He’s probably just “concerned for my health.”
The trick-or-treators looked adorable as they toddled from one house to another in their witch and superhero costumes. The houses were all done up with yard displays, carved pumpkins, and even scary music playing from an unknown source. I love how my new neighborhood does Halloween, the spirit was catching.
Around 7pm I waddled outside and enjoyed the ambiance of the holiday, seeing people dressed up at the corner store and orange and black lights on the houses. It was magical.
It also felt like a great time to go for a walk. Being pregnant, my previous hobbies of roller-skating, martial arts, bikram yoga, and rock-climbing were all off limits. But I like to get in a good walk as much as possible, often uphill to increase my heart rate.
My seven month baby bump was clearly visable under my dress. True, I had been rather slow to gain weight; I’m used to a very healthy lifestyle, and it has been hard for me to eat all the carbs I’m supposed to while pregnant. My doctor told me to stop worrying about how much or how little weight I’m gaining and just focus on being healthy and keep walking for exercise. Still, I was very proud of my round little soccer ball belly. I’ve wanted to be a mom for so long. I’m so glad it’s finally getting to happen for me.
Baby bumps look different on different people. I don’t have that look, where all of my body is thin and there’s one big round ball coming out of my belly. Yes, my stomach is clearly a round ball I’m carrying high, but the rest of me isn’t slender. Despite my strict life of eating healthy and intense exercise, my legs, but, thighs, and upper arms have always been rather large, probably becuase I have lipedema. But my upper waist was quite slim, as lipedema doesn’t affect that part of my body. However now, I literally have a baby growing in my belly, no more narrow waist for me.
So back to Halloween, I was walking the streets enjoying the walk, when suddenly a car slows down and stops in the middle of the road. The driver roles down his window and yells out at me.
“That’s quite a pork-belly you have there! Es no bueno!” He then shakes his head at me, as if I am a shameful person who has done something awful, and then drives away, starring at me with disapproval from the window, rubbernecking his disdain at my body.
I didn’t even have time to flip him the bird. What a jerk.
First of all, no I don’t have a pork-belly, I’m freaking pregnant, and that’s literally my baby in there. Second of all, who the F is he that he thinks it’s his job to police my body? Even if it was just fat, it’s none of his buisiness to label me as “no bueno.” Who died and made him the obesity police? Why does he even care? (Not to mention his poor understanding of Spanish grammar. Dude if you’re gonna insult me, for the love of Spain, don’t butcher the Spanish language whilst doing it).
The judgement that oozed off his gaze as he shook his head, indicated that I had some sort of moral failing due to my large stomach. I have committed a terrible sin of being fat, it’s all my fault. I must be a selfish glutton who doesn’t care about her own body.
The clear judgement, the shame that is immediately placed (misplaced) upon my large belly, doesn’t feel new or rare though. It feels familiar, like I’ve heard it a million times, but in less direct ways. Often in arguments counter to the body positive movement. Some view the whole body positive movement as society embracing and accepting different body types. Some view body positivity as fat acceptance. Some view body positivity as wrong because they think it’s encouraging an unhealthy lifestyle. They point out that obesity correlates to a mosiac of health issues including diabetes, heart disease, early death, sleep apnea, etc. By saying that larger fat bodies are beautiful too, are we telling people it’s okay to be obese and thus lead them to an early grave? Isn’t good we find fat bodies unacceptable so that people realize it’s not okay to just eat junk food and never exercise? Doesn’t “fat shamming” lead to intervention with people’s life styles giving them a second chance at life?
While I can see the above thinking, I’m not big on enabeling anyone with unhealthy behavior, but how do we know who is actually unhealthy, and who is large for reasons unrelated to their lifestyle? Take me, I’m pregnant, and the weight and size of my body is totally normal and healthy, though this dude and his fly-by six second apprasial of my body didn’t catch that detail. He just saw that I have a big stomach and thus am fat, being fat is wrong due to its health and ascetic issues, and felt the need to tell me so.
I’m sure he’s not the only who thinks I’m fat, probably countless other strangers see my large belly and assumed as much too. Then I’m held to the scrutiny, the judgement, of being fat, which is not considered acceptable.
