Roxane Gay goes in depth about what it’s like to undergo weight loss surgery, how she felt before the surgery, and what her life was like after the surgery that (kinda didn’t) change her life.
Gay admits that,
“I had a desire to lose weight but an inability – or, perhaps, unwillingness – to force myself towards the deprivation required for the significant weight loss the world told me I needed”
She points out that the main reasoning for her wanting to get weight loss surgery was society shaming her and telling her that she needed to get it done because her body was ugly, unattractive, and not good enough.
I think everyone can agree that the idea of weight loss is all over the media we absorb, even if we aren’t personally concerned with it and aren’t always paying attention to it. Our society is so focused on maintaining certain body types for males and females (and everyone in-between) that I’ve literally seen completely healthy people worry about their weight and try to lose weight that they don’t need to be losing, all to fit into their prom dresses or look like their favorite models or singers. It’s awful and toxic how people are made to feel about their bodies.
I understand that sometimes people who are severely overweight need to do something about it because it could be life threatening and detrimental if they don’t. But what I cannot accept is fat shaming from people who know nothing about the people they are discussing, simply throwing harmful words in their direction because they feel like they have the right to tell them what to do with their body. If someone needs to lose weight, they have the ability and autonomy to go to their healthcare provider and choose to do something about it. They do not need random people coming up to them in school or on the street or on the internet telling them that the way they look is disgusting and that they should “really see someone about that” because “it’s in my genuine interest and for your sake as well”.
You do not have the right to tell anyone what to do with their body. Enough said.
In her interview with Trevor Noah, I found myself nodding my head to a lot of what Gay was saying, such as when she mentioned that people tend to give fat people unsolicited advice, they tell them that since they’re fat they’re going to die early (why do you care anyway?), and she discussed how the world doesn’t tend to accommodate to fat people because they don’t see them as deserving to belong there and that it isn’t their job to make fat people’s lives just a little bit easier.
What is especially heartbreaking about this piece is how Gay isn’t 100% sure of anything she signs up for and agrees to in this process. No matter what she does, she is always doubtful and scared of what could happen or could not happen after she makes a decision. For example, she states that,
“I don’t want any weight loss to be acknowledged (or worse, celebrated), but I also very much do”
indicating that she is constantly insecure, even after the weight loss surgery, about if people will say anything or not say anything about it. Her life has been a constant struggle of overthinking, over-planning, worrying, and stressing about things that she cannot always control. She mentions that she has “replaced one set of anxieties with another”, something that for me was truly heartbreaking. She made this massive financial decision mainly for society’s approval, and she may never truly approve of herself and her body image. She is rarely physically hungry, but she is constantly ravenous for self-acceptance and to feel whole, beautiful, and accepted by others.
Societies all over the world shame fat people for what they are and many of them will refuse to act differently. Like Roxane’s article, this response doesn’t have a very happy ending, because I don’t know myself if there will ever be a solution to fat shaming in our society and other societies over the world. I want to preach about autonomy and self-love, but I feel as though people on the shaming side of this issue constantly refuse to see being fat as anything other than ugly and needing to be fixed.
E367: Writing and Diversity 