A Dirty Shame

On September 3rd, a video went up on youtube that has been getting a lot of press.  I will link that video below, though I suggest you NOT watch it, both to keep its view count down and to prevent getting you angry.

The video is titled "Dear Fat People" and it's a message directed at those of us who have struggled with our weight.  Among its claims is that "Fat-shaming is not a thing," and this isn't the first time I've heard that argument.  So, let's talk about shame a bit.

Dr. Marc Miller offers this information about what shame is and how it's caused:

Shame is often experienced as the inner, critical voice that judges whatever we do as wrong, inferior, or worthless. Often this inner critical voice is repeating what was said to us by our parents, relatives, teachers and peers. We may have been told that we were naughty, selfish, ugly, stupid, etc. We may have been ostracized by peers at school, humiliated by teachers, treated with contempt by our parents. Paradoxically, shame may be caused by others expecting too much of us, evoking criticism when our performance is less than perfect. Some authority figures are never satisfied with one's efforts or performance, they are critical no matter what. Unfortunately, these criticisms become internalized, so that it is our own inner critical voice that is meting out the shaming messages, such as: "You idiot, why did you do that?," "Can't you do anything right?,"or " You should be ashamed of yourself," etc. (source)

Shame, then, is the feeling that you have failed at something, and feeling remorse over it.  It's failing to meet your own expectations and the expectations of those important to you.

When we shame others, we do so by pointing out their failings in a very negative way.  That is, it's one thing to acknowledge failure and offer encouragement to succeed at it in the future ("nice try, you'll get it next time"), and quite another to make fun of the person for failing.  The second is the one Miller offers is the one to be internalized negatively, so that our own inner voice says the same horrible things.

And, for many of us who fail at something we strive for continuously, those voices can be always present.  It's easy for other people to trigger them again, because they've been such a part of our psyche for such a long time.

As such, shame can destroy a person's self-esteem and make it impossible for that person to feel good enough about himself or herself to try to change - that is, it when we have self-esteem, we believe that we can succeed at things we attempt, and can give another shot at doing the thing we've so often failed at.

For some people, the fear of shame is enough to spur them to action, which is why we occasionally see people take those moments of shame and fight back against them, succeeding despite the adversity. That said, it's a big risk to take - you could help someone fine the strength to succeed, but you could also cause them to fail, and worse, to hate themselves enough to end the fight in a more final manner.

Shaming requires a few things:

• The target of the shaming knowing something is good
• The target desiring that something
• The target failing at that something
• Ridicule of the target for failing to achieve that goal

When Nicole Arbour says "fat-shaming is not a thing," we can test it against those objectives:

• Do fat people know that being fat is unhealthy?  (Yes)
• Do fat people desire to be thin? (I can't speak for all, but given the multi-billion dollar diet industry, I'd say this is true for the majority.  So yes.)
• Do fat people fail at dieting? (Again, multi-billion dollar diet industry.  Yes.)
• Are Arbour and others ridiculing them for failing? (Yes)

So, objectively, fat-shaming is a thing.

But then, Ardour says that it's "the race card with no race."  Let's try to unpack that statement.

First is the idea of the race card as an attempt to claim justification for something purely based on race.  It's an exploitation of race.  That's not to say that "the race card" does or doesn't exist; rather, people think it does or doesn't exist, and that others are using or not using it, based on their prejudices (here I do not use the word prejudice to necessarily mean "hatred of a race," but rather in its original definition of pre-judgement or inclination, though certainly they are connected). 

Thus, she's claiming that arguments about "fat shaming" are simply attempts to exploit obesity for political or social gain. 

Which of course is true - in that the social gains that fat people are trying to achieve are gains to simply be recognized as human beings instead of being objectified as "fat people."

Thus, it seems that what Arbour is saying is that fat people deserve to be objectified based on their weight, and thus deserve to be mocked and ridiculed for that weight.

And if you can't see what's wrong with believing that a human being is just an object deserving ridicule, then I can't help you.

But if you agree that fat people are human, with human foibles and human thoughts and feelings, then you should also understand how bloody difficult weight loss is.  It's really easy to gain weight.  All you have to do is eat what you're told.  But because science has been manipulated by a ginormous food industry (a food industry that has acted much like the cigarette industry in the time when science was starting to prove smoking was bad, by blocking legislation and using a huge propaganda campaign to push back against it) and because news media is notoriously bad at reporting on science, there's a huge amount of misinformation out there on what healthy eating is.  We're making strides in that department, but it's huge uphill battle.  And the result of that misinformation is that losing weight is hard.

It's even harder because sugar, the leading cause of weight gain, is more addictive than cocaine and heroin. 

While some people naturally metabolize this sugar better, that tends to be only while they're young.  In fact, there are two kinds of fat.  The fat you usually see is called "subcutaneous fat" and exists close to the surface. On most of the body, it's innocuous.  Tummy fat - both subcutaneous and visceral fat - is deadly  (source).  But a person can be thin and still have heavy deposits of visceral fat.  As a result, they can appear quite healthy and still be at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and so on.  As people get older, their muscles and good fats become less efficient at burning energy, and the fat storage accelerates.

Meaning some day, Arbour could join the ranks of the obese, without changing her diet or routine in any way.

She better hope fat-shaming ends by then.