Why fatty is a state of mind

And the secret things you are privy to during a "slim-passing" phase.

My last post, about working at heat magazine during the height of celebrity body image madness, has brought quite a few new eyes my way. Eyes that I’m worried are now hoping for salacious gossip, not me banging on about how much I love parkrun.

So, for their benefit, here’s a quick recap: “Keep it up fatty!” was what some twats in a white van shouted at me a few years ago, when I first started running. I’m now reclaiming it by publishing roughly fortnightly posts on whatever jumble of fitness and body image stuff is whirring around my brain. I want to help make more people - especially women - feel like exercise is accessible to them, while shining a light on how it often isn’t.

On seeing the name of this newsletter, quite a few people have said “but you’re not even fat!” and indeed this is a subject of some debate - both in my own head and in the Telegraph comments box.

On the one hand, who really fucking cares? It is the literal definition of navel-gazing. Even if I was “morbidly obese”, it wouldn’t be anyone else’s business, although fat-phobics love pretending they’re deeply concerned about the strain overweight people put on the NHS when really they just don’t like looking at them.

On the other, it is a topic as huge and loaded as the XL portion of nachos I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now (anyone know where you can get really good nachos these days?).  

I won these in the chocolate tombola at our school winter fair on Saturday and frankly I’m running out of photos to illustrate this newsletter with.

I think that most people have their own version of “fatty”, something they carry with them that makes them feel lesser, and like they have something to prove. As well as aesthetics, it could be an accent, an age, a disability, a social status - and some of these are more instantly visible than others. 

There is so much interesting stuff to say about weight and exercise in relation to race and class, but as a middle class white woman I’m not sure I’m the right person to say it, so if it’s OK with you I’m going to stay in my body image lane and talk about why I will always be “fatty” whatever the label on my jeans says. 

When I’m in a smaller phase (like now, when I am “midsize”), I only ever feel like I’m in disguise as a socially acceptable slim-passing person. And when you’re slim-passing, you suddenly have an ear to people who are slim all the time. 

Here are some conversations I’ve been part of that would not have happened within my earshot when I was bigger, and they’re the sort of conversations that make it so much harder to accept being fat… 

1. Years ago, at my slimmest, I was part of a panel interviewing lots of candidates for some writing roles. We were seeing quite a lot of people, so it was hard to keep track of them by name. Therefore, the default when discussing them afterwards was to describe them physically. When I said something about one of them, my co-interviewer asked matter-of-factly “was that the blonde one or the fat one?”. I remember blinking and saying that yes, I meant the fat one. I guess what I should have said was “the brunette”. Of course, fat activists like to use the f word, reclaiming it as a simple descriptor, but I don’t think that is what was happening here. When the slimmer population say it, it always feels derogatory. 

2. Discussing local schools (sorry, can’t help it, I live in Motherland), a large group of parents admitted that they had all been put off applying to a particular one because when they went to have a look around they noticed that a lot of the teachers were very overweight. I had seen this school too and it wasn’t something I’d particularly processed at the time, but in hindsight they were right. And as far as they were concerned, this was bad role modelling. Would these obese teachers encourage their children to eat healthily and to be active? They thought not, and nobody, no matter how body-positive, including me, maybe especially me, wants their children to be overweight. Now I’m desperate to know whether the school has clocked this, and whether they care - but it would take a very brave person to ask.

3. A friend confessed that she was worried about inviting an old friend to a party because the friend’s weight had ballooned and it made her feel uncomfortable in front of her other, slim, friends. She wasn’t being mean, she was being self-conscious on her friend’s behalf, and making assumptions, as thin people do, that if someone has put on weight, they are probably unhappy. Even if the friend was unhappy, it didn’t mean she was the only one - there were bound to be people there with alcohol issues, poor mental health and god knows what else going on. But weight… well, that one is visible; as far as my friend was concerned she might as well have been holding up a sign saying “I don’t have my shit together!” and that bothered her.   

4. Another friend admitted that she makes assumptions about people’s work ethics when they’re noticeably big, the assumption being that if you’re overweight, you’re probably lazy and sloppy. I asked if she had ever made these assumptions about me. “No! But it’s a scale isn’t it?”. Sure - but I actually worked much harder as an indisputably fat 23 year old than I do now as a slim-passing 42 year old. The truth is, if you’re fat (or carry something else with you that makes you feel inferior) you have to work harder to prove your worth. Also, let’s be honest, I have worked with some bloody lazy, good for nothing size 8 babes.

It is very hard to remain body-positive when you’ve been privy to this stuff. Now that I’m old and confident, I will happily argue and point out the nuances, but it’s going to take an awful lot of systematic unravelling for any of these long-held views and prejudices to actually change.

