Episode 9: Why do I use the word Fat?
Episode Summary:
In this episode of "Fat and Fertile," Nicola share why she uses the word FAT in her business and what it means for her both professionally and personally.
She also talks about how we can use the power of language to make real change in the way that fat folks are treated and in the fertility industry.
What to Expect from the Podcast
We look at why Nicola went from avoiding the term to confidently reclaiming it as a neutral descriptor and her struggles with internalised fatphobia and how writing her book, Fat and Fertile, transformed her perspective
Highlights
Nicola’s relationship with the word "fat"
The cultural stigma of the word "fat"
Fat as a neutral descriptor
Issues with terms like "obesity" and "overweight"
Reclaiming the word "fat"
Why some people struggle with the word “fat”
Links and Resources
Nicola’s book, Fat and Fertile
Get Involved
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Hey, my lovely Welcome to fat and fertile the podcast. I'm Nicola salmon, fat positive fertility coach and author of the book fat and fertile. I'm obsessed with helping folks navigate getting pregnant in an anti fat world on this podcast, we'll explore the complexities that fat folks face when you want to grow your family. If you want to support this podcast, I would love for you to share it on social media or leave me a review on your podcast app. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to this week's fat and fertile. Today we're going to be talking about the word bat. Now this is a really interesting topic, and one that not loads of people have talked to me about in my business, but one that I know when people first hear about my work, when people first find my work, it can be a little jarring, because everywhere you see me, I'm the fat positive fertility coach. I'm fat positive fertility on Instagram, and it's very different to other fertility businesses that you might see or other healthcare professionals. So I thought it would be really fun to have a little bit of a dive into why I use the word fat and why it's really important for me. I think the best way I thought of sharing a little bit about my history with the word fat was to read a little bit from my book, fat and fertile, inspiration for the podcast name, obviously, and in the beginning, I wrote this about four, five years ago now, so it really highlights how I was feeling at that point. Because like everyone, I've had a very interesting relationship with this word, and it's not always been a Oh, I love this word. I'm going to use the word fat like this. Has taken me years to get to a point where I feel comfortable being in my fat body most of the time, because, again, this is not linear, and using the word fat really confidently in my business. So this is the first couple of paragraphs from chapter one in fat and fertile. This book was never nearly written, not because I'm not passionate about fertility and helping fat folks, not because fat people who want to get pregnant can't be helped, but because of me, I put off writing this book for over two years after I decided to write it. Why? Because I was worried that if I wrote a book about being fat, that meant I would be fat forever. If I became the fat fertility coach, then being fat would be part of who I am, and I would never be able to lose weight, and therefore never be healthy and happy, because it's been so entrenched in me that my worth is based on my weight. I was too frightened to write this book because in the end, it would mean that I would never be happy. But what I came to realize was that I was completely wrong. It's not about what the weighing scales say. It's not about what your BMI is, or how much fat you can measure around your waist. By focusing on weight loss, we are perpetuating the story that folks have to be a certain size to be healthy. We're continuing the myth that people are on this planet to look pretty and to do as we're told. We do not have to accept that as our reality anymore. So I've had to change a couple of the words in the book because the work, the book needs an update, and I no longer use gendered language, but the premise still stands. I was so scared of writing this book initially, because of the word bat, because of how I felt about the word fact, how it had been used against me in the past, and because of what I thought being fat meant. So let's get into that. What does the word fact even mean? So when I say the word fact, there may be all kinds of words associations that spring up in your mind, common ones that I hear, that I know myself from the way that I used to think about the word are things like greedy, lazy, unmotivated, disgusting, and all of these associations are backed up for us in our culture from a really, really young age. And when I talk about our culture, I mean, like Western culture, like I live in the UK, and these ideas are also around in a lot of those kind of Americanized. It's English, ified, anglified spaces. So this isn't the same all over the world. But growing up for me, when you saw a fat character on the screen in children's cartoons in books, that was almost shorthand for a bad person, an evil person. Think Ursula from The Little Mermaid, think I can't think of any more now, there are so many of them, and now all of them have just left my head. But yeah, Ursula is a wonderful example, because, again, a lot of the fat community have reclaimed her as a misunderstood, super powerful witch. But the shorthand is there. I am sure. If you look at any of the things that you used to watch in the past when you were a kid, you will see this shorthand of using fat folks to represent somebody who's evil or greedy or lazy, and it's no wonder that we then