‘Fat’ Is Not A Bad Word
It’s time to stop acting like it is
The ‘f-a-t’ word hangs off your lips tentatively as you question if you should use it on this person you barely know. You’re unsure of how they’ll react so instead, you say ‘curvy’, ‘chubby’, ‘thick’, or like we say in Pidgin English: ‘you get body, small”. Those are safer options. But when you do this, you perpetuate the stigma built around the word and if they react negatively, they do too.
The word ‘fat’, originally an adjective, is now a taunt at the person it’s intended for. It’s a derogatory term that shouldn’t be used on anyone unless they upset you, in which case you resort to body shaming as your defence. But why has the word turned from a physical description into an abusive term that should be used with caution?
The media continually bombards us with portrayals that promote society’s unrealistic standards of beauty in subtle ways. They tell us there’s a specific way to look and ‘fat’ or anything resembling fat, isn’t it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the question, “Do these jeans make me look fat?” inquired on TV shows and movies. It’s usually a girlfriend asking her boyfriend and if he replies in the affirmative, there’s a problem. But I’ve never understood why.
People’s hatred and irritation toward fat people is incomprehensible. They cringe when a fat person walks by them and make awful side comments or whine when the major character of a movie is fat. People didn’t even try to cover up their fat phobia with Lizzo. They couldn’t wrap their minds around a beautiful, fat woman who loved her body and showed it off too.
Then they’re those relatives who seize the opportunity of family gatherings to display their fat phobia. I know about ‘aunties’ that can’t help but comment on people’s bodies, always redirecting the conversation to how much weight someone has put on and sometimes masking it as concern for their health.
But passive aggressive comments like those, fat jokes, or funny fat characters whose comedic tendencies rest on their weight (yes, fat Monica from ‘Friends’ included) are the problem. They contribute to the negative perception we have of fatness and the myriad of people hating their bodies and thinking less of themselves. They perpetuate society’s standards when we are supposed to defy them.
A girl once kissed her teeth in disgust while telling me about how she wished her mother had stayed skinny after all her pregnancies, but she had dangling arms and a paunch. She said she wouldn’t be like that after pregnancy. I didn’t understand how she could be so ignorant and insensitive. In my head I wished she’d gain so much weight after pregnancy and see there was so much more to it than she thought there was. But I realised if that happened, it wouldn’t change a thing. The irritation and dislike would transfer from her mother’s body to hers, then she’d hate herself and keep wishing she were skinny.
We’ve created this negative image around fatness, made it seem like a horrible thing to be, and made people feel horrible about themselves. They settle for less — hating their bodies — and get comfortable with that, thinking there’s no other option when there is: ignoring society’s judgemental gaze and harsh words. Developing thick skin so you can love that person staring back at you in the mirror who craves your affection.
It’s not our business what people’s bodies look like, and we’re not in the position to feel irritated or disgusted by them. We’re different people with different sizes and we need not understand it, but we need to respect and get comfortable with it.
We need to stop cringing at the word fat; it’s a normal adjective, like skinny or short or tall. We don’t pause before we use words like that, but we do with fat and substitute it for less harsh words that glide smoothly off our tongues even if they don’t fit the description. We don’t get offended when someone says we lost weight or look thinner, but we get defensive when they say we added some weight or look fatter.
Fat people are not a threat to society. They don’t harm anyone by being fat. The negative notions we’ve created and the distorted view we have of them reveal the shallow nature we possess because we judge and dismiss people based solely on the way they look.
It’s our responsibility to stop those derogatory and obtrusive thoughts popping up in our minds directed at a fat person, even if that person is ourself. Then we have to stop other people who don’t do this for themselves because if we allow this, we enable the destructive environment we’ve created for ourselves.
It’s time to change the way we use the word and dismantle the stigma we’ve associated with it. It’s time to stop pausing before we say ‘fat’ and stop shaming people for being fat or offering unsolicited advice on weight loss.
Achieving this will take us a step further into creating a society where people aren’t shamed for their body types and pressured to live up to a certain standard. To a time where people don’t hate their bodies and are comfortable with what they look like. To thepoint where we accept each other as we are.
