'It’s a cliché to call something the new F-word, but isn’t fat, for so many of us, the last taboo?'
I often find myself grasping for words to describe my own body. This happens more frequently than I would like to admit. Just the other day, I was trying to tell a friend – a thin friend with a lanky body that can be poured into a bias-cut dress as easily as a poufy one – why I would never buy a wrap dress.“They just don’t look good on people like me, who are...” I resorted to waving my hands over my midsection.
“You’re a goddess,” my friend said finally, landing on yet another polite, vaguely empowering synonym to fill the conversational void. “You are bodacious.” I tried not to roll my eyes. I tell her to remind me of that when I have to choose my body type on an online dating profile. I use the word fat not as a cheerful reclamation or political statement but as a no-frills description. Do I want to hear other people use it to describe me, let alone use it to describe myself? No. It still feels like an insult that makes me wince.
A fan of Jean Nidetch, who invented Weight Watchers in the 1960s, once wrote her a letter asking whether fat could ever be acceptable. Her response was unequivocal: “I don’t think fat is beautiful, and I don’t think many other people think so, either.” I spent three years writing a biography of her, and can hear her no-nonsense, adenoidal Brooklyn-accented voice in my head, telling me that. “Fat is anything but beautiful – the word itself is unattractive.
This disconnection between our actions and our words is everywhere in our culture. None of us want to say the wrong thing. The problem is we end up saying things that don’t mean anything. We don’t even really diet these days, instead we tell our partners and co-workers who look at our carb-free lunches and say that we’re going on a cleanse or eating clean. I have heard people call getting Botox self-care. Some of my favourite designers now offer “extended sizing” options.
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