associate the word fat with meaning all of those things growing up as a fat person as well. You may have memories of either yourself being bullied with the word fat, or people around you using the word fat. I know with my kids, it has taken a lot of deconditioning, even from such a young age, for them to understand that fat is not a bad word. We talk about that a lot in our house, about how I freely use the word fat to describe my body, and I encourage them to use it to describe my body too. That conversation always goes hand in hand with the conversation around we just don't comment on other people's bodies. It's not appropriate. So I'm encouraging them not to use that word for other people in case that they find that activating for their nervous systems. But we are doing a lot of work around deconditioning the word fat as not being bad. So for me, the word fat is a totally neutral descriptor. It doesn't mean anything about my personality. It means nothing about my worth within society. It means, nothing about whether I deem myself to be beautiful or sexy or I have separated it from all of those ideals. It is a totally neutral term, and when I use it within my business, I am referring to a group of folks who self identify as having issues that they face within the world based on their bodies being bigger than the ideal. And when I say ideal, obviously that varies massively, but it's usually thin white women. Again, depending what you see as thin is totally like based on your own lived experience and your own way that you see the world, but it is based on this idea that a thin privilege exists, and if you were in a smaller body, you get better access to healthcare, you get better salaries in workplaces. You get generally treated better than somebody who is in a bigger body as a fat person. So that is what the word fat is to me, totally neutral. It just means I have fat on my body and more fat than would be deemed socially acceptable in the country that I live. So that's all well and good, but why do I use it in my business? And this is a really, really great question, and I think it's really important to talk about because for many, many years before me, back into the 1960s and 70s, there have been so many activists who are fat, often black and queer, having intersectional marginalized identities, who have reclaimed this word fat and my work, I really want to align with their values, with what they uphold held in their work, and it really is building on their work of creating a space where that people are accepted and their lived experience is acknowledged, and that they are able to access the world in the same way that thin folks do so by using it in my business, by using it everywhere in the work that I do. This is a deliberate act to signal to the world that I am centring fat folks in my business in a non stigmatizing way. So there may be other businesses out there who. To center their businesses on fertility and fat people. But for me, using the word fat and more specifically, fat positive, I'm saying that I do not want you to change. You are not the quote, unquote problem here. It's not that you need to lose weight so that you can access the care. It's the systems that are at fault, and it's the systems that need to change. So every time you see the word facts in my business, every time you see the word fat positive that it's a deliberate act to signal that I am a hopefully safe space. And obviously safe is completely
dependent on you and your lived experience, and I will not be safe for everybody, but I am trying to create a safer space for fat folks to be able to access support. And it's also about breaking a lot of the stereotypes and the stigmas that we associate with the word fat, and if that is, like, this word that we don't talk about, if it's a if it's a word that we like, oh, we can't say that. We can't do that, it just perpetuates those harmful stereotypes that we have around the word fat and being fat. Because what I'm saying is that fat isn't bad, being fat isn't bad. So why would fat be a bad word if being fat isn't bad? This episode of fat and fertile is proudly sponsored by supported the 12 month community program that offers the support you truly deserve, compassionate, respectful, evidence based, and above all, led by you, it provides a safe haven where you can feel validated and acknowledged amidst the prevailing inequality and anti fat bias that often accompanies fertility. Care to learn more, visit the link in our show notes, or send me a message on Instagram at fact positive fertility. Now let's get back to the show. But what about the other words? There are lots of other words that both healthcare professionals and other facility specialized specialists use to describe votes in bigger bodies and to differentiate that population of people who might be navigating getting pregnant, and a lot of them are harmful, so it's really important that we discuss why they're harmful, so that we can avoid using them where possible. And I understand that it's not always possible, and it can be really useful to have a shared and common language when we're talking about these things, but the two in particular that we're going to be talking about today are the O words obesity and overweight. But I'll start with overweight. I mean, when you say it, you think like, oh, that sounds like a pretty okay term, like it's one that's quite accepted. People know what you mean. We use it all the time. But actually, when you break the words down over weight into those two separate parts. What it's meaning in its subtext, when you use it, is that you are over a quote, unquote, normal weight. So we're saying that there is this normal weight that bodies are and then people who are over that normal