We Are Fat and We Are Legion

by Benjamin Duffy

  One time I asked him if he had any pictures or souvenirs, and as it turned out, he had both. He showed me a few faded photographs of himself and some other guys in the desert. I hardly recognized him, of course. He was fifteen years younger and countless pounds lighter in those photographs. If I squinted really hard at his facial features, I could see the resemblance, but for the most part the young Marine in the picture looked like a totally different person. Denny just seemed sad when he looked at himself all of those years ago. He also showed me some of his medals. He had two neat ones awarded to him by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

  Sometimes I see guys riding around town in trucks that are just plastered with Marine Corps stickers—red and gold, ‘Semper Fi’, USMC, and stuff like that. Massachusetts even offers a special license plate for Marine Corps veterans. I asked Denny once why he didn’t get those plates for his Dodge Neon. “Cause no one would believe me,” he replied.

  I knew what that meant. No one would believe that a fat man like him had once been in the Marine Corps. On the other hand, I don’t know why he has to let other people’s small minds dictate to him what he should put on his car. He was a Marine and he earned the right to cover every inch of his car with globes and anchors if he damned well pleases. It shouldn’t matter if other people would believe him or not. If anything, it would serve as a lesson to a lot of ignorant fatphobes who would be surprised to find out that some fat people are decorated veterans, just as other fat people are talented painters, spectacular singers, and brilliant scientists.

  Denny doesn’t see it that way. My guess is that he’d rather not let people know how much weight he’s put on since his military days. Somehow it’s (slightly) more acceptable to be fat if that’s the way you’ve always been. If you were once perfectly lean and toned, but later became fat, well then— shame on you. That’s the prevailing message of our fat-hating society anyway: shame.

  How could you let yourself go? I didn’t necessarily grow up with that handy phrase. I’ve always been so fat that there really was no “letting myself go”, but I know plenty of fat people who have hated themselves for years because they “allowed” themselves to lose the figure they had had as teenagers.

  I suspect Denny beats himself up for exactly that—”letting himself go”. I don’t think it’s worth losing any sleep over, but that’s because I like him just the way he is. Still, Denny needs to learn to love himself for who he is—a flab-ulous, smart, bear of a man.

  That’s my goal.

  Chapter Seven:

  My Garry Kasparov

  I wake up and look at the clock, hoping it isn’t time to get up yet. The hot red digits read 1:12. I’m overjoyed because I can go back to sleep for another five hours. I close my eyes.

  Denny isn’t in bed. Normally, his warm presence would be next to me. Where is Denny? I listen closely and hear the clicking of a computer mouse. He must be surfing the net. I sit up in bed, blinking my eyes to see without my contacts. Yes, there he is, over in the corner, his face lit up with the eerie light pouring forth from the computer monitor.

  I stand up and approach him, laying one hand on his shoulder. “Hey, hon. Whatchya doing?”

  Dumb question. I can see what he’s doing. He’s online at chess.com.

  “Playing chess against some Turkish guy,” he explains.

  “Oh,” I say. “At one in the morning?”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  Denny happens to be a master chess player. His father taught him to play when he was six years old and he’s turned out to be kind of a boy wonder. His rating at chess.com is 1853, which is really high. I don’t know exactly how the rating system works, but I do know that a score of 1853 is quite formidable.

  “Are you winning?” I ask.

  “Kicking ass and taking names.”

  Another silly question on my part. It’s a rare occurrence when he doesn’t win. He really has a mind for the game. He’s my Garry Kasparov.

  “Well, when the game is over, can you come to bed?” I ask in a whiney tone. I miss his big, warm, soft mass next to me.

  “I could…” he trails off.

  “Yeah?”

  “But I really can’t sleep.”

  I nod. “Well, when you’re ready.”

  Denny always has problems sleeping. He’s a regular insomniac. I’ve secretly suspected that his inability to sleep is a symptom of Gulf War Syndrome. Somebody told me that once. I wish I could do something for him.

  “I’m going to win,” he says. “This guy’s an amateur.”

