By Jessica Balbino*
Not fitting into clothes, chairs, beds, armchairs, turnstiles, elevators, etc, causes more damage to bodies – and fat minds – than the calculation of BMI (Body Mass Index), used to define whether or not someone is sick and , therefore, a risk to public health.
Fat people, especially fat women, suffer daily from the sayings “but it's just a concern for your health”. If that's right, it helps me pay the monthly installment of the health plan, or pays for my psychoanalysis sessions. How about paying for my swimming lessons? Or my gym? What if you keep me company on neighborhood walks? How about going out for coffee with me and listening to me talk about the social neglect I suffer?
How many 'good' people are concerned about the health of others, but have never, in their entire lives, donated blood or registered for bone marrow donation? Do you really want to help people? Look for the nearest blood collection unit. Stocks deplete quickly and you can save lives. Patrolling the fat person's plate isn't going to save anyone.
Treating a fat person's body as excess or exaggeration is an absurd practice of dehumanization. The question we must ask ourselves is: why? Why try to dehumanize our fat bodies? Why are they so annoying? Why the insistence on treating it like an epidemic or a serious health case?
It is known that there is no disease that affects only fat people. All the data on cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes are questionable. But I can say, without exaggeration, that fatphobia exists and affects all fat people.
Fatphobia is limiting, it prevents the person from living in society and forces isolation, with that comes depression, and such excessive concern with health gives rise to numerous problems of self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-confidence. But who cares? If the fat person is isolated, crying in a bed, that's fine, what he cannot do is be full, alive and radiant in society, occupying spaces with his fat body. It doesn't work there. IT DOESN'T HAVE APPROPRIATION.
There is no reason for the fat person to want to be free. Therefore, thin people need to remind them all the time how "sick" they are for being "above" the weight considered ideal by society. It doesn't matter how active the fat person is, play sports, eat well, work hard and be nice. She is fat and it is important to reinforce stereotypes, as well as her discomfort.
It doesn't matter that the skinny person is unhealthy. She's skinny, so she appears to be. It doesn't matter what she eats, what drugs she eventually uses, or how much her skinny body costs her. It fits. Fits clothes, turnstiles and seats. It fits in thought, in social fragility, in the prescribed stereotype.
Thin people fit and have social passability. Fat people are read as sick and it doesn't matter how much health they actually have: the world is programmed so that they don't fit. And, not having a place, they cannot exist, nor fight.
This is not a happy text. He proposes a reflection: are we concerned with size, with how much things fit, why? Who does this fit serve?
My wish is that we can spread out, enjoy ourselves, go out the edges, not fit, spill our body, our size, our dreams and our lives. My wish is that we, more than fighting, can, one day, at least one day, rest. Does it fit?
Jessica Balbino is the type of electric woman, who mixes journalism, cultural production and literature with pepper, caffeine, phosphorus and gasoline.
Marie Boiseau is an illustrator and is inspired by women, colors and shapes from nature, sexuality, the little things of everyday life.
5 comments
Ualllllll… Tô sem fôlego com esse texto… Infelizmente uma realidade que vivo, porém especialmente nessa quarentena – tendo que ouvir tantas “suposições” de mal gosto; vim me desconstruindo e me resignificando – um trabalho árduo, muito mais muito difícil, mas não vou desistir; de ser livre para ser eu mesma, e mais do que ser bem aceita pela “sociedade”,eu quero me aceitar, me amar.
Muito obrigada por esse texto realista e inspirador!
Grata
Texto maravilhoso! “Pessoas magras cabem e têm passabilidade social”. A humilhação diária e reiterada destrói qualquer autoestima que a gente tenta construir.
Não, não tem cabimento vestirmos a camisa da hipocrisia. Num país onde o próprio Presidente veste a camisa de atleta de meia tigela, num momento em que muitas pessoas continuam saindo de casa e desafiando a quarentena, simplesmente porque não são idosos, num lugar onde todos os manequins, imagens, estereótipos tem medida certa, feito pedra de gelo. Sim, você falou tudo, querida, e o que me mata é sabermos que estamos mesmo engessados nessa camisa de força hipócrita, aristocrata e misógina….claro, tenho uma ponta de esperança, esses dias até doei minha camisa azul e amarela que há anos não me cabe mais.
Incrível adoro seus textos, trabalhos, presença, parceria e tudo mais… Você é uma mulher incrível generosa extremamente inteligente eu aprendo muito com você obrigada por acreditar e confiar em mim no meu trabalho a soma é real esse é meu maior presente! s2 sou grato por ter vc na minga vida.
Excelente reflexão Jéssica! Queria que todo mundo estivesse aberto a esse diálogo, mas acredito que quanto mais sacrifícios uma pessoa faz para atender as regras (do padrão de beleza, da régua médica, da tradicional família) mais ela se incomoda com a suposta rebeldia de quem existe fora da cartilha. Não conseguem nem chegar ao final desse texto com o coração aberto. Minha dica é: silencie os estímulos internos e tente descobrir sua própria voz. O tempo e esforço que você despreende sendo obediente pode te surpreender e ser bem melhor empregado.