Am I Fatphobic
An exploration of the boundaries of a rational fear
This article was inspired by this Tumblr post
I will admit, I am scared of growing fat. The idea of having a huge belly with flabby folds and man boobs tortures me. I don’t stay awake at night fretting over my weight or stand in front of a mirror pinching inches of fat off my belly, (okay I do that last one). In the light of all this, the question that is yet to be answered is, am I fatphobic?
Phobia — an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something
If you write fatphobic your text editor underlines it in red because it is not a dictionary word
To be clear, I am not talking about obesity because I believe simply by definition it would be ridiculous to argue against it. Also, everybody and everybody’s body is different. Even with the same composition, two bodies can look drastically different due to differing morphology. Still, I am scared of being fat and I have reasons.
Body Surface Area
Studies show that regardless of body weight, the amount of total body surface area is a prognostic marker in chronic heart failure patients and a predictor of coronary artery calcium. Those are direct quotes so don’t ask me what those words mean but essentially, the more body surface area you have, the more at risk your heart is regardless of your body weight. Interestingly enough, this applies not only to fat but muscle as well. So bodybuilders who also have larger body surface areas than normal also face this challenge.
If you are concerned about your heart health as I am, ideally, at whatever weight you are, you want to have more muscle than fat seeing as muscle takes up way less surface area than fat. Below is a commonly shared image of the difference between meat and muscle mass at the same weight alongside a more accurate rendition.
I have not fact-checked the actual difference in measurements between muscle and fat at the same weight but these images are taken from the article “Myth Busted: Muscle vs. Fat” and should be a fairly accurate representation.
Visceral fat
Body fat is useful. Even necessary and healthy. But not all fat is created the same. Visceral fat is fat that is stored in the stomach (abdominal cavity if you want to get technical. Again, not a doctor). The problem with this is that it is right next to several organs which are vital to your continued living. These are the liver, the stomach (see why people use technical terms) and the intestines.
Because visceral fat is inside the abdominal cavity you can’t see it. Most of the fat you can see on your body is subcutaneous fat which is stored right under the skin and is not that big a deal or at least not as big a deal as visceral fat. The general rule of thumb however is that 10% of all body fat is visceral fat so the more fat you have in general, the more visceral fat you have. Also if your waist measures 35 inches or more (for women) and 40 inches or more (for men) you likely have a significant amount of visceral fat but that’s neither here nor there.
Surgery
If you’ve ever stood in an operating room and watched someone you love get cut up in the stomach as I have, you may develop a healthy fear of fat in general because it looks frightening.
Vanity
My mind has been so conditioned by social media, Instagram in particular, that I want to look good in clothes. And not just that, I want to look good out of them too. Ridiculous I know but how can I possibly fight against 21st-century technological brainwashing.
Jokes aside though, in a world that’s constantly creaming about the importance of the freedom of identity expression I am not shocked that the fitness industry gets as much flak as it does because, yes, it can get dark. What I am shocked about is how regular people who set body goals for themselves and work hard to achieve them have come to be labelled as hateful of people who don’t share similar goals. So I can identify as an evil spirit and get body modification surgery to bring out the real me but I can’t do push-ups for a six-pack or I am fatphobic? Which of these is more symptomatic of an irrational fear?
I can’t help but wonder if the reason is that one of these roads to identity realization can simply be bought while the other requires actual work.
Discipline
And now the reason why I am scared of being fat. It is not so much discipline as much as it is the lack of it. I am afraid that if I am unable to achieve the body that I desire or at least avoid the one that I do not, then that is proof that I am incapable of setting my mind to a goal and accomplishing it. Our bodies and our minds are the only things we have full control of in our lives. Barring certain conditions, we are the sole determiners of how and how much we develop our minds and our bodies. And we must recognise that these are decisions that have a profound impact on the quality of our lives, beyond name-calling.
Disclaimer
I understand that there are conditions in which people indeed are afraid of the bodies they inhabit and the form they take but quite often those are diagnosable and sometimes complex conditions which require treatment, not stigmatization. The worth of an individual cannot be determined based on their outward appearance or body mass. There are no studies to support this. There are however already words to describe humans who engage in this behaviour, asshole being the most common.
We should learn to appreciate people and their identities on all sides of the divide. ANd more importantly, we should learn to accept ourselves, our fears and our prejudices and be alright with them. Because it is these things that truly make us human. And we are all of us after all, human.
