Figuring I’d just gained some weight because I stopped my disordered eating behavior, the label “obese” hit differently.
After the measuring tape experience, I went back to fretting about my weight, trying to figure out which system I’d begrudgingly return to in order to get it off. I kept planning to start — a new exercise program, a new food restriction, a new cleanse, a new commitment to being thin. But I was sick of how miserable these programs made me feel. I was sick of dreading each day, or each workout, and I was so sick of fighting off that horrible hunger. I just couldn’t make myself go back.
Luckily, a paradigm-shifting piece about obesity and stigma in the Huffington Post late last year helped me grapple with the definition in a new way. The piece examines the impact of living as an overweight or obese person, and points to new research that determines healthy habits and lifestyle as much more impactful than a number on the scale. Expert counselors in the piece note that many overweight and obese people put their lives on hold, waiting to pursue their future until they’re properly thin again, when it’s acceptable to dream.
“overweight people put their lives on hold, waiting to pursue their future until they’re properly thin again.”
Reading this piece kicked me into gear. I quit my full-time job to start the publication I’d always hoped to found; I signed up for yoga teacher training at one of the first studios that made practicing in my bigger body feel safe; I got back on the dating apps and committed to go out with someone. These were all things I thought only the skinny version of me was entitled to do. But saying it out loud, that the existence of my big belly somehow prohibited me from following these impulses, was ridiculous. Or was it? The messaging that a fat woman shouldn’t live fully wasn’t all in my head.
Though new research found in this Huffington Post piece and beyond continues to prove that consistent diet, regular exercise and daily healthy habits are a better indicator of overall health than weight, the idea remains that if you look fat, you’re unhealthy. Even though my mental and emotional health were greatly improved by leaving my disordered eating and forcefully “thin” body behind, as my stomach, in particular, began to expand, the stigma of living in a larger body became more and more clear — especially a female body with a larger belly.
“I tend to think that all the shame women experience about their bodies is rooted in the patriarchy and rooted in oppressing women or disempowering us, so that we’re distracted, and quiet,” explained Rachel Cole, life coach and host of the Belly Love capsule podcast. Her work explores how the female belly is perceived in culture, from post-partum to obesity, and notes that belly fat can be a positive, healthful thing for women in the case of something like menopause. “I started to see how strange it was that we celebrate little baby’s tummies, and we celebrate pregnant women’s bellies, and we celebrate six packs, or flat stomachs — and that’s it. That leaves out 99.9% of the population,” she continued.
American culture is in the midst of a reckoning with weight. Put more bluntly — a reckoning with fat. While body positivity and inclusive sizing gain prominence in some mainstream spaces, the accumulation of fat around the middle is still something completely taboo, particularly for women. And even as the “ideal” size for a woman has moved away from the coke-skinny aesthetic of the ‘90s, being visibly fat, meaning rolls around the middle, on appendages, or anything that doesn’t conform to the toned, tanned hourglass shape, is still stigmatized.
And the demonization of belly fat reigns supreme.
We’ve heard all the warnings about belly fat before, as respected sources like Harvard Medical School (from 2010) and the Mayo Clinic (from June of this year) continue to put these messages into the world: Belly fat is more harmful than gaining other kinds of weight and having a big belly is a more dangerous, risky body shape. The reasoning behind this logic involves something called visceral fat, which is different from subcutaneous fat, or the rolls just under the skin. Instead, visceral fat lives in between our organs, and is theoretically connected to chemicals that can increase risks for heart disease, Alheizmer’s, type two diabetes and more.
“We have a lot of theories as to why visceral fat is associated with higher risks of disease,” said Registered Dietitian and Nutritionist, Whitney Catalano, an Intuitive Eating coach who founded the Trust Your Body Project after struggling with her own disordered eating for years. “But, ultimately, these are theories. In my professional opinion, without a direct causal link, the focus on visceral fat as this demonized thing is very blown out of proportion, very harmful, and feeds into the stigmatizing rhetoric around body weight.”
