“Fatorexia”
Cindy in the comments alerted us to a couple of posts on SF Gate that I thought were worthy of their own post. First, an article with the headline Fat people deny their [sic] plus size:
In the same way as anorexics may have a distorted self-perception of being fat, some overweight and obese people fail to see their true plus-size selves, believing instead that they are a healthy weight, says British author Sara Bird, whose book documenting her experience with “fatorexia” was published in March… “When I looked in the mirror, I saw a confident thin person, when in fact I was obese,” says Bird,… At 240 pounds, she looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy with a head that appeared much too small for her body, she said.
Oh good. Another self-loathing reformed fat person. Looks like we’ll get more people helpfully informing us that we’re fat! Terrific! THAT’S JUST WHAT WE NEED.
So then movie critic Mick LaSalle “weighs” in on this “excellent” story!
A couple of weeks ago I got some nasty reaction to my review of JUST WRIGHT, the new Queen Latifah movie in which she is the romantic lead. She plays an average woman who becomes the love interest of an extremely desirable man — an NBA superstar who could presumably have absolutely anybody. In the most delicate terms imaginable, I questioned how the movie could present its hero’s attraction for (let’s just say it) an obese woman, without in some way accounting for the unusual nature of that attraction.
Yes, apparently, it’s COMPLETELY FUCKING CRAZY that someone could be attracted to the “obese” Queen Latifah. QUEEN LATIFAH! Who looks like this!
(His original review is actually, to give him credit that I would rather not give him, a bit more nuanced than this would suggest.) Still, he’s no Lindy West (the critic who wrote that scathing takedown of the new Sex and the City movie).
I know that neither Mick LaSalle nor Sara Bird is likely to listen when I say this, but allow me to repeat: FAT PEOPLE KNOW THEY’RE FAT. We really don’t need more shaming. A lack of shaming is not the problem here.
And also, Queen Latifah is hot.
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Fatism, International, Media, Movies, Queen Latifah, Sex & Romance
Self confidence =/= not knowing we’re fat.
Look, media, I know I’m fat. I know I’m supposed to feel like shit for being fat, but I don’t. Just because I don’t play by your rules does not make me, or any confident fat person delusional.
Then there’s folks who are healthy despite being fat. “Healthy weight” =/= “thin”.
Oh, and being thin doesn’t necessarily mean someone is healthy either. ;)
When I look in the mirror, I see a smart, beautiful, confident woman who is fat! I’m fat and I know it! I’m fat and I like it! *waits for the people to stop their gasping* My body is fine. My body is beautiful at 300 pounds. I run! I jump! I dance! I laugh! I have a boyfriend and he doesn’t think I’m hot because I’m fat or despite my fatness. He just thinks I’m hot. I’m happy. Get over it.
I dunno, sometimes I encounter “fatorexia” in my own life. I don’t necessarily think I’m thin, but I think I look pretty average when I look in the mirror. Then I’ll see pictures taken of me and have a moment of confusion cuz I look fatter than I thought I was.
I still don’t approve of the article, though. haha
I feel the same as you. I grew up being thin and athletic all my life( never gave it a second thought) until I had kids, I knew I put on weight and this wasn’t acceptable to society so I started yoyo dieting but I never thought I was actually fat…maybe a bit chubby. Even now i feel good until I try to put on clothes, I keep buying too small, I must be fooling myself that I am 2 sizes smaller. And when I look at photos I too am shocked…WHO IS THAT? My measurements say I am actually obese..ha..thats what they tell me, I just dont see it.
Nor does thin= / =attractive. The logic does not necessarily follow.
