last night i met up for dinner with some old-ish friends who i went to grad school with. it's really nice to stay in touch with these women. we have a lot of great conversation filled with humour and critical thought. at the same time, though, it becomes very difficult to stay engaged when our differences in experience and viewpoint are remarkably loud and glaringly bright. i can handle a good difference of opinion - it's what keeps things interesting and makes for interesting conversations. what i can't handle is when that difference has real implications for my perceived worth and therefore, my well-being.
last night, two of us arrived at the same time, and as we were settling into our table, a third member of our group came to join us. as she approached, the person who arrived with me said "hey! you look so skinny! wow!" i actually didn't know how to respond. i mean, it's not MY body she was commenting on, it really didn't involve me at all. but i can't help but wonder. would she ever say "hey katie! you look so fat! wow!" in a similar, positive way? if my body changed (which it frequently does) and i became smaller, would she comment on it in a positive way? if i got fatter again, would she comment in a negative way? likely not. this body commentary tends to happen one way - when someone is perceived as skinnier/smaller than before.
and for the person who "looked so skinny" - what implications might this have had for her? maybe she's been ill. maybe she's felt pressure to be smaller for her upcoming wedding. maybe she is suffering from stress-induced weight loss. maybe she didn't even notice and couldn't care less. the point is that we don't know. i can't fathom commenting on the size of another person's body, and i particularly can't fathom making a non-neutral statement about another person's body size. in a situation like this, i tend not to respond. it's not my body that was commented on, i wasn't asked my opinion, i don't know how that felt for the person at whom the body commentary was directed. so i kept my mouth shut and swallowed my discomfort.
later in the conversation, i was talking a bit about my experiences at NOLOSE and my time in Portland. we got on the topic of bodies and fatness. i use the word fat to talk about fat bodies, which i know isn't a comfortable term for everyone (the other three women with me are not fat). throughout this conversation, though, the only word they used was "obese". from what i gathered, they were using "obese" to mean superfat most of the time (and therefore not including me in this category). i've been told i'm not fat before (by non-fat folks trying to make me feel better about myself or some shit), but this seems to have been a way for them to exclude me from their negative (healthist) comments while still allowing me to call myself fat. the level of fuckedupedness here is alarming. i made it clear that this word is so fucking medicalized and according to the BMI, i am "morbidly obese", so let's maybe re-think this word, but that didn't seem to make a difference.
i KNOW that this stuff is new and maybe uncomfortable for some folks. i KNOW that they probably mean well. i KNOW that they don't get to have these conversation often, so they don't "practice" this dialogue. but i just can't fucking handle it. i can't be the person to educate them. i can't (always) confront these things in a way that is articulate and also sensitive. i don't know if it's even worth my time to try because at the end of these conversations, i just feel like shit and nothing has changed. and maybe nothing needs to change. maybe i just need to choose my conversations, choose my battles. i have a hard time thinking about walking away from relationships that are unhealthy for me in a fatphobic way. being fat is just one part of who i am, and there are many other ways in which i connect with people. but i do have a fatphobia bullshit threshold that i am constantly trying to navigate in a way that is caring, but also meets my needs.
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