Everyone from the academic, medical sources cited above, to the most click-bait and listicle-centric sites on the internet provide guidelines on how to reduce belly fat; hits for the phrase abound, most commonly paired with “lose” “lower” and “flatten.” The stigma against belly fat remains, even if it’s since been determined that one-note measures like BMI and hysteria around visceral fat aren’t useful in determining overall health. “Many deem the tummy the truest sign of whale-status,” a Bustle piece from 2016 opined. “The most undeniable proof that one's body is fat and subsequently failed.”
A lot of the more intense consequences of fat phobia are reserved for women with big stomachs, big bellies — as if this body shape, located so near the site of digestion, is somehow proof of their overeating. It wasn’t until I gained weight in my midsection that sales associates at clothing stores began to recommend “flowy” shirts and dresses. I was supposed to hide my belly at all costs, in case other people were uncomfortable with it. As with any form of marginalization, the intersections of fatness with factors like race, sexuality and disability, only increases systematic oppression.
“Anybody in the fucking world can walk up to me as a fat person and talk to me as though they have more knowledge about something because I’m fat and I’ve ‘failed,’ somehow because I’m in a fat body,” said JerVae Anthony, a social worker and writer who fights for fat black liberation. “People don’t ever look at fat bodies and think, ‘oh this person already lost weight.’ Fat people are made fun of, even doctors make fun of us. I’ve actually had doctors that were upset with me because I didn’t have high blood pressure because it didn’t fit their narrative for fat bodies. We’re just treated poorly across the board regardless of whether we meet their health markers — it’s about stigma, it's not really about health.”
Fatness exists on a continuum for most people, with certain levels they will accept and arbitrary levels that they won’t, so let me be clear about my privilege. I’m firmly mid-size, not plus-size, and I’m white, so I’m protected from a lot of violence toward fat women by that privilege. It’s not necessarily easy for me to find clothes that fit my body, and I don’t really like most of the options that are out there, but they’re out there. I can fit into most airplane seats or other seating pretty well, and almost no one would label me as obese just by looking at me.
And while the blinders of my eating disorder made me hyper-focused on my own body, looking at the world with a fresh perspective yielded mixed results. Friends with big hips, butts and thighs were empowered by the new Kardashian era, finding acceptance and even sexiness in their shape, a blown up version of the hourglass, but I felt more ostracized than ever, because my now-larger body didn’t fit into that celebrated paradigm, either.
“The classic Venus hourglass shape is the traditional standard of beauty when it comes to the plus-size body type,” said digital and brand strategist Charlotte Zoller, the former Head of Social at the plus size clothing brand ELOQUII. “It’s the most easily digestible body shape that can be scaled up or down, using the same proportions, and you still know exactly what you’re getting. So, anything that’s an anomaly from that body shape is difficult for people to wrap their heads around. If you see someone with, for instance, a larger stomach, it’s like oh, we can ‘see’ that they’re not healthy.”
“fat stomachs don’t get praised the same way a “fat ass” does. ”
Fat stomachs don’t get praised the same way a “fat ass” does (except maybe in a kink setting), and mainstream culture’s encouragement to show off your rolls is cautiously reserved for the thinnest and whitest versions of this body positive trope. As Catalano knows well from working with her clients, living with fatness goes so much deeper than that.
“A lot of body positivity online has been kind of thin-washed and white-washed,” she said. “So there are a lot of thin bodies with stomach rolls saying ‘I struggle to feel secure in my body.’ But that’s not why body positivity was created. Body positivity was originally a social justice movement that was born out of the need to fight for fat rights, the rights of fat people to not be fired because they are fat, because that is still allowed in a majority of states. You can literally be fired for being fat.”
To that point, when it comes to acceptance for fat bodies, particularly those that aren’t white, Anthony has one suggestion: Hire more fat people. “The best way to fight anti-fat bias/ weight stigma is to hand over power,” she said. “Pay fat people. Listen to us when we tell you something doesn’t feel right. There has to be honest conversations about how marginalized bodies are treated. Don’t just put us in pictures. Protect us and give us power in these spaces.”