Just the other day I saw a commercial, it was an ad for some family friendly product, I can’t remember now what it was. What struck me about it was the couple dipicted, obviously in love by the way they where kissing and snuggling, clealy consisted of a young white woman and brownskined young man. Reminded me that the very first interracial kiss featured on national TV was between William Shatner and
Nichelle Nichols on the original Star Trek. The only way Gene Roddenberry was allowed to get away with it was because it was ‘science FICTION’ and the characters were dipicted as being forced into it against their will. Still, the Civil Rights Movement in this country was very young and LOTS of viewers were disgusted by that scene to. Now we see it in commercials. Wonder how long it will take for people to get over their stupid ideas about what is beautiful and what isn’t. Hopfully not quite so long.
The concept of ‘fatorexia’ doesn’t seem completely out there for me. If I can believe that a person who starves themselves, honestly sees themselves as fat, I can’t deny that there may be fat people who honestly see themselves as societal-normed size. Neither is healthy. And neither has a damn thing to do with their actual size.
I was trying to explain to my boss how, when we first met, she’d referred to my fatness in a non-insulting way, and this had made me like her more.
Similarly, an old lady of my aquaintance was referring to someone she’d met, and, describing them, said they were ‘plump, like you’… It was very refreshing to hear someone both mention that I’m fat and do so in a way that didn’t suggest this was disgusting or shameful, just a particular physical characteristic that described both me and the person in question.
I try to refer to my own fatness in a non-embarrassed, matter-of-fact way. It’s tricky cause it does sometimes come across as being self-deprecating, but I like that I have friends who are also fat, and comfortable enough that we can refer to our own and each other’s fatness without it being cruel or attached to diet talk. It’s nice even when one of us is having a “god I’m so fat” moment that another can say, “yeah, so?”
I’m bothered by Bird’s comparison with anorexia, I think perhaps because of the way that in anorexia (for some people at least), people have the distorted view that their body is ‘overweight’ whereas often they’re actually ‘undeweight’… People with anorexia tend to suffer with low self-esteem and can use self-starvation as a form of self-harm. Whereas her problem seems to be that she was happy with the way she looked and believed she was a ‘confident thin person’… Regardless of what size she thought she was, how on earth could she be deluded into thinking she was confident? Surely she was confident whether she was fat or not? It makes me wonder if she thinks that fat people don’t deserve to be confident, or something.
Hi – I am the author, founder and creator of Fatorexia, I weigh 240 lbs and I am a REFORMED fat lady because I feel FABULOUS despite being fat. You have commented on an article that takes snippets of my 300page book and you have reacted to them which are out of context.
I am FAT in fact OBESE and I am veryhappy, very healthy and spend time making the best of how I look and feel. Visit my website and buy buy my book understand FATorexia first then comment. Lets be real, if fat people cannot see that they are as fat as they are this can become a real problem, take RUBY, she had no idea how fat she was – because she had FATorexia, by understanding and accepting that some of us may not see our fat is dangerous. My book, my theory is about seeing the fat and NOT letting it prohibit my life. I am a mum, I work I am happy and I love it, I just happen to be fat, I am reformed because for many years unhappy – now I am in control and I am happy about that and my weight is stable and I am starting my fitness campaign to help me remain healthy. Please dont take FATorexia out of context, it is far too important to dismiss, I will get this conditon recognised and people treated with respect as they start to feel better about themselves. Many thanks for you interest, best regards to all of your readers no matter what their shape and size. Sara Bird x
some overweight and obese people fail to see their true plus-size selves, believing instead that they are a healthy weight
I’m so fucking tired of the “those poor deluded fatties think they’re healthy” meme. I know exactly what I see when I look in the mirror, and I also know that I’m healthy. If I am healthy at my current weight, isn’t that a “healthy weight”?
The surveys that gather data on perceived healthy weight are a set up for fatties. If you say you’re at a healthy weight, clearly you must be deluded, but if you acknowledge being “overweight,” then you’ve essentially admitted to being unhealthy or having done something wrong in the eyes of the study authors and medical community. It’s a zero sum game for us.
I’m 360 lbs. Telling me that I’m fat is like telling Lindsay Lohan she likes the booze.
How dumb can some people be?