It’s not just pregnancy that can make a person look obese when they are not. Take the condition of lipedema, which I also have. Lipedema is a condition that causes large amounts of fat to accumlate on certain parts of the body. Lipedema fat is resistant to diet and exercise, you can’t diet and exercise lipedema fat away. Diet and exercise is important for people with lipedema, to slow the disease, but you can’t reverse it or remove lipedema fat unless you have actual, expensive, surgery. Shout out to Shannon Ashley for spreading awareness.
How many women are there with lipedema, and large amounts of fat on their bodies, and it’s just assumed they are lazy and fat, and judged to be unhealthy? Lipedema doesn’t cause high blood pressure, diabetes, or other issues. Women can have lipedema and be very fat, and also quite healthy.
There are other reasons to why someone could be fat. It could just honestly be in their genetics. Yes, they can diet and exercise and loose weight, but maybe the weight loss is much less than it would be in the average person. I’ve known many women who were big, tall, wide, and thick. They were muscular, but also fat, and were frankly just built like that, since childhood. I knew one woman, who was in excellent shape, at 250 lbs. I watched her earn her black belt, in an 8 hour grueling physical test, she showed more endurance and athleticism that most people.
It can be very difficult to lose weight when someone has hypothyroidism. It’s a condition that can literally change your metabolism and reduce weight loss. This is a condition very common to women.
My exhusband was in great shape when I met him. He also has schizoaffective disorder, and needed medication. The medication was life-saving, but caused him to gain weight. He still exercised, but the meds changed his metabolism and he was never the size he was before. However, he wasn’t psychotic anymore. It wasn’t healthy for him to be that size, but it would have been even worse for him to off his meds. Can you imagine being in that situation of having to literally chose your sanity over your weight? Who are we to judge him, telling him he is unhealthy for being fat, when he needed the medication to be healthy?
I read an article by another woman on medium, who condemned the body positive movement, because she felt it encouraged obesity. Fat people shouldn’t be accepted, because then everyone will just be fine being fat and unhealthy. She made a point of saying that people who are fat for medical reasons should be excluded from judgement.
The thing is though, how do you know? How do you know if someone is fat for a medical reason, such as lipedema, hypothyrodism, badly needed medication, pregnancy (in my case) or some other reason, and who is just unhealthy? For many of the above casses, we look very similar. Should all of us suffer just because of the way we look? Should all fat people be shamed because some of us are unhealthy? (Further more should all skinny people be judged to be meth users? Meth can make a person rail thin and it’s very unhealthy).
When all people have to go on is fat, then they make a 5 second judgement of a person’s health based what they see, and make assumptions about their health, can they really be trusted to decide whose fat body is acceptable and whose is not? Why do we even need to strangers to police our bodies for our own health? Is this really caring about a fat person’s health, judging their bodies and assuming we know the cause and shaming them?
Maybe, instead of just equating fat with undesire and ill-health, we should instead be looking into more treatment options for people who are fat, above and beyond just diet and exercise. For me, diet and exercise will not rid my body of the lipedema fat, all it can do is slow the disease, not reverse it. Lipedema remains and understudied and under researched, despite it being very common, affecting 11% of women and girls. The treatments available are also not covered by insurance companies. Women with lipedema will continue to be fat until we find more therapies, treatments, and prevention instead of just shoving diet and exercise down our throats. Yes, I diet and exercise, and yet I will never be below the obesity BMI because of the lipedema.
Maybe we can look into treatment options for people who need mental-health medication to help them manage weight gains? Maybe we can find additional causes of why weight loss is harder in some bodies than others, and find more treatments for those bodies that don’t always respond to diet and exercise the same way? Maybe we can realize that small size does not necessarily equal health?
Most importantly, can we stop literally sizing up strangers, making assumptions about their health, judging them by our assumptions and then shaming them for them? If someone does infact have an obesity problem, why is it any of our business? They have enough to worry about without others trying to peek into their private medical health issues and judge them. We are not doctors, it’s not our job to judge other’s bodies.
For me, yes, it’s absurd to think that my pregnancy bump was interrpreted as me being fat, it’s a freaking baby in my uterus, not fat. But are we as a society any different, assuming we know why someone is fat or not fat and it’s about their health?