range are overweight. And again, that is perpetuating this idea that there is an ideal weight for everybody to be, and that is just not true. Body diversity has existed for as long as humans have existed. There's a great Instagram account. I cannot remember the name of it now, but I will share it in the show notes, and it shows all these incredible historical fat figures. And I think that is so powerful to see that folks who are in your body's size having existed for centuries and have had wonderful lives, I actually have started doing a little bit of family history investigation, and I found this incredible photo. I think it was of why Nana's mother and she was in a bigger body, and just that relief, I can feel myself even tearing up now, just almost that recognition of seeing someone in my family in a bigger body was really powerful. So yeah, it is incredible how when we accept that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, regardless of our habits, regardless of how we choose to eat, move and live, it's incredible. So that's overweight, that's why it's a problem and why we don't have to use it the second word obesity is something that is used a lot within medical circles. It's used a lot within research Doctor surgeries. It's used a lot when we talk about BMI limits, and it's the main problem with it is that it medicalizes fatness. So when you're talking about OD. Obesity, you're talking about a healthcare medical illness that is based on somebody's body size or BMI. And that is just not true. There is no healthcare condition that is being fat that is not an illness, that is not a health concern or problem, and by describing it as such, you are immediately putting a whole population of people into this bracket of being unwell or unhealthy. And that is so far from the truth. Again, there's been a research that's done that shows actually in every pocket of people, if we decide to put people in pockets based on their BMI, there is the same percentage of people who have active lifestyles. There are the same percentage of people who have quote, unquote, sedentary lifestyles. And so it's really harmful to take a group of people based on their body type, and they you are all healthy, you all have an illness, and you need to be fixed, whether that is through dieting, whether that is through weight loss surgery, whether that is through injections, like whatever that is, you are a problem, and you need to be fixed. Because that's not true, and it's really harmful to those people who have been put into that bracket. So if we don't use overweight, if we don't use obesity, there are other terms that we can use, but all the other terms, fluffy, flush, size, all that they're doing is, is othering fat people. They are they are avoiding the F word, if you like. They are finding any other way to describe somebody's body except fat and by avoiding the word fat, again, we are saying that this is a bad thing. It's wrong to be fat. We can't even use the word because it's so damaging and it's so dangerous. And for me, taking back that word, reclaiming its power. It's really, really powerful, and we can use language like that to change perceptions of our bodies, both internally, within ourselves and externally. So by using the word fat, we are challenging the way things are always done the status quo. We're asking people to think about the language that they're using and why we're using that. So for example, with fertility clinics and fertility specialists, anybody working in the volatility industry, if they continue to use the words like obesity and overweight, whether it's conscious or unconscious, they are always seeking to medicalize and pathologize our bodies, and therefore they're always going to be seeking a way to, quote, unquote, cure us. They're always going to be finding a way to make our body smaller or to label as higher risk, but by using the word fat instead, we are not pathologizing ourselves. We are not medicalising or giving ourselves a problem that needs to be fixed. We're just fat in the same way that I have brown hair or that I have brown eyes. This is just a part of me, it's not something to be medicalized or to be pathologized. Now, I know what you might be thinking. I hate the word bats. I can hear you screaming. It's not that again, but I hate it. I hate the visceral reaction that it has in my body. And I would love to think about that, because it's really important, and understanding why you have such a visual reaction to that word can be really powerful. So that reaction in your body, when I use the word fat, it comes from somewhere. The way that our body has a response is based on the thoughts that we're thinking. So I'm saying the word that I'm using it pretty liberally, as you might imagine, in the podcast both of today, because it's the topic that we're talking about, but also in general, on my social media everywhere, basically, if you're in my world, you'll see me use it very liberally, and that is an absolutely neutral circumstance within the world. When I use that word, I'm not making it mean anything. But when you read that word, you're reading it through your own lens. So you're reading it through everything that you've been made to believe about that word, fact, every experience that you've had in your life so far, and the way that that has been used against you, the way that it had been used to oppress you, there are so many ways that you have will have come across that word and will it have it will have shaped the thoughts that you have. When you see that word. So some common thoughts that you might experience when you see the word fat is, oh gosh, no. That's not something I want to identify as because that is disgusting or that is shameful or that is harmful.