When LaSalle writes about “the unusual nature of that attraction”, is he referring to what a rare occurrence it is in real life, or to how unusual it is to see it portrayed in a mainstream Hollywood movie?
The first option would be offensive to fat women, women in general, *and* men. Everyday, around the world, thousands of men fall in love, get crushes on, or feel sexual desire for fat women, thin women, tall women, short women, women with bad teeth, women with bad breath, hairy women, women wih oily skin and cellulite. Men, even those who are “extremely desirable” and “could presumably have absolutely anybody” can feel attracted to women because of their (not necessarily thin) body type, but also because of their sense of humor, brains, attitude, outlook on life, values and personality. Why is it ok to assume that men are superficial creatures who will choose a life partner based on the size and firmness of her ass? And why aren’t more men outraged about this?
If he is referring to movies… Well yes, if we accept his premise that Queen Latifah is not an attractive woman, this is unusual. But it is about time we saw an “extremely desirable” man fall in love with a [suppossedly] not-so-desirable woman “without in some way accounting for the unusual nature of that attraction”. We see the opposite (beautiful, accomplished women inexplicably falling for unattractive, loser-type guys) ALL THE TIME. In fact, it seems to be an acceptable premise for a specific type of romantic comedy that is made once and again, at the approximate rate of 1.5 times per year.
Weird article. Sometimes I feel so fat that I fear I won’t be able to fit in my car, but that is not reality, it’s also a feeling I’ve felt at lower and higher weights than I am now. Does that mean I’m anorexic? :)
Oh my God. OH MY GOD. Has it NEVER occurred to Sara Bird or any of these people that their “fatorexia” MIGHT have something to do with the way fat people are routinely depicted as grotesque monsters and demonized and dehumanized in our culture? If someone grows up accepting the popular view of fat people as stupid weak-willed Wal-Mart trolls who eat babies and ruin airplane flights and are unworthy of love and dignity, then of course her self-perceptive mind is going to play a few tricks to keep from seeing herself as fat. OF COURSE.
I think the most pathetic thing about that article is how it demonstrates that in our culture, people desperately do not want to be fat but get fat anyway, and yet instead of thinking critically about why this is happening on a major scale (because the reasons are complicated, and involve everything from industrialized food to medical science, and there are no easy answers), we’d rather just say that some people have problems in their heads.
So much WORD I don’t even know where to start.
Why do you say “Fat people deny their plus size” [SIC]?? I’m assuming you think it should be “they’re plus size,” but actually in the context “their plus size” IS correct. In the same way as it would be correct to say “Pretty people deny their beauty,” or “Pretty people deny their size.”
Wendy – agreed.
Sara Bird – This “fatorexia” idea isn’t new. It’s called “transformed body image,” and the concept has been around at least since the 1980s. It’s a way of coping with being fat without internalizing all of the negative stereotypes. It allows you to act and live as if you were thin, and it’s an effective strategy for some people at some times of their lives.
I thought about that, Suzie, but I still would have written “they’re” so I [sic]ed it!
Terrific comments, guys, really enjoying the discussion. Thanks for stopping by, Sara!
Nobody bats an eyelid at all the films and television shows involving a gorgeous woman and an “average Joe,” yet a character being attracted to Queen Latifah blows their mind! Ridiculous.
To my mind, I would need more explanation for why a hetero man wouldn’t find Queen Latifah attractive than why he would. That woman is smokin’ hot!
Mr. Twistie agrees with me.
That said, attraction is a complex and individual thing that doesn’t always follow societal norms. Whatever people find attractive is what they find attractive.
As skippy notes, nobody sits there questioning comedies (and they are always comedies, which is probably a large part of the reason nobody questions the concept) in which the Average Joe gets the supermodel. Why should anyone question a story in which a hot shot handsome athlete falls for a gorgeous fat woman with all kinds of wit?
