FAT - 11/01/08

I wrote this one evening a few days before E-day. I'm still emotional, ecstatic and trying to get to grips with such a phenomenal week, but in the meantime, chew on this....

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I am blissfully ignorant of most of the criticisms levied against me on the internet by virtue of never googling myself. However, my Campaign for Change colleagues are far more curious than I, and late last night after we’d data-entried the GOTV canvassing and calling, they laughingly drew my attention to the furore surrounding my ‘ignorant, hate-filled screed’ for The Guardian earlier this year. They’d found it by googling ‘Ruth Fowler bitch’ which I found mildly entertaining, particularly given that the subject of the article was ‘Women on the Net’, with a particular focus on the sexist and unpleasant comments thrown at women who write on the internet.

Now the article of mine that ‘Feministing’ described as “obscene” and “hateful” was certainly rude, obnoxious and insulting. It was a rant, it was an attack, and I deliberately employed insulting language as I wanted to take an extreme stance on what I perceive to be this recent new drive to ‘normalize’ obesity - one of the largest causes of health problems in the western world.

It was, however, NOT a ‘hate-filled screed’ on all ‘overweight’ people as many of the original commentators and Feministing contributors insist. It was a frustrated attack on the absurdity of tackling a growing obesity problem in the western world by ‘accepting’ and ‘normalizing’ fat, sending out a message to new generations that it’s OK to be grossly obese.

My point was made in offensive and cruelly humorous language, but there was a point. We don’t promote heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure and immobility problems as desirable attributes in life, so why should we laud obesity over a healthy attitude towards weight and exercise? I feel strongly about this as the child of parents who are now suffering from life-threatening health problems precisely because of their weight, as are many of my (predominantly grossly overweight) family. A close family member of mine suffered arthritis for years, accentuated by the fact that she was obese. She received two knee replacements and yet never managed to lose the weight afterward and is now practically immobile because she did not exercise after her surgery. She is the first to admit that her attitude towards food and exercise has now compounded health problems that, in turn, were the result of her weight issues, and have consequently made these health problems much worse. Her weight is not the symptom of disease, but the cause of much of her suffering now, while in a vicious circle, at the time she desperately needs to lose weight, she cannot. Another close family member just got diagnosed with weight-related diabetes, on top of high blood pressure and angina. His weight has yo-yo-ed for years, but he is the first to admit he is fat because he likes to eat too much and he does not exercise, predominantly because he now also suffers from gout. His weight has ballooned since the gout worsened. Coincidentally, a friend of his who ran marathons faces the same problems with gout. Both are in their early sixties. His friend’s weight remains relatively stable despite the fact he can no longer run and has to employ gentle exercise instead. Family member's weight has increased.

Once one has compounded health problems to the point where immobility and pain set in, it’s practically impossible to lose the excess fat a person is carrying, even by cutting down on calories. If one can’t move, one can’t expend the extra energy needed to burn excess fat. A sedentary life is a nightmare for overweight people. Once someone hits this point, losing weight becomes extremely, extremely hard.

Now growing up seeing these problems around me, seeing people I care deeply about suffer because of themselves and their attitude toward food and exercise: not just because of poor self esteem, or confidence issues, or childhood sexual abuse, or work-related stress, but because of a lack of willingness to confront their weight issues earlier in life when they had the chance to improve their diet and exercise, has profoundly affected me. I was anorexic for several years as a teenager because I didn’t want to end up like my family members. For years I didn’t enjoy food, did everything I could to avoid it, over-exercised in the middle of the night when no one could see me, and didn’t have a period for three years as a result. I equated food and its enjoyment with greed, a lack of self-control, obesity and ill-health, because this is what I saw in those I loved. It took me many years to re-educate myself before I could enjoy food and have a healthy attitude towards it. I even had to train as a chef and a yoga teacher to reach a healthy balance where I didn’t starve myself. I love exercising, I love my body shape (which, according to one former-anorexic female commentator in a national daily, is comprised of ‘chubby thighs’ and ‘a huge arse’), and ironically for all the haters out there, a big and important part of my self-acceptance has been dancing naked for money for 18 months of my life.

