I received some feedback about a presentation I did a little while back where I was accused of fat-shaming myself. I read that comment over and over again. I am not ashamed of who I am. I am publicly out as a fat person. I decry the behaviour of those who act out of a ‘right to cruelty’ sense of thin superiority. All of these things jumped about in my head when I read this. I thought back to the presentation and can remember making only two comments about my weight, neither of them suggesting that there was anything wrong or disgusting with me or my body.
I’m not sure who made the comment or what it was that they heard. But I had to think about what they said. I came to the decision that I’m not going back into the closet about my weight or about my existence as a fat man in a hostile world. It’s part of my personal narrative and it’s well within my rights to talk about it. Mentioning the fact that I am fat is not ‘fat shaming’. Talking about my experiences as a fat person is not ‘fat shaming.’ Joking about my weight is not ‘fat shaming’ if those jokes are about people’s response to me being fat or my experience of being fat, I avoid joking about any experience where fat is attached to a moral value.
It is not uncommon for people to tell me, in comments after a lecture, that I shouldn’t mention my weight. It’s like just the fact that I say out loud who I am, conjures up all the bad things they think about fat people so therefore I should be silent.
I won’t.
I’m fat.
I live a fat life.
And fuck it, I’m going to talk about it.
Silence, so often, is translated directly into shame.
Not in this boy.
