Fat bodies are not inherently unhealthy

A few days ago, I logged into my Facebook to find an article addressing and supporting Facebook’s decision to remove advertisements of plus-size model Tess Holliday, based on the assumption that Holliday’s body was inherently unhealthy. Being a physically healthy plus-size person myself, I was, needless to say, unsettled in reading the piece.

The idea that Tess Holliday shouldn’t be on display because her size must make her inherently unhealthy is incredibly hypocritical, especially when almost every conventional model seen in the media, including advertisements seen on Facebook, is airbrushed to the extent that they look unhealthy even if they aren’t.

Another issue vaguely touched on in the article is the health of underweight bodies which, much like fat bodies, are not inherently unhealthy. The reasoning behind focusing on fat bodies in this article, and perhaps the focus on fat bodies in the previous article, is the serious social stigma which surrounds fat people. It is true that underweight bodies are also stigmatized in the article, but there’s much less of an overwhelming social disgust attached to smaller bodies.

The social stigma attached to fat bodies has been touched on by everyone from feminist scholars to Tumblr bloggers, with each reaching a similar conclusion that fat bodies, male or female, are treated with an aversion and significant distaste. Most of this distaste tends to be shrouded in a form of fake concern for their eating patterns and caloric intake. Individuals cite the dangers of heart disease and diabetes, matters of health which should ideally only be discussed between a person and their doctor, as if overweight people are not the individuals in this society most concerned with living up to expectations of health and beauty.

To an overweight person, all of this concern seems nothing more than a thinly disguised way of saying, “You need to change in order to fit in our society.”

Writer Lindy West, in an article for the Guardian, summed up poignantly how society views fat bodies: “Fat people are helpless babies enslaved by their most capricious cravings. Fat people don’t know what’s best for them. Fat people need to be guided and scolded like children. Having that awkward, babyish word dragging on you every day of your life, from childhood into maturity, well, maybe it’s no wonder I prefer hot chocolate to whisky and substitute Harry Potter audiobooks for therapy.”

Bodies exist in all shapes and sizes. Furthermore, while Facebook’s policy might be to not to show “a state of health or body weight as being perfect,” I most definitely see female models who represent the unrealistic expectations of female bodies, as well as a great deal of photoshopping which further distorts the unrealistic nature of the bodies presented to us in the media.

Who are we to decide which bodies deserve to exist? Both perfection and desirability are incredibly relative matters, which can be clearly seen in everything from a person’s food choice to the people an individual swipes right for on Tinder.

By saying that Tess Holliday’s existence in an advertising sphere is wrong, what you are essentially saying is that it is wrong to look like her or be her size, and that is a decision that no one of us are fit to make.