Michelle Murphy, who’s currently guest blogging at Big Fat Blog, recently wrote a post there discussing a survey which demonstrates that even fat people are biased against fat people. In the survey, fat people were asked what they’d be willing to sacrifice in order not to be fat. Quoting the article, “Nearly half said they would swap one year of life rather than be fat, while 15 percent reported that they’d give up 10 years or more. About a third of respondents said they’d rather get divorced than be obese. One in five said they’d prefer to be childless; 15 percent said they’d pick severe depression over obesity and 14 percent chose alcoholism over girth.”

Personally, I wasn’t surprised at all. While some of us may accept being fat, and even like some of the things that go along with being fat (being massive rocks!), very few of us like being fat. Those of us in the fat acceptance movement included. While we may not be willing to diet, get WLS, or go on some strange pill–we know those things don’t work, after all, and will make us worse off in the end–I strongly believe that the vast majority of us would make the sacrifice of at least a year of life if we were guaranteed thinness.

Interestingly, however, BFB’ers resoundingly disagreed with my beliefs in their comments on the article, even going so far as to imply that no reasonable person would make this kind of sacrifice. Many commented that such a sacrifice can only be the result of self-hate, that the negative aspects of being fat that would cause people to make such sacrifices can be ameliorated with a good dose of self-love. While this may be true for some people, including most of the people at the lower end of the BMI scale, it by no means addresses the realities many of us fat people face on a daily basis. My position is that until the SA movement accepts the fact that being fat has disadvantages in and of it self, disadvantages unrelated to self-love and society’s attitudes–we’re never going to be taken seriously by the majority of the population. Especially fat people, since our statements aren’t grounded in their personal realities.

Many BFB’ers remain stubborn idealists, however. The whole idealism/pragmatism dichotomy in general is a major hot-button of mine, as is the SA movement’s lack of acceptance of the fact that sometimes being fat sucks because of physical problems inherent in the fat itself. Add into that my strong views about people who believe they can judge the worth of other people’s lives…well, suffice to say, few discussions could get me more riled up than this one.

Michelle often argues that if we could only convince the world, and particularly the health establishment, that being fat isn’t unhealthy, we’d make major strides toward achieving our goal of fat acceptance. I generally concur with Michelle’s views on SA, but this subject is one on which my views greatly diverge from hers. I think she’s totally barking up the wrong tree. I think most people dislike being fat because of vanity and inconvenience. Therefore, convincing fat people that they don’t need to lose weight to be healthy is not going to keep people from trying to lose weight.

I subscribe to Michelle’s LiveJournal, so I noticed that she’s posted her thoughts about the BFB discussion there. Riled up as I am, I wrote a tome of a response–so much of a tome that LJ wouldn’t let me post it as a comment there, so I’m posting it here instead. I’d love to hear your comments on this debate.

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There’s an extremely important part of my argument that you’ve misunderstood. Just because making a big sacrifice in order to not be fat can be a reasonable choice doesn’t mean that refusing said sacrifice is not a reasonable choice. I strongly believe that this is not the kind of question the SA movement can purport to answer for all of its members. This is a personal calculation in a way that e.g. “you can improve your health without losing weight” isn’t.

I’m a good utilitarian, so I see this problem through the lens of that philosophy: minimizing overall suffering. Were you in reality given the choice between being fat and giving up a year of your life (which year?), you’d have to find the balance between the amount you suffer from being fat vs. the value of one of your years. From your comments here and at BFB, I understand that such a sacrifice is not one you’d make, and that may very well be a reasonable decision for you. For you, one of your years is too high of a price to pay to buy off the amount of suffering you’d experience for the rest of your life as a result of being fat, and that’s wonderful! You love your life enough to want to live as much of it as possible, and your weight doesn’t hinder you from doing so to any meaningful extent.

The calculation doesn’t work out the same way for everyone, however. The way I see it, there are three different spheres where we can suffer from being fat: the physical, the societal, and the personal.

• Physical issues are objective facts about how being fat can affect the body. For many fat people, physical issues seriously lower their quality of life, causing a major amount of suffering. Many of these are issues that no amount of societal acceptance or self-love will change, contrary to the popular beliefs of many in the SA movement. Examples of physical problems include cellulitis, major joint problems, and mobility issues. Luckily I don’t suffer much at all from the physical problems caused by my fat; the knee and skin problems I mentioned on BFB are pretty much it.
• Societal issues are the attitudes most people in our culture hold that lead them to behave in ways that cause fat people suffering. These include lack of access to inexpensive, quality, stylish clothing, lack of respect, fit problems, job discrimination…the list here goes on and on. Unfortunately, society cannot practically accommodate each and every one of its members. Not all of our societally-caused problems are practically fixable. I suffer from only a few (and non-major, at that) societally-caused problems, e.g. my lack of attractiveness to other people, my lack of ability to find clothing I like in my size, and my lack of ability to physically fit in some places.
• Personal issues involve the way our self-esteem affects the way we treat ourselves; this is the sphere over which we can exert the most control. IMO, personal issues are where the rubber really hits the road of fat acceptance. Improving your self-esteem can help you take better care of your health, do the things you want to do regardless of your weight, dress in flattering clothing, demand respect, etc. When it comes to personal issues, I suffer very little because of my weight. I don’t hate myself and I don’t hate the way I look (I’m actually pretty conceited when it comes to those things–just ask anyone who knows me!). I don’t keep myself from doing things because I’m “too fat”. There are very few things I would be doing differently with my life if I were thinner. Increasing self-love can work wonders for those of us lucky enough to be primarily hindered by a lack of this valuable commodity, but it’s hardly a panacea for others who are mostly hindered by the other two spheres of difficulty.

