Have you ever looked at an outfit someone else is wearing and thought, ‘I wouldn’t have put that skirt with that top’? I have. We all have. It is a human instinct to pass judgement over others. It is irresistible. So not a surprise when this week, Anthea Turner, who I watched avidly on Blue Peter as a kid, went on a sort of mass-fat-shaming exercise via twitter. I won’t repeat the whole thing, but she has since apologised for tweeting a picture of a fat person in a wheelchair, and has not yet removed her tweet saying, “So much evidence as to why our numbers are high yet people fail to listen and treat the NHS as sticking plaster for their lifestyle choices…”.
Lifestyle choice. Fat people are a strain on the NHS. You get the gist. Reading it, she made me feel like I was facing the school changing room before PE, all over again. That is why I think that, though we all pass judgement all the time, nothing good comes from shaming people.
Have you ever been properly ashamed? Of course you have, and you know it feels horrible. Fat-shaming is the ultimate though, as it tends to come with a healthy dose of self-righteous sanctimony and ‘think of the NHS!’ do-goodery. Fat is one of the ultimate shames. Because diet culture is pervasive, it is easy to assume that body shape must be a choice. Given the so-called health consequences of a larger body shape, if it is a choice to be fat, you must be unwilling to control your eating. How selfish, goes the argument.
This is nonsense.
Being honest, this was why I wrote about the impact of shame on body image for Grazia in the first place. Someone has to talk about the other side of this equation. If Lizzo has existed when Anthea Turner was on the telly, maybe I would have a more balanced view of my own body. But I grew up thinking that I had done something that would rightly prompt disgust in the eyes of others. All I wanted was to hide from it. As a result, shaming causes avoidance. You can think you are helping by telling fat people off all you like, but believe me, all that will do is give them cause to avoid you for the sake of mental survival. Which is counter-productive because, whilst I could avoid the girls who told me my ‘pot belly’ was gross aged 11, in order for public health professionals to help people tackle poor mental and physical health, we need people not to avoid them for fear of personal shame.
And, given what we know about health in the UK, we can be absolutely clear: the causes of ill health are social. It is the kind of world we live in where too many people work long hours to make ends meet, and drive home knackered at the end of the day. What stops people being healthy is stuff in their lives that they put first: the kids, having enough money, time. None of these facts get changed with shame.
Whilst I could avoid the girls who told me my ‘pot belly’ was gross aged 11, in order for public health professionals to help people tackle poor mental and physical health, we need people not to avoid them for fear of personal shame.
What stops people exercising - once they have found the time and can afford what is on offer - is fear of being shamed for what they can’t do. I have seen this first hand. My friend, Conservative MP Tracy Crouch and I are part of the Women’s Parliamentary Football team. We have spent the past four years or so persuading women in politics to play football with us. The most common reason for not doing so is time: women have to put their kids, their partner or their job first. And the second most common reason is: I am not fit enough, I can’t run fast enough, I am not quick enough, I would not be good enough. But we are a team for people who have never played football before so there is no such thing as ‘good enough’ because the training we do is for beginners. It isn’t that women aren’t good enough, it is that they are worried they will be embarrassed or ashamed, as so often women have been through life.
Sport is the thin end of the wedge really. Women are graced with so many of life’s potential embarrassments: we can’t talk about periods generally, much less accept that a leak of blood might be a normal consequence of a heavy period, rather than ‘dirty’; our homes must be neat and tidy or we would be caught out as ‘messy’; we must not eat on public transport; if you are ambitious you are ‘no better than you ought to be’, and if you are happy in life you are lazy; if you are slender, you must be starving yourself, and if you are fat, you must have no self-control.
The only response to do-gooder body-shamers is to recognise this for the misogyny that it is, and to offer such commentary the finger. And in doing so, to not just ignore the shame, but to actively take it on by doing whatever you enjoy. If you want to go for a run at the pace of a fast walk, do it. If you want to elbow the men off the football pitch and have a go, just do it. If you want to try out roller derby, or skiing, or rugby, just do it. It is impossible to know that you are no good at something you’ve never done and, unless you are considering a second career as an Olympian, it doesn’t matter. And even more, it is completely impossible for someone else to look at your body and know immediately what it is good for or how ‘healthy’ it is.
What matters is where you are in your head. For all the people I ever silently judged, I bet loads of them felt ten times better about themselves at that point than I did. For them, that skirt absolutely did go with that top. And I was an idiot to think there was any other opinion that mattered.
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