This Is About Those Things You Asked About Fat Acceptance

By Jared T. Fischer 

This article was first published at Thought Catalog.

As that noble listicle prided itself on its logical inquiries and its advocacy for social change through physical change of bodies via the results of armchair lecturing by the “fit” bodied idealists of the world, those who won’t accept the fat acceptance movement, what follows is a sad and very depressed, a hurt but also unavoidably laughing, mocking, happy and accepting, insane, illogical counterpoint to such “life-saving” idealism.

If you don’t love your body . . . or rather if you don’t love a particular stage of your body’s development, a condition, the history of the whole, or a part or parts, the breathing present, the beating heart and frame, the spirit and limbs, the mind, the diseases, viruses and skin, teeth and eyes . . . if you don’t love the animal and the human of your body . . . no one can force you to love it.

Conversely, . . . if you love your body . . . no matter if it is perceived by others or by you as too large, too small, too bent or deformed . . . if you are diseased and broken down, if you would change your skin, weight or sexual organs, but can still look in the mirror and smile because you still love yourself (in fact all of that self, both good and bad), and daily you look up into the sky or often you get online and happen to read hateful, accusatory, shaming words . . . from an idealist or many idealists with computers . . . please know, no one, not even the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, not Hitler, a movie director, some arrested eugenics doctor from the old war, or a blogger can make you hate yourself. [PAUSE.]

This is a moment of loving silence for our individual bodies (o it can be however scientific or spiritual or bodily or animal or human or anti-intellectual, in a depressed or manic state). [PAUSE.] Wherever these bodies are in time and space, the sun is not dead yet, the moon is not dead, the bodies of the world (all of them) are living that are not yet done.

And what meaning do we get from this comfort of living bodies? What problems, what blame, do we articulate at the fact that, no matter what, it never stops, all bodies are dying . . . in fact, because they are living and not mere robots?

Feel the momentary perfect peace and poise of a living body. Let drain from you the poison of the wise-worded dart, the scientific diagnosis and prescription, the never healing words of an unwise church that defines fit life for the body, fit life for the soul.

The hurt of the words, the pain in the bones, and the overall good or bad feelings, let it all go numb, dumb, and then let it do itself a favor and feel alive. And what lurking joys and dangers await these bodies not one fortune teller can competently, completely say. All is born of the earth (at least, in earth terms, human body earth terms, as we know them today), and we all will die eventually, and where we go next not a soul knows.

Don’t let some internet commentator’s snark unhorse you from your very own physical and spiritual, nihilistic and positive seat in your own beautiful, changing and retiring body. If the internet commentator is Sisyphus tasked with the rock of your body by choice, your beautiful body is that resistant, resilient, rolling, happy and tragic rock. And you need never even crush Sisyphus, just roll down on your own, illogically, logically, against the pushing, defying all trying, doing your own thing, and all lives roll down the slopes again, no matter what.

One comment on Thought Catalog regarding the Carolyn Hall article, penned by anon, I absolutely love: “this article lacks any appreciation of spiritual life and health. all life is on a timeline from birth to death. each life has a completely unpredictable end date and likewise the meaning of any life is never clear. so to waste any time encroaching on the lives of large-bodied people or animals is a rejection of the time that could be spent improving your own life, thoughts, body and space.” Right on!

Consider this: the gang of hippos turns around when the fight with the alligators gets too serious. But this fight on the internet is not that kind of serious fight. Some person in her righteousness cannot get you to detach from your body. In your own response, you tell such a person to have a nice life.

No one can make a recommendation for the living days of your body. No one can say hit the gym. No one can fund government programs to get you in shape. If you desire change then, by all means, plot the course to morph into a butterfly, or if you are just happy and alive in the world and are problematic and wholesome like everyone else and rummaging through some chips and laughing . . . then mud up like a hippo and deal with the sun and gators on your own terms; there’s as much conceivable virtue in doing nothing and consuming much as in exercising much and eating very little.

But religion and science are not the observant eagles or military drones that from above can look down upon your body and find an easy prey.

The visible and anonymous commenters cannot enter your veins with a poison . . . though they can stress your mind out and wear away at the health of your body through their cruelty. But still, no matter what, you live on insanely and sanely in your own time and space. Matters are worsening as they are getting better. You smile, you breathe, you type fuck off to some troll, or you ride a bicycle, or you eat a greasy cheese sandwich or hot sausage.

All health, all knowledge and practice of health, is relatively successful or unsuccessful. And if it is not relative, does any of it matter?

This is not some anti-medicine Tom Cruise mentality. This is the blunt defiance of the body and the uniqueness of its makeup, course and situation, its deterioration, stretch and stench, its making it through basic days, around which bugs buzz.

The body is thoroughly queer, and it can never be answered and it does not even answer to itself. It is a strange, unpredictable meaty sack of variables . . . long live the heart of it.

Except . . . [PAUSE] . . . is the world dead, are you dead, is it over, are there not billions of different bodies, and births, and startup bodies, lives and deaths all over the lawns and in the cities and in the seaside towns of the world? And are not mad galaxies struggling or doing uncharted and familiar actions and inactions while you are in your own body and seemingly everything moves about or rests rock solid or waits to spring and prey, all for your body and against your body, to support, to nourish, to harm or to kill you? . . . well then [PAUSE].

Come as you are, know and love yourself, accept yourself and change only on your own terms, change in relation only to your ability to better love the world and yourself and others and live in your body that is everything and nothing at all.

Because your very own historic birth, your variables of life and your awaiting death don’t have to commit one additional sign to show how much your body is loved, no matter what body it is and no matter who you are. LOVED BY LIFE! That is, not DEAD!

Without doing anything and saying little, this jumbled mess of words is strength training.

Love your damned, blessed body. AMEN. [PAUSE.]