People make a lot of assumptions when they see a fat person. It’s somebody lazy and greedy, surely. Somebody with no self-respect.
When that fat person is also disabled, the assumptions triple, at least. She’s in that wheelchair because she’s so fat. He’s only ill because he can’t control his diet. She wouldn’t have bad knees if she was slim.
Even in fat-positive communities, there can be a tendency towards disablism. “I’m fat but I’m healthy!”, people proclaim, distancing themselves from the sick or disabled fat people at the edge of the crowd. “I eat really well, I’m not like those who eat chips all day” is the implication; “I run three miles a day, I’m different to those who can’t get up off their fat arses”.
I understand the appeal of the “fat but healthy” trope, I really do. You want to put people right when they make those very assumptions above… but, in doing so, you’re crapping at your disabled allies from a great height.
When a Imgur user went to an event with their child, they posted a photo of two women using mobility scooters with a long caption that included the words “I’m sorry but being fat is not disability”. On seeing fat women using mobility aids, their immediate assumption was that they were using the scooters because of their weight, rather than realising that they may be fat and disabled as well. To see those bodies and conclude, with no evidence other than that the mobility scooters were hired by the venue, that the only reason those women needed that assistance was because of their weight is all too common, yet it is all too wrong.
I have no idea about those particular women. I have no objection to anyone using whatever tools make their life easier, for whatever reason. And I know that the original poster of the image later came back to acknowledge “Of course I don’t know their medical diagnosis” in response to feedback. But why make the size of their bodies the main focus of your anger that they took up disabled people’s spaces? Why assume that that is all they are?
Fat and disability merge
I was slim before I became disabled. Then I gained a lot of weight, very quickly, taking some medication notorious for leading to people piling on the pounds. It had the combined fun of making you starving hungry all the time, while also slowing your metabolism so you can’t process the calories you take in quite so well. A lot of my peers stopped taking that same tablet because of the weight gain but, for me, the dramatic improvement in my mental health meant I stuck with it. I carried on taking it. I still do.
I could have come off it and sacrificed my mental health to keep my slim-sized figure. But, having been as unwell as I had at that point, I had no desire to return to a point of madness.
Later, I developed other, more physical impairments. As moving around got more and more painful, I did it less and less. I should not have to state that this was unrelated to my weight, but it was. I can walk but it really hurts. So I don’t do it as much as I used to. This, in turn, leads to me gaining more weight.
And I still take those meds.
On top of that, my health means I can’t stand up to cook two meals a day. I can’t motivate myself to cook from scratch. And I just don’t have the capacity to do magical stuff with avocados and cucumbers to make my meals minimally caloric. Plus I really like pasta and chocolate. Not together.
So I don’t always eat as well as I might if I wasn’t disabled. I can’t move around well. And I take meds that leave me ravenous. If I stopped taking the meds, I could be seen as behaving recklessly with my mental wellbeing – it’s a real catch 22 situation.
But if I ever reach a point where I need a scooter or a wheelchair, I know for a fact I would never opt for a scooter. Because I would be photographed from behind in the supermarket, in the shot we have all seen a hundred times already, by somebody implying that we could get up and walk if we weren’t too lazy to make our way around Tesco. The shot would probably include me reaching for something especially gluttonous, for bonus points. I wouldn’t be immune from that in a wheelchair but, for some reason, the scooter has become the meme the fatphobes all laugh at. And becoming a meme or a figure to be laughed at or abused is far too common as a disabled person, too.
Fat activists and disability activists need to be aware of the intersections between the two oppressions and work to eliminate them within their own activism. We are not helping the cause when we are stomping on another minority group, and – while I hate the argument that you should only care about things that might affect you – it is true to say that both fatness and disability are positions anybody can find themselves in.
Photo: Marie L.