It may bring back memories of friends, family, bullies using it against you violently as a weapon. So it's totally understandable that when you see that totally neutral word that your brain offers you circumstances or thoughts based on your own past experience of seeing that word in the past, and then those thoughts can bring up all kinds of feelings, whether that's disgust, shame, fear, unworthiness, doubt, feeling not enough, all of those things are so common. And of course, when you're feeling like that, you're going to have that response. Your body's going to be like what or you are going to want to turn off. You're going to not want to listen to what I'm saying. But it's totally understandable. It is a self protection mechanism that your body is having because of the negative experiences you've had. Seen that word word in the world before. So I would love for you to think about that, to think about, okay, I can see that pattern. I can see what Nico's saying about it. Renewable these thoughts. Maybe write them down. Maybe write down what you think of when you hear the word back or you see it written down. And then decide, like, do I want to continue thinking this way if I could choose what I choose to have these thoughts based on the word that I'd love to know what you think about that by reclaiming the word, if it's been used as an insult in the past, it allows us to take that power back. It allows us to challenge and destigmatize that word and challenge those negative stereotypes, if it's shorthand that you've seen before in the past, of it being used as a negative word for something, by taking that word back, we're refusing to accept those negative stereotypes. We're refusing to accept that fat people are lazy or unmotivated. But ultimately, you get to choose how you define your own body. I use fat liberally, and I use it to describe myself, but I'm not going to use it to describe you. If you choose not to accept that it is your body and it is your choice, you get to identify what terms are useful for you. So we've been on a bit of a journey with this word so far, and I hope me chatting through this has been really interesting and helpful. We've talked about what the word bat means and how I use it as a neutral descriptor in my business and also for myself, I've shared a little bit about my history with it, and the history of fat activists, and how I use it as a deliberate, deliberate act to signal that I send to fat folks in a non stigmatizing way. Within my business, we've had a look, a little look about the other words so obesity and overweight and how they can be really problematic for fat folks, and we've also looked at how we can use the word to act as an agent of change, and how we can use the word fat to change the systems and structures that exist to medicalize or pathologize our bodies. And we've also looked at why we might hate the word fat and what steps we can do to unpack a little bit of that internal bias that we might hold, because we all hold internal bias around fatness, regardless of what our body size is, and we can always work towards reducing the bias that we hold. I hope that is helpful. I would love to hear more about your relationship with the word fat, and anything that this episode has brought up for you, you are so welcome to come over to my Instagram at Fat positive fertility, send me a DM, share in some of the comments on my posts, how you think about the word fat? I can't wait to open up this conversation with you. Take care. Thanks so much for joining me today for fat and fertile. If you want to learn more about how to have a fat positive facility journey, then I'd love for you to check out my book fat and fertile, how to get pregnant in a bigger body. It's available everywhere via Amazon, so just search in your Amazon store for fat and fertile, or click in the link in the show notes, see you next time you.
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Apologies for any typos - transcribed byhttps://otter.ai - it can make mistakes! If you need clarification on anything - please get in touch!