The point is, that to me it’s a symptom of the complete absurdity of political correctness and ego-massaging to send out a message to kids saying to be grossly obese is OK. It’s not. Like I said in my article, it’s not OK to be anorexic, it’s not OK to be enormously obese. Both conditions are life-threatening, and when 66% of American adults are obese, why in gods name are we going around insisting that we be more accepting of these people as if they are an oppressed minority?! Obviously if 66% of Americans are either overweight or obese (I don't know the figures for the UK), the message that it’s OK to be fat is a particularly damaging one, and should be replaced with, not an emphasis on skinnies, on surgery to solve the problem, on liposuction and gastric bypasses and slimfast diets and starvation, but on re-educating the masses on diet and exercise, ensuring that those who don't have the money to join Equinox or shop at Wholefoods know how to make tasty, nutritious food from rice, lentils, daal, some fresh tomatoes - a meal that is financially proportionate to the cheap crap from fast food outlets, but far, far better for your family. I’m not targeting, and never was targeting, anyone who carries a few extra pounds, who has a large butt, who doesn’t weigh the same as Lily Cole, who agonizes over the cellulite and wishes that they could get from a size 14 to a 12. I'm talking people whose weight is posing a serious health risk, and yet the hysteria surrounding this article seemed to suggest I’d planned to round up anyone over a size 14 and send them to Belsen.

I find life pretty absurd, ridiculous and funny, which is why I couched a serious point in flippant and cruel language which was intended to offend by deliberately confronting head-on the kinds of politically correct BS we feed people in order to assuage delicate sensibilities and pretend we’re all tolerant liberals. Obesity is a 20th century condition become a 21st century epidemic that has emerged from the availability of shit to eat, the western world's inability to say no when confronted with plenty, and the ease with which we can offload our own faults onto our emotional stress or our past. It'd be easy for me to say I smoke because I don't think my parents love me and I don't have a boyfriend, but I smoke because I'm addicted to this highly unpleasant and expensive habit and lack the desire to give up. Whether this makes me a low self-esteem sufferer or not, who can tell. It makes me smell like an ashtray and worry about wrinkles, but it's my fault, I admit responsibility for whatever disease I may incur because of it. How is an addiction to over-eating and sedentary living any different to drinking too much alcohol, taking too many drugs, smoking too much? I feel confident enough to say that very few of the clinically obese or very overweight people in the world are this way because of a pre-existing medical condition or their personal genetics. Genes dictate body shape, hereditary diseases, hair color, eye color, whether your boobs are DD’s or teensy A-cups, your ass is non-existent or, like mine, very much in existence. Genes do not dictate that you are unable to choose a salad over the pancakes, eggs, bacon and syrup option at brunch in Denny's. Weight is dictated by calorific intake versus calories burned. It’s impossible for someone to have a gland problem and be 300 pounds if they’re not consuming enough energy to maintain that weight. That's what pisses me off about this ridiculous 'celebration' of being overweight. I don't hate fat people at all, else I'd hate the majority of my family. I don't think fat people are wrong, as I claimed, wrongly and flippantly, in that article. But I do think obese people should not be held up as 'brave', 'role models' and something to aspire to.

I remember watching poor ole Jamie Oliver trying to educate schools about healthy eating and having to contend with a bunch of irate mums feeding their kiddies fries through the school railings at lunchtime. This is the fucked-up world we live in. I certainly don’t want my hypothetical children to grow up in a world which accepts obesity as normal, and not preventable, where the boundaries of what is healthy and what is not changes frequently, not because of medical research but because of public opinion - increasing percentages of fatties, parents who don't want their obese kids to feel weird, clothing companies that regularly change their sizing policies to make people feel slimmer, people who sue fast-food companies for their obesity or heart disease. I want my kids to grow up in a world which takes responsibility for themselves, not offloads problems onto genes, or poverty, or childhood trauma. I want them to have a healthy attitude towards food and exercise, whatever size and shape they turn out, to be mobile and enjoy exercise and sport and food, but never let their lives be dictated by consumption and weight. If they have this, you can guarantee they’re not going to be one of those people lifted out of their death-bed by the fire department.

Another argument levied at me by the ‘Feministing’ crew back in June was that my article dealt primarily with overweight women and not men.

“And finally lets get down to it- she never ONCE mentioned a male example of fat, never used a male pronoun. This isn't about her being disgusted with unhealthy living at all. This is about her dislike of women who defy societal standards of beauty, women who can openly love their bodies, and therefore- her (and society's) need to value women only for their looks and the need to otrasize them if they don't meet ridiculous requirements.” (sic)

This is because I am a woman, I worked in a predominantly weight-obsessed female environment for nearly two years, and because generally, women are obsessed with weight in a way in which men are not. This is not to say I am denying the existence of anorexic or obese men, merely that I have no experience of them other than acquaintance with my family members. Women are the ones who make a carnival of the fact a fat model won a modeling contest, as if she overcame a huge disability more crippling than four or five excess stone (about 100 pounds). It’s women who come up with absurd ads like Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ which reminds me of Palin’s comment about ‘real Americans’ so vapid is its content. Presumably anyone who looks like a supermodel is addled and bitter inside, somehow ‘unreal’ because they have been blessed, or more likely, have worked to achieve, a toned and slim body? And amongst these so called 'representative' women, where are the sporty, toned ones? Or the ones we all hate as they're naturally gorgeous and never have to work for it?