Not too long ago, when I looked in the mirror I thought I was much smaller than I was – confident, intelligent and pudgy but not fat…surely I didn’t need to buy size 20…22…24… clothes, it was just my body shape; damn you mother’s side of the family genes! 100kg…110kg…120kg… is big, but it’s not BIG big, right? The whole time, I was medically healthy and going to the gym. So that was no delusion.
These days I have accepted my fat and I am happier and more confident and probably the same intelligence. My point is, I think it’s a real thing, this fat denial. Especially to those who are just becoming fat, or who have psychological factors in their weight gain (eg. depression, as I did.)
I can see how there may be times when people are in denial about how big they are (esp. when their size is changing, as Deanna said). However, I really despise the term ‘fatorexia’. Anorexia is a deadly disease, and it involves way more than a distorted self-image – it’s a disease which actively involves self-hate and self-harm. Confidence is far from self-hate, and being fat isn’t an act of self-harm; it’s insulting to fat people and anorexics both to claim otherwise.
Even though I understand the desire to play off of the term (think you’re huge & despise yourself/ think you’re thin & love yourself), the comparison is too facile to work well. In addition, anorexia involves thinking that you’re *too* fat – fatorexia doesn’t seem to involve thinking that you’re *too* thin.
Sara, your website doesn’t offer additional info beyond the SF Gate article as to how you define fatorexia – if you’re trying to get this term to catch on, forcing anyone who disagrees with you to buy your book to learn more is a flawed strategy.
People may see themselves as smaller than they really are, just as a lot of people see themselves as younger than they are, hipper than they are, etc. It’s only a problem if it causes harmful behaviors.
Lastly, Queen Latifah is HOT. Anyone who can’t see how someone could go for her is singularly unimaginative.
Okay aside from having to slap myself (again) and tell myself not to read the freaking comments on articles like that I have to say..
Can people please stop adding “-rexia” on the end of everything? I mean, I guess people do it to try to run comparisons of things that are unhealthy to anorexia, but frankly, it was old back when the term “tanorexic” was coined and it’s just getting old now.
And really, I think that there aren’t a lot of people who think of themselves as the size they actually are. It can be really difficult to make accurate assessment of size on OTHER people, let alone on oneself. That’s why people have “fat” days and “skinny” days. Some days you just feel HUUUUGE and other days you don’t. If you have a truly distorted view of your own body, it’s body dysmorphia, and we don’t need a fancy word like “fatorexic” to explain that.
And I’ll add that I’m also sick of people who try to say “Why is it OK to criticize a skinny girl for being anorexic but you can’t criticize a fat girl for being unhealthy as well?” I don’t know who these people are that they don’t see how absolutely OK it is for the world to criticize fat as a freaking plague. Maybe the problem is that fat-bashing is so insidious that it’s almost just an accepted fact, and people only notice that they’re even doing it when someone calls them out on how ridiculous it is.
That’s the one that always boggles me when fatness equated to anorexia. The idea that fat people have no idea that we are fat, what size and shape we are, even how much we weigh.
How can we not know when the whole world tells us every single day?
It’s the most common thing I get now that I have “come out” as a fat acceptance activist. The reaction that I mustn’t know how fat I am, or that I don’t know the “health risks”, or that I’m somehow in denial.
The idea that I would have made an informed, educated, conscious choice to accept my fatness seems really alien to so many people.
I agree with Helen and Alice above. Fatorexia? REALLY!? Way to trivialize anorexia!! Unless thinking of yourself as thinner than you is a devastating, soul-killing illness, which renders a person completely incapacitated, and is often fatal, that’s really not okay!
I would like to speak about the movie issue for a moment.
I love the remake of Hairspray (stay with me, this is going somewhere). I love it to death. I love the music and I sing along loudly every time I see it. I love the defiance and the rebellion and the politics. What I really don’t love, however, is how such a big deal (heh) is made of the fact that OMG a THIN, HOT guy likes a NOT SO THIN, TOTALLY PRETTY girl. It is SUCH a big deal that he is able to look “past” her fat (ugh) and see what a totes awesome person she is.
