"Fat (in)visibility and its struggle" by Ale Mujica Rodríguez and Cynthia L Montalbetti

“You are not a political body just because you are “fat”,
if not because of how we face the world with our fat”
La Cerda Punk - Constanzx Alvarez Castillo

"It's for your health, it's for your own good". We have heard this phrase countless times, whenever we go to the doctor, who, on several occasions, instead of listening to us and attending to our needs, immediately perceives us as fat bodies and, therefore, we end up going on diets, extra exams and/or consultations with other specialists (which we neither need nor request). Even, at times, our reason for the consultation is entirely ignored. These entrances and exits from health services are accompanied by different symbolic and verbal violence and a paternalistic and infantilizing discourse.

There is a health imperative. We are still inhabiting the risk society (Ulrich Beck) and letting ourselves be captured by it. As every body-person is at risk of becoming ill, it must be cared for, monitored and controlled. Otherwise, this body-person will be blamed and punished. This territory of risk converses with the idea of ​​the impure body, as an organic and finite being, further delineating the need for regulation of this through medicalization and hygiene.

Medicine has been very effective in the biomedical-technological surveillance of fat bodies. It is through this, but not exclusively, that the paradigms of what would be normal and pathological, valid and invalid are created; what a body would be like and how it should be lived. Medicine and related areas focused on the body (nutrition, physical education, etc.) build a discourse that determines specific moral and aesthetic codes, which mark bodies and help in the imaginary existence of an “ideal” and “universal” body. A white, thin, straight, cis and non-disabled body, in this case.

This paradigm has generated a wave of fitness, which permeates both the way of eating and seeing food, as well as the language itself. Realize how places need to be called fit to be part of certain markets, or how on a daily basis we see advertisements related to fit and located within this territory in different networks and media. The idea of ​​fitness, which says 'get fit', means to adjust, adapt to the hegemonic models of corporeality and visual aesthetics, incorporating morals and values, meeting the needs of the logic of the show, through the different social networks and reinforced by the media.

On the other hand, we cannot fail to link capitalism to these body-normative measures, since it is important for the system to control disciplined bodies-people, as well as the consequent quantity of products and spaces created to obtain this idealized body-people. As Contanzx Alvarez Castillo comments in his book 'La bristle Punk, a regimen of power', we are led to consumption articulated by calories.

With these paradigms as a backdrop, possible lines of flight were thought of, other ways of inhabiting and building territories that would enable and allow the existence and resistance of bodies outside these norms, those who do not want to re-incorporate, or those who wish to transit free of violence.

It is for this reason and, mainly, seeking to depathologize, demoralize and break paradigms related to corporeality that Fat Activism comes into existence. Thus, at the end of the 1960s, groups of resistance and struggle emerged in the US that understood the need to demand recognition of these bodies and the social imposition that disgusts them, making public and performance demonstrations, poems and essays. The movement also ends up leading to deepening through research to challenge fat-phobic scientific knowledge, which supports and justifies violence against dissident corporealities.

Gordativism in Latin America is still taking its first steps, as this topic was not an object of interest until the 2000s (Moreno). With the help of the internet in activism, the so-called factopher is created, the possibility of socialization between different people and their stories loaded with violence that, through forums or social networks, identify themselves as belonging to a category that suffers the oppression of regulate their bodies to fit an archetype. This archetype that transforms people to serve a consumable, beautiful, interesting pattern to the delight of eyes sanitized by discourses of beauty and health. But, which brings humiliation as a consequence for not fitting clothes, bus turnstiles, public or private health services, since the equipment was made for an average body and does not support our corporalities, since the diagnoses come ready-made permeated with prejudice, with just one look.

The battle for visibility is essential and Fat Activism is a necessary way out, because there is no change without a fight. We need to revolutionize the way we see our bodies, as well as enter into the spaces that underlie discrimination. It is necessary to question, face, change the fat-phobic thoughts that anesthetize us. Many people are so concerned about their bodies that they end up being hostages of an imaginary of beauty that has nothing to do with health, but with the need for acceptance and recognition to feel part of this sanitized society.

Finally, we write from the curves, the folds, the stretch marks, the daily sweat, the roast between the legs, the (in)constant movement of our (in)visible and (un)desirable bodies, which make room in the narrowness of moral and aesthetic of the society(ies). We write from the border, without the intention of occupying any center, but, on the contrary, of building more border bridges that allow the creation of dissident forms of (re)existence.

It is worth, with joy, saying that this is just a mouth opener, a juicy and bittersweet entry of the next delights that await you.

References
_ Constanzx Alvarez Castillo. La bristle punk. Essays from a fat, lesbian, anti-capitalist & anti-speciesist feminism. Valparaiso: Editorial Trio. 2014.
_ Ulrich Beck. Risk society: towards another modernity. Publisher 34. 2013
_ Flavia Costa. The fitness device in biological modernity. Aesthetic democracy, just-in-time, crimes of ugliness and contagion. Journeys of Body and Culture National University of La Plata. Argentina May 15 to 17, 2008.
_ Rafael Silva Mattos. I'm fat, I'm abnormal. Rio de Janeiro, vol. 3, no. 2. 2007
_ Paz Moreno. Feminine Subjectivity and Fat. Santiago de Chile: University of Chile, 2015.
_ Laura Contrera and Nicolas Cuello. Bodies without patrons: Resistances from the disproportionate geographies of the flesh. Buenos Aires: Editorial Trio. 2016.

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About the authors

Ale Mujica Rodriguez. Graduated in Medicine. Sanitarian. (Trans)feminist, transimmigrant-sudaka, fight for the free womb and fatactivist.

Cynthia L Montalbetti (Chichi) . Sociologist and political scientist, migrant, feminist and fat activist.

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Negahamburger illustration.