Finally, my point with the original article was to shock, to voice all the myths and unpleasantness that goes unarticulated in a world which reveres beauty and slimness, which cloaks hypocrisy in an attitude of liberal acceptance and benevolence while secretly snickering at those it purports to support. The same ‘Feministing’ site which had a round table discussion with Guardian editors, just about the same time that The Guardian ditched me from CiF because Beth Ditto threatened to quit her column if I ever wrote for them again, printed this article about me.

The message that (…) Fowler (has) been complicit in sending (…) is neither groundbreaking nor feminist. ‘This is all we’re good for’ - that’s the only subtext, every time a well-heeled young woman decides to rent her ‘pert little academic arse at a hundred for hire. Johns everywhere must be rubbing their hands with glee: even the clever ones, the posh bitches who think they’re better than you, will turn into the willing nymphettes of your stickiest wet dreams at the flash of a fiver, is the implication. We’ll let them into our elite universities, but under their scholar’s gowns they’ll always be slappers.

Did this offend me? Not really. You do a job that comes with a certain amount of baggage, an obvious stereotype, and obviously you’re going to inherit that baggage. You have to be calm about the insults and assumptions and accept them, say your piece and sit back with a certain level of detachment, because in the end it doesn’t really matter what some priggish self-proclaimed 'feminist' pain-in-the-ass concocts about your “university education, support network, self-possession and financial safety net,”. A "university education" that the government and scholarships paid for as my parents retired early from health problems, a “support network” of, precisely, ME, the "self possession" that, what, they give out free from Oxbridge if you're white and have a double-barrelled name? My "financial safety net"?! Of what? The vast riches my family of seven acquired while Dad was working as a GP on shit wages back in the 80's and mid-90's before retiring from health problems just as my sister and I hit university? My imaginary trust fund? The million pounds bequeathed to me by Penguin for my first book?!

Here’s what the author of that piece says in defense of her language and tone:

“The use of visceral and graphic language was a deliberate ploy to emphasise what I feel is a persistent misogyny in media culture over the notion of 'high-class' sex work. It was designed to apall, because I reckon that media glee over Oxbridge-educated sex workers is utterly apalling. The tone is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, a dig at the hatred of women's sexuality in mass media culture and not a vindication of that hatred. Having been a stripper myself (as I mention in the article) such a point would have been massively hypocritical - but maybe that irony didn't come across well enough, and for that I apologise. Nevertheless, I used heated terminology when I'm angry, and I'm angry about this - not with female sex-workers themselves, never that, but with the demeaning way in which they are treated in the British press.”

And here’s what one of her commentators has said in response:

“feminist writing should be uncomfortable because we're supposed to be not shying away from uncomfortable issues. Occasionally I've felt you've been a little gratuitously provocative in your use of language - well, I know it can be hard to resist sometimes - but very rarely, and in this case not at all. Also, while it's important to listen, trust me, don't go down the slippery slope of censoring yourself!”

“I found the tone of the article entirely appropriate and I don't think the author should censor herself.”

I find myself resigned to the hypocritical comedy of the situation: a feminist website rabbiting on about how women are disempowered and prejudiced against, how women are rewritten in patriarchal narratives.... a feminist website rewriting me and my life and my opinions, and eventually, getting me deleted from the entire narrative by kicking up enough fuss that I get kicked off Comment is Free!

My controversial fat article came out in April, but it wasn't until June 10th that it was brought up in the round table discussion on ‘Journalism and Women’. The discussion featured the editor of Feministing, and three Guardian editors. I wrote my last piece for The Guardian on June 12th, and despite offering to rewrite the original Fat piece minus the Sarah Silverman language several times, and with an explanation of my intent and the basis for my views, this was declined.

In conclusion, the fat article was a bitch of an article, it was mean and it was offensive, but it certainly made a point, and that was my intent, and like the femmies keep telling us, "feminist writing should be uncomfortable because we're supposed to be not shying away from uncomfortable issues".

But perhaps 'happy hookers' are exempt from being women or feminists.