I am sick of seeing this in movies and t.v. Mainstream media, including advertising, gives us the impression that not only is fat uncommon but being attracted to fat is uncommon. I am one big lady. I weigh over 350 pounds. My boyfriend thinks I am smoking hot. When I am having a good day, I agree with him. He does not look PAST anything. He does not find me attractive just because of my personality. He thinks that MY BODY is awesome.
So, to see a movie where (hopefully, I can’t say for sure because I have not seen it) a guy is attracted to a fat lady BECAUSE HE JUST IS AND SHE IS JUST TOTALLY HOT is so incredibly refreshing, I could just cry.
Fatorexia is a ridiculous term. The only way it can possibly be considered acceptable is if it is used as a way to highlight anorexic behaviors that go undiagnoised because the person who is suffering from the disorder is at a weight that is considered to be obese.
And it does occur. Not everyone who is anorexic or bulemic is underweight and if you are anorexic or bulemic AND overweight, not only are you depriving yourself of vital nutrients and endangering your health, you also probably aren’t going to lose weight. It’s also a problem because anorexic behaviors toward food are marketed to obese people (sometimes by DOCTORS) as a quick way to lose weight.
Fatorexia as a term to describe people who look in the mirror and see someone they think is attractive and confident ISN’T A DISORDER.
As someone who suffers from body dysmorphic disorder I find the whole concept this woman is putting fourth HIGHLY offensive.
Also…Queen Latifa is hot. I have a ridiculous crush on her.
Sara Bird appears to be claiming she was misquoted (well, heck, that may have happened, it does happen often enough in the press) and that her book is really about how to live happily and confidently as a fat person. Which is fair enough, if it were true.
Problem is, that’s not the picture I’m getting. When I look at her website, and at her comments here, I’m seeing the old chestnut about how much we cost the NHS, I’m seeing words like ‘problem’ and ‘dangerous’, and I’m seeing the disclaimer about not wanting to condone being fat. I’m also seeing someone who admits to having no medical qualifications trying to get a new ‘condition’ accepted – a psychological condition, at that – and simultaneously having the name of this condition trademarked. Unless it’s a promotional device to pull in the diet-fixated (and to be fair, in self-publishing, you need all the promotional tricks you can get), it doesn’t add up.
Look, I know I’m fat. I regularly look at myself in the mirror and think yeah, I’m fat, and I’m damn hot too. (And my husband would concur with that.) I don’t have scales in the house. Is that a form of denial? I don’t know. I only know that for years I judged myself negatively by that number, no matter how low it was, and that I refuse to do that any more. Call that denial if you like, but I find it helpful to my self-esteem, and self-esteem is not an eating disorder.
Wendy: Damn skippy. Of course you could have an aversion to thinking of yourself as fat, if you’ve internalized fat = mendacious candy thief and kitten eater, which is very difficult not to do.
My question is, unless you either have someone buy or make all your clothes for you, or wear only bedsheet caftans, how can you not actually know (roughly) what size you are? Even if you cut the size tags out of your clothes, or make them yourself, you have to know what size you’re getting/making in the first place, do you not? And if you’re over a size 14 US, you already know that most straight-size racks aren’t going to have anything that fits you, unless you just went over size 14 a month ago.
This is a pet peeve of mine, when people slap -orexia onto any old term. It’s disrespectful to the very real psychological disorder that many women AND men are dealing with on a daily basis.
That being said, I can kind of relate to what Sara Bird said. At a size 10, I’m definitely overweight by society’s standards, but when I look in the mirror in a pair of soffe shorts I don’t feel as fat as I really am. It’s only when I’m photographed next to thinner friends or walk past a mirrored shop window that I realize, oh wow I’m no size 6!
However, is this a problem? No. What’s a problem is when someone finds issue with a woman looking in the mirror and seeing a beautiful confident person staring back at her.
People slap “-oholic” onto all sorts of things to denote addiction, too, but nobody takes alcoholism less seriously because of it.
