A few things off the top:
- This post discusses bodies and weight stigma. Please proceed carefully if these topics are triggering.
- I write this as a straight-sized, cis-gender, white women who holds tremendous privilege in the context of this particular conversation.
- This post is meant as a conversation starter, a toe-in to a conversation I don’t see in the running community, but a conversation I think we need to have. I am by no stretch an expert on diet culture, anti-fatness, fat phobia, or fat liberation. I am learning and this post is a dialogue on some of what concerns me. I am guilty of much of the behavior I discuss here.
- At its root, anti-fatness and fat phobia are white supremacist beliefs and behaviors. I do not get into that aspect here, simply for the sake of brevity (this post is already too long), but want to be clear that the these behaviors are white supremacy in action.
Over the last few years, the running community has started a reckoning with our deep history with eating disorder culture. We’ve acknowledged how women in particular have been harmed by sometimes (but not always) well-meaning coaches who place an outsized focus on body weight in competition. We’ve learned how girls as young as junior high and all of the way into the professional ranks have been scolded for the number on the scale. Runners who’ve been told they’re too fat to be fast, even while they compete at the upper echelons of the sport in very thin bodies.
But what I haven’t seen much of is a dialogue about how anti-fatness and diet culture have weaved their tentacles into running culture, particularly among the non-elite. Runners such as Mirna Valerio, Latoya Shauntay Snell, and Kelly Roberts have been vocal advocates for more inclusivity for fat bodies in the running community. As women in curvy bodies, and for Valerio and Snell black, curvy bodies, they’ve shouldered much of the burden of holding a mirror up to the running community. And while we work to make space for runners of all shapes and sizes, I don’t hear us talking about anti-fatness or fat phobia, or the ways in which it influences the behavior of straight-sized, mid-pack runners, never mind the ways in which it excludes people from the sport. I also don’t hear us discussing how diet culture repackages itself as a desire to be fit particularly among women athletes.
Anti-fatness: opposed to obese people
Fat phobia: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against obesity or people with obesity
Diet culture: a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue
Anti-fatness among the running community looks like clothing companies with limited sizing and with apparel that doesn’t take the needs of fat bodies into account. Shorts that are too short (longer shorts reduce chafing and increase comfort), sports bras that don’t account for an ample bust and in the rare instance they do, are ugly and utilitarian. It’s tops that aren’t long enough. Compression gear only in straight sizes. Sportswear catalogs and advertising that feature only straight-sized athletes and models. Running stores that carry clothing only for straight-sized athletes, or that carry a small offering of “extended sizes” on a small rack in the back corner. Running stores that don’t have any fat runners on staff. It is publications that feature exclusively straight-sized runners, except for the occasional feature about fat runners, which is the only time runners of size are seen.
Diet culture with a side of fat phobia is straight-sized, mid-pack runners monitoring their calories in the off season so as to not gain weight. It’s women wearing shirts when they run in the summer, until they are “thin enough” to run without it. It’s straight-sized runners saying they are fat – even as a joke – when they pick up a few pounds in between training cycles. It’s women wearing tights when the weather is hot (this can also relate to shorts not being long enough). It’s anytime someone covers their body for reasons that don’t include the temperature. It is going out for a long run to “earn” the cheeseburger, the pizza, the ice cream. It is the way we hide behind training, hide behind “wanting to be fast”, as an excuse for our calorie restriction. It is the folks who comment on Snell’s Instagram videos of her workouts, saying how they are smaller than her and couldn’t do what she does. It’s the people who see those videos and think that same thought. It’s complimenting each other on weight loss. It’s “transformation Tuesday” posts where the transformation is almost always a smaller body.
American culture is deeply fat phobic. Fat people are less likely to be hired for a job, less likely to have their complaints taken seriously at the doctor’s office – the solution to a sore throat is to lose weight, and more likely to be shamed for taking up space in public than straight-sized people. They are never the romantic lead in a movie. They are not the CEO of a company. Their size is always something to overcome, to succeed in spite of. Fat women of color are particularly invisible or when they are visible, it is never in positive ways. There isn’t a comparable state of the body that people are so thoroughly blamed for, even though body size is due to a very complicated set of circumstances, personal choices being but one incredibly small component. People are very comfortable making value judgements based on someone’s size. We are comfortable assuming how they (don’t) care for their body, and what must be their (ill) state of health.
Fat activist Caleb Luna states that fat phobia and anti-fatness pressures thin people into monitoring their bodies. I believe that many runners, particularly women runners, use running as one way of monitoring their body. A socially acceptable way. We can hide our internalized fat phobia and participation in diet culture behind our desire to be “fit” to be “fast”. I don’t doubt that we also want those things, but I don’t see how the pervasive anti-fatness of our culture isn’t also a factor in how we monitor our bodies in sport, especially when we belong to running groups that do not include any fat people, buy from companies that don’t make products for fat people, consume media that doesn’t include fat people or consider their needs.
Diet culture is an avenue for monitoring our bodies. Factor in a genuine desire to be a better athlete and it can be a perfect storm. Diet culture leaves us hungry and obsessed with food. It tells us to track our calories, to never be full. It tells us that low-carb/high fat will solve all of our problems, even if there is no medical reason to eat that way. It instructs us to skip the snack and to not eat after 7p. It is the belief that we need to earn our food.
Rejecting diet culture is understanding that we can eat whatever the fuck we want, whenever we want. It is the realization that we can be fit, we can be fast, without the obsession about our diet. It is acknowledging that we are humans who get hungry. Virgie Tovar says that “extinguishing our hunger is extinguishing our desire”. And that at it’s root, “desire is about power”. A patriarchal society thrives when women are kept small and distracted. Sociologist Sandra Gillman states that “dieting is a way that women express to their culture that they understand their role and are willing to accept it”. Gillman is a man, but his observation is accurate. Our hunger and our distraction keep us small. It keeps us focused on what we’re going to have for lunch instead of the art we want to make, the problem we’re trying to solve at work. It prevents us from being fully present with those we love.
Within the last year or so, Oiselle expanded their size offerings and now include runners of a variety of sizes in their advertising. They are one company, and a smaller company at that, but it feels like an important step forward. Oiselle has been called out over the years for not featuring diverse runners in their advertising and for not offering apparel for all sizes, and to their credit, they stepped up to the plate in both instances. Unfortunately in both cases, it was runners of color and runners of size who were the most vocal about the omissions.
When running creates space for fat liberation, it will be straight-sized runners pointing out these absences just as vocally. It will be straight-sized runners who notice the community isn’t fully represented, not just those who’ve been left out. Just as we’ve come to expect to see black and brown runners included in advertising and feature stories, we’ll expect to see fat runners included as well. We’ll expect to see fat runners in our local running groups, at the local run store. We’ll expect to see clothing for fat runners displayed right along clothing for straight sized runners. We’ll see companies developing cute, functional bras for fat women runners, just like they do for straight-sized women runners. We’ll realize the fat phobia inherent in our comments about our own bodies, and the damage those comments inflict on not just the fat people in our communities, but on straight-sized folks too.
Want to give white supremacy and the patriarchy a big middle finger? Embrace your hunger, love your body, run hard because it fills you with joy. Understand that bodies aren’t a problem to be solved, our own or other people’s. Consider not commenting on other people’s bodies at all. Stop viewing weight loss as progress, your own or other people’s. Take a deep dive into your own beliefs about fat people, regardless of your size. Read the work of authors who talk about fat liberation, authors such as Virgie Tovar. Eat the cheeseburger. Most of all, savor your food. What a tremendous privilege it is to have delicious, ample food.
