Fat Pride
First, if you haven’t watched the Netflix series Sense8, I cannot recommend it more highly. The quote above comes from Nomi Marks, a transgender woman living with her girlfriend in San Francisco. She is doing a video blog about that year’s Pride march and about her place in it as a trans woman. I love this moment because it is all about giving voice and representation to people who don’t (or can’t yet) speak for themselves.
One of my current favorite podcasts is The Allusionist, which explores language in all its various forms. This week’s episode was a mashup rerun of two previous episodes, one of which is Episode 12: Pride. In it, Helen Zaltzman, the podcast’s host, talks with Craig Schoonmaker who coined the word “pride” as part of the gay civil rights movement in 1970. Schoonmaker was on the committee formed to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots and proposed the term to unite the march and the events surrounding it under one label. During his interview with Zaltzman, he said two things that struck me:
“We were going to create a number of events the same weekend as the march to bring in people out of town, and wanted to unite the events under a label. First thought was ‘Gay Power’. I didn’t like that, so proposed gay pride. There’s very little chance for people in the world to have power. People did not have power then; even now, we only have some. But anyone can have pride in themselves, and that would make them happier as people, and produce the movement likely to produce change.”
“The poison was shame, and the antidote is pride. ”
As a fat person, so much of my life has been about shame and fear. Every day I deal with the reality that my body is a source of revulsion and disgust for some people. I have been fat shamed by strangers on the street calling me names. I have had people request to be moved on an airplane so as not to sit next to my fat body. I have seen the looks of fear on people’s faces when I board a train or subway as they pray I won’t choose to sit next to them. I have squashed myself into too small spaces, holding every part of my body close and tight so as not to infringe on the personal space of the thin person with the misfortune to sit next to me in a public space. I have envied the thin people who manage to navigate the world without ever having to worry if they will fit into a booth or a chair or between tables at a restaurant.
I am not alone in this shame. I am also a we. And the community of body positivity and fat acceptance advocates has given me the tools to love my body. However, I can love my body all day long and it won’t change the systemic fatphobia that denies us access to quality healthcare and services, makes us less likely to earn as much as our thin colleagues and more likely to be fired; and increases our risk of physical, sexual, and emotional violence, among other things.
Acceptance isn’t the antidote to poisonous shame. The antidote is pride.
So, as I join my LGBTQ+ compatriots this month in celebrating our pride and remembering the brave transgender women of color who were at the forefront of the Stonewall uprising, I’m going to work on my fat pride. Not just acceptance. It’s a hard road and difficult work, but if my fellow fats can join me and we can build our pride together, just maybe we can also change the world.