For many women who are reaching a breaking point with several decades of the cyclical demands of diet culture, the emotional roller coaster of yo-yo dieting, and the sense of failure when our bodies won’t stay thin, the connection between disordered eating and over exercising is very clear. In my case, I knew if I went back to running 4-5 miles a day, it would help me lose the weight. But I also knew, I wouldn’t be able to stop there, and keep it casual, that if I went back to running, I’d fall all the way back in.
“A couple years ago I went on Weight Watchers and lost 60 pounds, said Rachel Rosenbloom, a lifelong dieter and the co-founder of digital marketing firm Polka Dot Media. “Everyone in my life was telling me how amazing I looked, and that I was doing such a good job and I should keep it up, even though I was not doing social things and working out twice a day. I realized I was starving myself, overexercising, and had developed extremely disordered eating from it.”
Focus on exercising can also be difficult if you’re recovering from an eating disorder. Girls tracking their calories on Apple watches and working out twice a day stood as glaring reminders of my past, and the array of thin bodies and clearly disordered eating patterns discussed before and after workout classes were triggering, tempting me to go back to my own toxic habits. I thought once I quit the impossibly strict regimen of my disordered eating I’d be happier, but the difficulties of living in my body, how it wanted to be, were many.
“There is definitely a hierarchy of bodies that still exists, even among the plus-sized communities,” said Sydney Scott, a rising plus-size influencer on Instagram, who regularly hosts fascinating, honest conversations about sustainable and inclusive fashion. “There are false narratives about belly fat that have been sold to us by the diet and health industry. That bodies must exist in a particular way in order to be healthy, and that anything that looks different from their standard must change. It’s challenging to face this narrative, especially when simultaneously confronting a years-long eating disorder. Does diet culture want me to be skinny, or healthy?”
At least most workout clothes are stretchy enough to be, ahem, “forgiving,” (another word that situates my body as a sin), but finding fitness clothing that went up to my size was an issue, and had even become a chore. The waistband of even the stretchiest leggings almost always cut into my belly, and my chest poured out the top of most sports bras. How was I supposed to work out, and try to get my weight in check, if nothing fit the body I was currently in?
“Ten years ago, trying to find workout clothes for my size 18 body, I got so discouraged that I just gave up,” Zoller remembered. “There’s this thought that, ‘Oh if we don’t make clothes for fat people, that will shame them into losing weight.’ It’s so funny, because that kind of notion has been pervasive for so long now, but I saw someone just yesterday comment that on an Instagram post. Like, are we still doing this? Do you want me to work out in a Mumu?”
Within boutique fitness, the overwhelming message is that overweight or obese people aren’t welcome. This seems illogical, as the knee-jerk reaction to large bodies in mainstream culture is policing, concern-trolling, and demanding weight loss, but still, the stigma remains. Bellies, in particular, are the anti-ab, and I’ve been in classes where instructors called out which poses will help tighten, flatten, and tone the area, with a meaningful look in my direction.
“Marginalized body types are typically told to ‘workout more,’ but we are then faced with a lack of options when it comes to finding workout clothes, finding a gym where we feel comfortable, or a class where we feel welcome,” Scott explained. “I believe that inclusion in these types of ‘skinny spaces’ starts with what you’re wearing! Wearing something I feel good in always helps my confidence.”
One of the first places I felt comfortable working out again after I gained weight was a yoga studio called Y7 that blasted loud music during their flows and presented every suggested movement or pose as optional. Their candlelit classes took place in studios without mirrors, so I wasn’t staring at my body through each sweaty moment, and if I skipped the punishing planks I wasn’t publicly shamed for it. A “flow on your own” section let me modify poses to accommodate my body shape, and go at a pace that felt right for me, while still getting a great workout. I wasn’t losing weight, and that was no longer my fitness goal, but I felt healthy and strong — and accepted.