  I’ve asked Denny often why he doesn’t enter any local chess tournaments. He’s never given me a straight answer, but I think I can decipher enough to determine what his real objection is. He just doesn’t want anyone to see him. He’s ashamed of his body. Going to chess tournaments would involve actual social interaction, and he’s not going to do that. He’d much rather be a faceless, invisible screen name floating around in cyberspace, playing opponents from all over the world without the inconvenience of ever meeting them in person.

  It breaks my heart. If there’s one thing I stand for, it’s that we fat people shouldn’t allow other people’s prejudices to rule our lives. Fat people should do whatever gives us joy, be it chess, water-skiing, or belly-dancing. Sadly, too many people of our girth hide themselves away behind closed doors, never setting foot outside unless absolutely necessary.

  “Okay, Denny. You take as long as you like.”

  He says nothing, staring into the screen. I return to the bed and slip under the warm covers.

  “I went to the doctor today,” Denny says.

  “Oh yeah?” I reply. I think he mentioned that to me. I don’t like doctors but I still think we should see them sometimes. “How did that go?”

  “Not well,” he replies.

  Oh geez. I can only imagine. “Let me guess. The doctor played shame and blame with you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gave you some weight loss pamphlets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Typical,” I say. “Don’t let it bother you. A lot of doctors think that health and thinness are the same thing.”

  A silence falls between us. More mouse-clicking. “He says I have diabetes.”

  The word hangs in the air between us. Diabetes. I flinch at the sound. “He said that?” I ask.

  “Yup. Type Two. Adult onset.”

  “Oh my God,” I say. “He’s sure of it? He doesn’t need to run more tests or anything?”

  Denny shakes his head. “Nope. I’m diabetic.”

  I sit up straight in bed. This is something I have to hear. “Did he say… why?”

  Denny snorts. “Come on, Gabby. It’s cause I’m over four hundred pounds. I’ve always known this would happen.”

  “That’s what the doctor said? Cause you’re fat?”

  “Uh, yeah, Gab. People our size are almost guaranteed to get diabetes in their forties. I’m turning forty-one this year. It’s my time.”

  “Not me!” I object. “My blood sugars are just fine. I had a checkup in November.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. The link between diabetes and obesity has hardly been conclusively proven,” I explain. “Heredity is a far better predictor of diabetes than how fat a person is.”

  “Sure, Gabby.”

  He doesn’t believe me. My face turns red. It upsets me that he doubts my experise. No one knows more about fatness than I do. “It’s true!” I protest.

  “That’s what you say. The doctor says otherwise.”

  “Oh yeah? And what was your fasting blood sugar?”

  “It was at 130,” Denny replies smartly. “Too high.”

  “Ha!” I chortle. “One of the reasons why we’re seeing so many new cases of diabetes is because they changed the threshold for diagnosis. Fifteen years ago, you weren’t considered diabetic unless you had a fasting blood sugar of at least 140. Then they lowered it to 126!”

  “So I’m not really diabetic?” Denny asks.


  “No! Not under the old standard. But the new standard allows millions more people to be diagnosed with diabetes, which means millions of new customers for pharmaceutical companies to medicate. It’s a scam to sell more drugs! You’re one of the millions of Americans who magically became diabetic because they changed the definition.”

  Denny nods. He’s staring intently into the glowing abyss of the computer monitor, manipulating little black chessmen with the mouse pointer. I can tell that he isn’t taking me seriously. It’s just in one ear and out the other. “Gabby, the doctor told me I’m sick. It was a big wake up call for me.”

  “And what are you going to do?” I stand up again and creep up behind him.

  “What else can I do? I’m going to follow the doctor’s orders. I’m going to take my medicine, eat right and exercise. I’m going to lose some weight. It’s really something I have to do.”

  I kiss him on the cheek. “Denny, you don’t have to do that. Get a second opinion. That doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How old is he, anyway?”

  “Dr. Thompson? Oh, I don’t know. Probably about seventy.”

  “See? He probably went to medical school back in the sixties. Those old doctors blame fat for everything. That’s what they used to teach in med school back then. It’s bullshit.”