I think of myself as both thinner and taller than I am. In my head, I bear a semblance to one of those middle-height, graceful outdoorsy sorts of women you see in the Lands End and Columbia catalogues. In reality I am short and pear-shaped. I don’t know whether it’s a protective mechanism or not. It does mean that I’m unrealistic about clothing – I am forever thinking that I’ll look great in a casual ensemble of a plain white t-shirt and jeans, only to catch sight of myself in a mirror and realize I look like I’m about to go clean out the gutters. But it doesn’t interfere with my understanding of what healthy behaviors are, nor of what my cardiovascular risk profile is – that’s what BMI and caliper fat measurements are for.
I would be willing to bet that this is nothing but secret marketing by weight loss interests. The first one fatorexia has no scientific credibility whatsoever. Most studies show that people overestimate their size.
I know I’m a day late to the party, but I wanted to chime in briefly that as a former anorexic I find the term “fatorexia” extremely disrespectful and dismissive of my own experiences. The thing about anorexia? Oh, that’s right, IT CAN FUCKING KILL YOU (and almost did in my case). I have yet to hear from someone dying from having too much confidence in their appearance, and even if someone is overconfident, unless they have narcissistic personality disorder that isn’t a mental illness!
Reminds me of the time I posted to someone, about Fat Acceptance when they were going on an on about dieting and what not.
They responded by saying it was okay that I had self-esteem, but I was in denial and should strive to be healthier. The second part wasn’t what surprised me, but it’s okay I have self-esteem? I’m supposed to hate myself thin, or I need other people’s permission to think good about myself? What the heck? Of course, that speaks more to how sadly messed up his perspective on his weight is.
What Gorda, and Skippy, and Katy said. Before we wonder how on earth any man could desire the (freaking gorgeous) Queen Latifah, could we ask what Gwyneth Paltrow, even in a (highly offensive) fat suit, would see in Jack Black, or where the plausibility is in Katherine Heigl or Elizabeth Banks getting paired with Seth NotConventionallyBeautiful Rogen, and by the way who’d ever BELIEVE Calista Flockhart could fall for an old geezer like that Harrison Ford?! I mean, dude, it’s practically Harold and Maude! (And it’s in “real life”, not the movies.) Where are the crowd and critics saying dude, no way, it’d never happen? Nowhere…because they know, as we do, that women are socialized to “marry down” in terms of conventional beauty, and also, too often, in terms of intelligence and charm. It’s TOTALLY plausible that a conventionally beautiful woman could fall for an ordinary-looking guy…but not so much the reverse, right? I mean, it’s WOMEN whose job is embodying conventional beauty and who are lifelong failures if they look ordinary, right?
Grrr. Just grr.
My mother once told me she thought I had “reverse anorexia” – that I looked in the mirror and saw a skinny person instead of how FAT I was. Thanks, mom. I guess self-confidence just doesn’t matter as much as weight, right? (wrong)
How much do you want to bet that Mick LaSalle does not need an explanation as to why Elizabeth Moss and Jonah Hill would be a couple in the upcoming “Get Him to the Greek,” but Queen Latifah and Common as a couple just *blows his mind*?
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Sorry to reply to this so late, but I just found your blog today I’ve been reading through your back entries. *thumbs up!*
The idea that anybody could doubt Queen Latifah attracting a successful man must be delusional, because she is gorgeous, period. Beauty and attractiveness don’t correlate with size. There are handsome and appealing big guys, too. I don’t really differentiate. I find people of all sizes attractive when they are attractive.
And that’s not even taking into account someone’s awesome personality, self-confidence and inner self making them appealing to me as well.
I recently thought I might have a degree of this “don’t view my size in the same way others do” thing, but dismiss that. I KNOW I’m a size 20 and own a mirror. I just think I’m awesome anyway and don’t apologize for not being a size 4. And THAT is why guys of all sizes ask me out.