“Feeling included, happy and confident has nothing to do with how much you weigh, how many workout classes you do, or how many calories you eat,” said Y7 Studio Founder & CEO, Sarah Larson Levey. “It has to do with how you feel and being around people and in places that bring out the best feelings in you is what should matter. We have been conditioned to listen to what we are being fed by brands selling things, instead of listening to what our bodies are telling us.”
A recent collaboration between the Y7 and size-inclusive activewear brand, Girlfriend Collective, went up to a 2X, further cementing their commitment to welcoming bigger bodies in their space, and the company strives to use real women in their advertisements and photoshoots, focusing on all ethnicities, backgrounds, and yes, sizes. “At Y7 Studio, we welcome everyone — it’s not our responsibility to dictate what a yogi should look like,” said the company’s Director of Retail, Melanie Miracolo. “We’ve built an inclusive space and that has partly to do with our clothing size range. Non-inclusive sizing feels out of touch with culture and outdated.”
But a recent backlash to a Nike mannequin modeled after a plus-size woman revealed just how far we have to go when it comes to fat acceptance. A trolly response led by British journalist Tanya Gold for The Telegraph described the mannequin as “immense, gargantuan, vast. She heaves with fat.” Well guess who else heaves with fat as I pull my body off the mat and flip into a warrior two? There is a world of women out there, heaving with fat, doing the damn thing anyway. Gold’s description only revealed her disdain for larger bodies, not a concern for the health of said bodies.
“Our belly is particularly feminine,” Cole said. “The belly area is where we all come from, it’s soft, it’s vulnerable, it’s a source of wisdom and knowing, and it’s a symbol of being nourished. And if you want women to be hungry, and hard, and less connected to their femininity and their power, shame their belly.”
For plenty of women — including the author of a recent New York Times takedown of the wellness industry — Intuitive Eating was their way out of the diet cycle, or the kind of self-loathing that Gold so aptly illustrated in her op-ed. Intuitive Eating is a set of principles that are anti-diet and weight-neutral, they sound so simple it’s almost shocking: your body knows what it wants to eat and when, and listening to these cues will lead to a peaceful, healthful relationship with food. The goal is not to lose weight, but learn how to eat in a natural way.
“trusting your body to signal its own dietary and exercise needs is a revolutionary concept in American culture. ”
Trusting your body to signal its own dietary and exercise needs is a revolutionary concept in American culture. Getting away from emotional eating, overeating after periods of restriction, and exercising as a form of punishment are all things I’d been slowly doing on my own, so coming to the principles of Intuitive Eating felt like coming home. I’m more comfortable with food and exercise than I’ve ever been, and I’m still working to accept my body, as it is, but I’m not sure I’ll ever “love” my stomach. Maybe, love isn’t the real goal — neutrality is.
“For me, what makes the whole body positivity thing so much more doable, is that it’s not necessarily about needing to love my body, or needing to love my stomach,” Rosenbloom said. “It’s more like, I need to accept them, and I need to feel neutral about them. So instead of thinking ‘I hate my stomach,’ I want to get to a point where that’s not a thing I’m thinking about constantly.”
If you asked me when I hated my body the most, though, it was when I was the thinnest that I ever was. When I was a size two who weighed 120 pounds, ran 90 minutes to two hours a day and barely ate a single meal, that was the most convinced that my body was unworthy and hideous. Now that I weigh close to double that number, I struggle with the stretch marks and the arm fat, the rolls around my hips and thighs, and yes, my stomach. And I don’t love my body. I’m not there yet, probably never will be.
But I don’t hate it either. I don’t stiffen at the word obese, or overweight — that’s what I am, and I know I’m still a healthy, attractive person deserving of love. I don’t break down in dressing rooms when clothes don’t fit, or when there’s not a size larger available. I try new places until I find clothes that work for my body, and fit my belly, and I talk with other women about their similar struggles. I get my yoga mat, I go to practice every day. I work on the company I started. I get ready to go on dates. I live the life I want. And most of all, when I’m hungry, I eat.
Caitlin White is a freelance writer/editor living in LA, interested in empathy, pop music, and wholehearted wellness. She is also the founder and Editor-in-chief of Cinnamon Mag. You can find her here.