  “Gabby…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just stop it,” says Denny. “I know that being fat and happy is your thing, but I’m going to listen to Dr. Thompson on this one. I’m going to do what he tells me to do. Dr. Thompson is a good doctor and I trust him. I think he knows pretty well how to treat this sort of thing.”

  My mouth drops open. This is outrageous! Doesn’t he know that the profit-driven medical industry does not have his best interests at heart? “Please don’t do this to yourself,” I say. “Dr. Thompson’s assessment in way off. If this was fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t even be considered diabetic. You do not need to lose weight. If that’s what he’s telling you, I think we can safely say that he’s a quack. He needs to acquaint himself with the scientific literature.”

  “You’ll get it too,” Denny adds.

  “Oh come on,” I say. “I have no family history of diabetes. It’s mainly genetic.”

  “I don’t have a family history either,” Denny retorts. “You think it won’t happen to you, but it will.”

  Denny’s remarks are really teeing me off. I’d like to swat him upside the head. I clench my jaws together, a very bad habit of mine that has slowly worn down the enamel on my teeth. I don’t want to discuss this with him anymore. He’s obviously not listening.

  “We’ll talk about this in the morning,” I say.

  “Uh huh.”

  I return to the bed in a snit, pulling the sheets up to my ear. I wish Denny would quit being so obtuse.

  * * *

  I don’t suffer fools well. In fact, on a bad day, I may not suffer fools at all.

  The specific type of fool I suffer the least is the moralizing anti-fat crusader. I come armed with the facts and I don’t hold my fire until all of the crusader’s arguments have been shot up like Swiss cheese.

  Under no circumstances do I accept the premise that fat people are marginalized “for their own good”. Fatphobes have preached their gospel of dietary salvation since I can remember and they have never demonstrated that fat, in and of itself, is harmful.

  There are two basic motivations for anti-fat prejudice. The first is to make money. Like skilled alchemists, today’s marketing executives know how to turn fat into gold. The profit motive drives prejudicial attitudes in this country because weight loss represents a seemingly limitless source of income. It’s a big, fat, mooing, cash-cow just waiting to be milked.

  In order to perpetuate itself, the dietary-pharmaceutical complex requires fat people to hate their bodies. Without self-loathing, there would be no stomach-stapling, no Weight Watchers, no diet pills, no thigh creams, and no cowhide beverages. In order to continue existing, fatphobic society must establish what an “ideal” woman looks like and then prod women to make themselves resemble that ideal. Our society has selected the waifishly thin, tall, blonde, Caucasian woman as its ideal. In other words, Barbie is the mold we’re all supposed to fit.

  This incredibly narrow ideal does not allow for much latitude. Mediterranean women (like me) can’t be beautiful. Latina and black women can’t be beautiful. A punk rock chick with a hot pink mohawk can’t be beautiful. Short women can’t be beautiful, and of course—of course!—women who weigh a few pounds more than the starvelings in the fashion industry can never, ever, be beautiful. Absolutely, positively, never.

  But there is a method to this madness. The ideal image lies just out of reach for most women, meaning that they will spend their whole lives reaching for it and blaming themselves for never attaining it. They become desperate, which is exactly the intended result. Desperate consumers are gullible consumers. They will buy the next diet pill to hit the market in hopes that this one will be different than all the others that failed to deliver on their grandiose promises in the past. Desperate consumers will spend their money on exercise videos, diet pills, workout equipment, thigh creams, tummy toners, and “lite” food products in hopes of some day looking like the models they see in the magazines. Coincidentally, the magazines are stuffed with advertisements for exactly the same products they “need” in order to attain the ideal. How convenient. They’re slyly cultivating their readership for the crap their advertisers are selling.

  Being beautiful mustn’t be easy or else everyone would do it. It mustn’t be cheap either, or else no one would buy the corporate sponsors’ products. Beauty has to be rare, meaning that it has to be as different as possible from what real women look like. It has to be a fantasy, an illusion.