You might deduce from all this that I mostly hang around with people slimmer than me, and you would be right - in fact, some of my closest friends could be considered “tiny”, and I’m not sure why, but it’s always been this way. This means that even when I’m not technically “fat” I still feel big in comparison to my mates, who probably average out at a size 10 and can borrow each other’s clothes. 

Friends lending clothes to each other and not to me is one of the things that’s always made me feel highly aware of my relative non-thinness, and it goes right back to when I was a teenager. The other day, my quite petite, fit (in every sense of the word, naturally) friend K kindly lent me some sort of oversize waterproof during an unexpected weather situation and I felt a little buzz of acceptance even though it would have literally fit anyone, such is the patheticness of never feeling like your body conforms.

Helen Lewis

has written a brilliant article this week, as she tends to, about weight loss drugs, and there’s a quote from someone who’s lost a lot of weight saying:

 “I always had the feeling of being outside everything, like there was a velvet rope. And there is.”

They’re so right. Being slim is a club. One friend, a size 10, told me that other slim friends have made her feel bad - not on purpose and not because they’re thinner than her but because they project their own need to be thin onto her. When she has been at the skinnier end of her always slim range, they have acted like she’s solved all the world’s problems, when actually she’s just not been eating as many crisps as usual. She even told me that one slim friend, wrapped up in her own body image issues, reminded her to make sure she keeps the weight off. Or what, exactly? She has to leave her membership card and XS gym leggings at the door on the way out?

My friends who say these things and feel these things are not arseholes. They mostly don’t even work in the media or fashion, like you might assume. We’re talking about people in the public sector, charities, education, tech, finance, politics, everywhere! All they have in common is that they are largely “professional” and largely friends with me, and they mostly live in and around London. Women, perhaps particularly in these demographics, know that thinness is power. 

This means that when you’re not thin, you possess less power, and this is particularly evident when it comes to assumptions about how athletic you are, since sport and power go hand in hand. Plenty of my slim friends don’t exercise at all, but they’re assumed to be fit and healthy. I am pretty fit and healthy, but feel like I need to work extra hard to prove it (and yes, write a bloody newsletter about it).  

When I was training for The Big Half earlier this year, and was a little bit heavier than I am right now, I had a couple of conversations where it felt like the person I was speaking to was shocked that I was running “the whole thing” rather than being part of a 5K relay team. Maybe they would be surprised by anyone running 13 miles, but it didn’t feel that way.

That’s why with every run I go on or race I sign up for, I feel like I am making a point. I go to a Body Pump class once a week, and notice that I lift heavier weights than most of the women and some of the men. When the instructor suggests adding on more weight, I’m the first to reach for the extra plates. I want people to know I might not be thin, but I’m reasonably strong and I am working hard to get stronger still.

I want people to think that I might not be thin or fast, but like Forrest Gump, I can just keep on running. At least I hope I can. Because it’s now less than five months until London marathon. And that’s 26 miles. Shit.  

Is this the right motivation to exercise? Does it matter? It’s not as worthy a reason as “it just feels good for my mental health!” but it’s probably healthier than “I want to get really skinny!”. Related to this, I’ve lost about a stone in the last six months, by eating a bit less shit, and running more. I’ll probably keep this up until the marathon, and then go back to “normal”.  

Is all this the real reason why, when people lose weight, they often struggle to keep it off? Because being smaller never feels real, you just feel like you’re cosplaying as a smaller person while always feeling like “fatty” inside?

Whenever I lose weight, my assumption is always that I’ll gain at least some of it back again. It’s not that I want to, but it’s what the world tells me, that diets don’t work, that if you are fat, you will ultimately stay that way: sorry, it’s the lot you’ve been given in life, or maybe poor choices you made as a toddler. 

If you have ever been overweight, you can never truly be in the club. Dismantling the club feels impossible, so instead I’ll enjoy occasionally winning a competition to mingle in the VIP area, while secretly trying to create a hot new venue of my own right here. 

NEW FEATURE WHERE I SHARE COOL LINKS AND STUFF LIKE ALL THE PROPER SUBSTACKERS:

• I’ve been struggling to find other newsletters about all this body image business, but I just discovered

  Body Type
  and really need to set some time aside to read the whole archive. Do use the comments to recommend any other good uns on your radar.

• I know I’ve mentioned it once already, but

  Helen Lewis
  ‘s piece for The Atlantic on weight loss drugs really is worth a read.

• Christmas shopping for a running bore close to your heart? They might like a cool/nerdy print of one of their runs from Race Day Prints. Don’t get me one until next year when I’ve won the marathon though, OK? 

• What I do want right now though is one of these totally unnecessary but excellent runners advent calendars from Bimble & Bolt. I think my husband’s got me a Tony’s one instead, the swine.

• And finally… just a really wholesome story about a couple who met at parkrun.