So why would I be willing to sacrifice x number of years of my life to be thin, when it seems that I suffer so little from my weight? Mostly because of the other half of the equation. My years aren’t worth much to me. I’ve got a form of bipolar disorder that’s primarily characterized by depression, and depression, by definition, means that I’m not enjoying life. For me, sacrificing a year of my life to be not fat is a win-win situation. Granted, though, I’m not the best illustration of a person who might reasonably choose to sacrifice a year to be thin. Ever been to a NAAFA convention? My first NAAFA convention really opened my eyes. There you’ll come into contact with many people who have major problems caused by their weight. People who cannot walk, people who are in a great deal of pain all the time, people with major breathing problems, people who cannot go out of their homes without being stared at or harassed. These people can love themselves all they want and treat themselves and their bodies with utmost respect–and many do–but that’s not going to magically help them be able to walk or allow them to get on an airplane and travel cross-country to see their family. Luckily, many of these people have a constitution that allows them to love life irrespective of any problems their physical embodiment brings them.

But some people suffer from their fat an incredible amount. Who are you to tell them they’re unreasonable for being willing to make the transaction under discussion? Who are you to judge the amount they suffer, how easily that suffering can be remedied, or how valuable their lives are to them? No-one can judge another person’s suffering, no-one can know whether or not any remedies touted to cure another’s ills or those remedies’ benefits are realizable for that person, and no-one can judge the value of another person’s life. Period.

As for the Krishnamurti quote, I think it’s total bullshit. (And before I rip it to shreds, I should clarify that I understand the term well-adjusted to mean accepting/acknowledging reality). To begin with, in a healthy society, no-one would need to be well-adjusted. A healthy society, as I understand it, would itself by definition be adjusted its members, so its members would not have to adjust to it. Not to mention that a healthy society cannot practically exist, and probably not logically, either, so those who refuse to adjust to a sick society are basically condemning themselves to being poorly-adjusted for the rest of their lives. I can hardly comprehend how it’s preferable to be poorly-adjusted to our sick society–the society that exists, and only society we have–than to be well-adjusted. Being poorly-adjusted implies increased suffering for you, and as a result, others around you. Most importantly, however, it’s difficult to effect positive change in society if you’re poorly-adjusted to it. And I’m assuming, with all the judgmental terms here, that there’s an ideal, non-sick society that we want to work towards. Seems to me that in order to begin to mould society into your ideal, you have to first become well-adjusted to society as it currently exists.

This whole discussion reminds me a lot of the issue of abstinence-only education. Some people think a sick society is a society in which people have sex before marriage. They are poorly-adjusted to the realities of what they see as a sick society–that people do have sex, regardless of whether or not they’re married. In order to work toward their ideal of no-one having sex until marriage, they want to teach kids that sex before marriage is a sin, that condoms don’t work, that sex before marriage will end up killing you, etc. They propagate demonstrable lies in order to further their agenda of creating an ideal world where no-one has sex before marriage. The result of their lack of acceptance of reality–the result of their poor adjustment to our supposedly sick society–is that teen pregnancy and STD rates are higher than ever. How is it that singlemindedly pursuing their ideal of a non-sick society while failing to accept reality is healthy?

I do most definitely not see acceptance–well-adjustedness–as defeat. I see it as a prerequisite to positive change. Is this not one of the defining tenets of the SA movement? Therefore it’s my goal to be well-adjusted to our sick society. I actively work to change society to be more in line with my ideal world, but at the same time I have to relate to society as it is now. I don’t have a choice–none of us does, unless we want to go all Unabomber. I believe that I will not be able to affect positive change in the world unless I use reality as my starting point. Just like I accept the fact that I’m fat, I accept the fact that society makes things difficult for fat people. I also accept the fact that being fat is sometimes difficult in and of itself. Because of these facts, most fat people don’t want to be fat. If I don’t accept these facts–if SA doesn’t accept these facts–no-one will take us seriously because we’re not demonstrating that our ideas have a base in reality. It’s logic, you know? You can have a valid formula, but if you plug junk into it, you’ll only get junk out.