  The second motive for anti-fat prejudice is pure moral superiority. Skinny bitches relish their position above fat people. In the great hierarchy of fatness, skinny bitches can look down upon the “overweight”. “Overweight” people can look down upon the “obese”, and “obese” people can look down upon the “morbidly obese”. People at the bottom of the heap can go kick a dog if they wish, or curse out a homeless person. Everyone has to have someone to kick around. Skinny bitches like the hierarchy just fine because they’re at the top of it.

  I’m embarrassed to say that I used to play this game as well. All through grade school, I was thrilled to be in the same class with someone who was fatter than I was. There was one girl in particular, I won’t mention her name, whose girth exceeded mine. Her mere presence offered welcome relief from fatphobic teasing. When she was around, I felt better about myself because I was no longer the fat girl; or at least not the fattest girl. When kids gathered around her to heap massive humiliation upon her, I breathed a sigh of relief that she was catching the brunt of it. Better her than me.

  The anti-fat crusaders’ argument boils down to this—fat is unhealthy. Whatever insults a fat person may suffer at the hands of society are justifiable so long as they motivate the person to lose weight. I call this technique “shame and blame”.

  We only humiliate you because we love you. We only discriminate against you because we care. We only deny you access to public spaces because we’ve got your best interests at heart. We only wound you because you need to be shamed into submission.

  As a fat woman, I would just like to say thank you. I’ve been treated like shit since I can remember and it’s really done me a lot of good. Society’s downpour of guilt has reformed me.

  Ha! Yeah right! If societal shunning were all it took to make fat people thin, there wouldn’t be a fat person on the planet. They are not helping anyone with their abuse. The anti-fat crusaders have made me want to crawl into a hole, made me want to hide inside of my house, made me want to throw myself in front of a speeding train, made me want to cry and vomit…but they’ve never improved my bodily well-being one iota.

  That’s because fat is not unhealthy. Not intrinsically. Some fat people are un
healthy, mostly because they maintain a sedentary lifestyle. But guess what? Nearly everyone with the same habits will exhibit the same signs of poor health, regardless of weight. Thin couch potatoes are just as unhealthy as fat couch potatoes! Thin people who get their recommended dose of moderate exercise are no more healthy than fat people who do the same. Simply sizing up a person’s girth reveals virtually nothing about a person’s health.

  And if anti-fat crusaders are so damned concerned about getting us off the couch and moving, why are they so intolerant of fat people who choose to exercise? Why is it that they never actually want to see our “disgusting”, jiggling, spandex-covered bodies working up a sweat? They don’t want anyone to come to the gym who doesn’t already have a washboard stomach. Gyms are for people who are already trim and muscular, not for fatasses. Also, fat people should never be seen in public running, swimming, biking, or dancing. As a matter of fact, fat people should not be seen in public having any type of fun whatsoever. If a fat person appears to be enjoying herself, someone should put a stop to it as quickly as possible so that she reverts to being miserable, the way she’s supposed to be.

  Can’t you at least have the decency to be ashamed of yourself?

  Anti-fat crusaders make a certain assumption that has never been demonstrably proven in any scientific sense. The assumption is that fat people who become thin and manage to keep it off will necessarily exhibit the same good health as people who were always thin.

  There’s no evidence that fat people who starve themselves thin take on the health characteristics of people who were thin in the first place. Any study designed to measure the benefits of weight loss would have to compare a group of already thin people with a group of fat people who have lost weight and kept it off. No such study has ever been done because all the best minds in “obesity” research have never figured out how to make fat people thin and keep them that way.

  Once you understand anti-fat prejudice as a form of bigotry similar to its cousins—racism, classism, homophobia, sexism—you begin to object to the magnanimous assistance of fatphobes who just want to “help”. Such “well-meaning” fatphobes usually argue that fat people should lose weight in order to avoid anti-fat discrimination. In which alternate universe does this make sense? We don’t stigmatize Judaism in order to fight anti-Semitism. We don’t advise young girls not to climb the corporate ladder in order to avoid the stigma of sexism. Why on earth do we encourage fat people to lose weight in order to “protect” them from the scourges of fatphobic culture?