The Fat Liberation Movement, Radical Therapy and Victim Blaming.

Part 1

A few years ago, I discovered the body positive movement via social media. Instantly I fell in love. As a recovered anorexic who had found herself on the other ‘wrong’ side of the BMI it was like someone had read my mind. I can love myself, my belly rolls, stretch marks and cheery thighs that rub together. I can pose in a rainbow bikini and hash tag to my heart’s content in my support of the bodi posi movement. Dear reader I was naïve and it wasn’t long before I saw the body positive community had been hijacked by influencers

. Influencers, I hate that word. Sparkly thin women talking about intuitive eating and smoothies lurched out at me. Body positivity is a cheap knock off version 2.0 of the fat liberation movement. I am not OK with it.

 I was obviously not trying hard enough to love myself because I still felt like shit. I still yoyo dieted and despised my PCOS that causes weight gain, depression and excess body hair (to name but a few symptoms). It’s hard to learn to love a body that you come to think of as ‘dysfunctional’. I have visited the G.P numerous times for help and I’m always told the same thing ‘lose weight’ and your symptoms will get better. However if your condition effects your metabolism which causes weight gain it feels really counter intuitive and impossible. I wanted to scream ‘I’ve fucking tried’, in fact I’ve been trying for 12 years. I weigh 13 stone and I wear a size 18. By western societies beauty standards, I am fat. I’ve been bigger and I’ve been smaller. Nonetheless I am a fat, queer, poor women.

I started to research the fat liberation movement and had no idea that radical fat acceptance started in the 1960’s in America but really gained traction in the 70’s in Los Angeles. Known as The Fat Underground they came with a Fat Liberation Manifesto. The feminist perspective on being fat says that western culture fears fat because it fears powerful women. Particularly their sensuality and their sexuality. Fat people are not thin people with bad eating habits.

In part two I’ll be looking at the emergence of radical psychotherapy which was born from the fat underground and whether the secret is to love yourself?