WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN BY 'ROMANTIZING OBESITY? by Jessica Balbino

"In the popular imagination, a fat person cannot exist, because just the fact that they inhabit the same world as you already puts them in a place where they need to mold themselves, adapt, stop being who they are, in the body they have, to that can finally 'be accepted'."

"Being fat is fine, but you don't have to romanticize obesity." Who throws the first kg who has never heard or used that phrase. And the question is, what the hell are they talking about when they say that phrase? What is the romanticization of obesity?

The first thing we need to talk about is the term obesity.  

March 4 is 'World Obesity Day', a date used to reinforce 'prevention' campaigns. Already the term coined by the medical literature, is based on the calculation of the Body Mass Index (BMI), as obsolete as in the nineteenth century, when it was created. The word arrives loaded with a pejorative tone, pathologizing a condition of chronic disease to all fat bodies, without, however, the need for individual and subjective evaluation, considering as fat accumulation every person who is not within the pre-established standards at each time .

When we say that we are going to 'fight obesity', we are, in practice, saying that we are going to fight fat bodies, forgetting that people, human beings, live in these bodies. We are in war? In practice yes. And who dies is who inhabits fat bodies.

Break.

Returning to the supposed romanticization. It is enough for a fat person to exist - and publicizing it in some way, to be attacked as romanticizing obesity. If she's eating a lettuce salad, she's romanticizing obesity. If you're reading a book: romanticizing obesity. If you're exercising: romanticizing obesity. Working: romanticizing obesity.

In the popular imagination, a fat person cannot exist , because just the fact that they live in the same world as you already puts them in a place where they need to mold themselves, adapt, stop being who they are, in the body they have, so that can finally 'be accepted'.

Now, where does this romanticizing obesity nonsense come from? This question has been haunting me for some time.

Etymologically, romanticizing means idealizing something and then wishing for it. How many people do you know who wish they were fat?

How is fat people's lives better than thin people's when thin people are dehumanized and demonized all the time?

I really like an exercise, which is to think about how many people from oppressed groups, especially the fat ones, do we know in leadership positions? In the spotlight in politics? In memorable roles and without serving ridicule in cinema and soap operas? How many fat protagonists do we know? How many are bestselling villains?

And we know the answer: very few. Which, by itself, already excludes the argument of the 'romanticization of obesity' that has been repeated to exhaustion, disgracing fat bodies that are just trying to exist with the dignity of a standard body, but are persecuted and hated, no matter what they are doing, under the argument that it is not hate, but 'concern for health'. ⁣⁣⁣⁣

So, before accusing fat people of romanticizing obesity, think about where this attack comes from and what your purpose is with it. And also if the person wants to lose weight. Or whether or not she is healthy. This is a request: stop patrolling other people's bodies. ⁣⁣⁣⁣

⁣⁣ I'll say it again: we all know that no one is concerned about other people's health. If that were true, we would donate blood regularly, visit hospitals for children with cancer, register for bone marrow donation and, above all, use masks and alcohol gel in the middle of a pandemic.

If we don't do this, if we don't patrol our friends who smoke, who drink every day, who ingest drugs of the most different types, who take controlled medicines based on self-diagnosis, like who drinks water, why do we have this concern with fat bodies? ?

The account is simple: out of hate.

And here is more questioning: what is the origin of your hatred for fat bodies?

Here we resume the war against fat people. Play.

An article published by Michael Hobbes this March on Huffposting reveals that, for decades, the medical community ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and useless war against fat people, with diets that do not work and with a way of acting that criminalizes the bodies. , poisoned public perception and ruined millions of lives.

In Brazil, a fat person dies every 7 minutes. This is what a study by Preventing Chronic Disease in Atlanta, USA, states. The study reveals that in 2019 in Brazil, 168,000 people died because they were fat.

Looking at it like that, it doesn't even look scary, does it? It is a number only slightly lower than the number of deaths from Covid-19 in the midst of the pandemic. If we look closely, while you read this text, scroll through your Instagram feed, take a pee, reply to a WhatsApp message, a fat person ceases to exist. ⁣

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The study deals with deaths that could have been avoided. However, what is done for this? It has nothing to do with the amount of calories ingested or physical exercise done. Fat people don't die because of their weight or BMI calculation, but because of fatphobia, which comes in the form of lack of access to medical treatments - myself, I'm afraid of going to the doctor - prejudice, lack of employment, not fit in places. Fat people die because they are socially rejected. Because they are harassed all the time. Because they commit suicide due to the social isolation that comes much earlier to those who inhabit these bodies. ⁣

Still according to the article by Michael Hobbes,

For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved or even saved millions of lives. The first is that diets don't work. The second big lesson that the medical establishment has learned and repeatedly rejected is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms.

Studies have found that one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of high blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of people without excess weight are what epidemiologists call "the sickly skinny", as Michael Hobbes brings in the article entitled "Everything You Know About Obesity Is Wrong".

That said, we don't need to dehumanize fat people so that they become thin, but we can all work together so that we are all healthy in the same way.

And here, now, is the question: what have you been doing so that the fat people around you don't die like in a pandemic?

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Jéssica Balbino is a fat woman, columnist for Puta Peita, journalist, master in communication and believes that she can transform the world through narratives. She is the creator and editor of Margens, a project that disseminates content about peripheral women in writing. Curator of literary events across the country. Author of the books "Hip-Hop - A Cultura Marginal", "Traficando Conhecimento" and "Gasoline & phosphorus - my body in flames" (in press). Psychoanalyst in training.

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