“You look good!  Did you lose weight?”

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - Comments 2

By Margot Starbuck

So how did you celebrate Fat Talk Free Week?

If you were skimming quickly, it’s not “Fat-Free Talk Week.” So keep your comments about celery and Skittles to yourself.  It’s actually don’t-talk-about-how-fat-we-are week.

Fat Talk Free Week is a 5-day public awareness event being sponsored by Delta Delta Delta sorority, and partners, through their Reflections Body Image Program.  The campaign encourages women to end fat talk through self-expression and social media. If “fat talk” is new to you, here’s what it sounds like:

“I’m fat.”
“Do these jeans make my butt look big?”
“I’m glad I’m not as big as her.”
“You look good.  Did you lose weight?”

Though the words aren’t particularly cruel or vicious, “fat talk” is problematic because words influence how one’s value is perceived. Despite fervent “sticks and stones” playground protests, words matter.  From our earliest days, the words which are spoken to us, about us, and by us—identifying us either as precious or of little value—shape our self-understanding.  For example, commenting on a woman’s larger size in some countries inflates her inherent worth.  In these cultures a woman’s fullness shows that because she has been blessed with plenty she is valued.

The opposite is true in the United States.  Fat talk in North America connotes, instead, that someone is worth less.  Dr. Robyn Silverman, the author of Good Girls Don’t Get Fat, notes that in our culture fat is viewed as “bad, ugly, lazy, gross, stupid, nasty, unpopular, smelly, blameworthy.” She also highlights the converse, that “thin is good, beautiful, successful, sexy, smart, sophisticated, controlled, well-liked.”

This is why fat talk, and thin talk, deny our fundamental worth as those created in the image of God.  When we fat talk, it’s not the statement of a scientific fact about a heightened body mass index number which is harmful.  Instead it is this underlying meaning about human value—one which is reinforced daily by Hollywood, advertisers and peers—that damages the identity of girls and women. 

Identifying anyone by one aspect of who they are—by disability, or sexual orientation, or hue, or intelligence, or weight—reduces individuals to less than who they really are.  The absurd irony of fat talk and thin talk is that in magnifying the importance of size, either large or small, we minimize a person’s value.

When we fat talk we define ourselves, and others, by something that was never meant to define us.  Singer India Arie articulates this as she sings, “I am not my hair, I am not this skin.  I am a soul that lives within.” Admittedly, taken to the extreme, denying our physicality in favor of a spiritual reality can border on Gnosticism—an early Christian heresy, rooted in the apostle Paul’s dichotomy between flesh and spirit—which devalued the body.  Understood within the climate of our current culture, though, Arie is on to something important: our body is part of us; it is not all of us. 

The Tri Delts are on to something big, sisters. 

When we keep our lips zipped, refraining from making negative comments about our physical appearances, we actively disagree with our culture’s twisted valuing of individuals.  Fat Talk Free Week provides a contemporary spiritual discipline which helps us move toward laying hold of…reality.  This secular sabbatical from words that diminish human identity helps us, in a very practical way, reject lies about who we were made to be.

The 2004 animated hit The Incredibles features a seemingly typical family who have assumed secret undercover identities to protect their true identity as superheroes.  One fiery spokeswoman lobbying to eliminate government funding of the superhero program, insists, “It is time for their secret identity to become their only identity.”

The danger of fat talk is the quiet insinuation that one’s appearance is her only identity.

Ideologically, theologically, Christians ought to be leading the end fat talk parade, announcing the truth about human value and identity.

“I’m fat.”
“Do these jeans make my butt look big?”
“I’m glad I’m not as big as her.”
“You look good.  Did you lose weight?”

“I bear the image of God.”
“I’m accepted.”
“I’m beloved.”
“I’m precious.”

End fat talk.  Start true talk.

Check out the True Campaign to join the movement of Christian women partnering to live into the reality of their true value and worth.

Margot Starbuck, who tries not to Fat Talk any of the other 51 weeks of the year either, is the author of Unsqueezed: Springing Free From Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, Highlights & Stilettos (InterVarsity Press, 2010).  Find Margot on facebook or visit www.MargotStarbuck.com.