I was fortunate enough to be asked to do a sermon at my church, Unitarian Society of Germantown, yesterday. I knew that I had to use the opportunity to speak out my experiences of fat phobia and discrimination. It came out amazingly well, and I am lucky that my church records all our sermons. The the video is below. My wife did an amazing introduction for me and then there’s the sermon. The whole thing is about 16 minutes long.
When I first started hearing about Brittany Runs a Marathon, I saw a lot of images of a fat woman running and a lot of commentary about how “inspirational” the story was and “daring.” I thought for a brief moment that it might actually center a true story of a fat person learning to love movement for the sake of movement and not to lose weight, which is the most common narrative.
Then I watched the trailer.
The very first scene in the trailer is the title character going to a doctor and being told that she should get healthy by losing 55 pounds. I immediately rolled my eyes because here we go, the false equivalence that weight loss equals health. And then things got worse from there. Suddenly Brittany’s out-of-control life—her inability to get a job, her loneliness, the way she’s treated by other people—all starts to get better. The pieces miraculously fall into place as she loses the weight while training to run the NYC marathon.
I could not physically roll my eyes any harder.
But I didn’t want to rely on my own perceptions of the movie from the trailer, especially because I no longer had any desire to see it. This article from a fat runner in Runner’s World gave me an interesting perspective on just what the movie gets wrong about running while fat, something I think I knew instinctively but needed someone with real experience to say:
Dr. Kate Brown, Runner’s World
Dr. Brown goes on to say that she herself is a fat runner who weighs the same as she did when she started training 5 years ago.
Dr. Brown, Runner’s World
I am very lucky to follow several other people doing the same kind of work I am. One of them writes on Medium and Twitter (among others) as Your Fat Friend. She saw the movie and wrote one of her incisive analyses of media and the world that I have come to rely on. While the movie claims body positivity and that “You running this marathon was never about your weight. It was about taking responsibility for your life.” that message is subsumed by the entire set up of the film.
Source: https://medium.com/@thefatshadow/brittany-runs-a-marathon-and-thin-fantasies-of-fat-lives-f0496408a2aa
I’m glad that Your Fat Friend saw the movie so that I didn’t have to. From the trailer I instinctively knew that this movie was not written for me. Just seeing a thin actress in a fat suit “get thin” told me that. This movie is for thin people to feel validated in their treatment of fat people. That if only fat people would take responsibility for ourselves and lose the damn weight, we’d suddenly be worthy of the same basic courtesies that thin people offer each other. If I suddenly lost weight, then people would hold doors for me, too, and I’d suddenly find the love and fulfillment my life is lacking.
Except that I already have an amazing life full of love and a career that I like, the respect of my peers, and yeah, people hold doors for me. Why? Because it is the right thing to do.
All over my time at Dragon Con this year, I noticed it. People showed me basic decency and kindness because I was one of them, regardless of my fat and disabled body. More than that, I was shown respect for my knowledge and experience and volunteer status.
Brittany Runs a Marathon never contemplates that Brittany’s life could be complete exactly as she is. That finding focus and discipline as she learns to enjoy healthy movement through running is the larger factor in her life than her weight loss (which is also unbelievable and as we have learned through studies, likely unsustainable).
As much as I wanted to feel like this movie would be something I could enjoy, it is clearly not for me. I so wish it was, but in the end, I choose not to subject myself to this kind of message.
*Side note: Hello to all my new followers! If you’ve found yourself here based on my surprise plug during the David Tennant panel at Dragon Con, I hope you enjoy yourself. I publish on Mondays and Wednesdays more or less regularly and hope to have my podcast up and running by the winter. It will drop monthly to start, unless I find I can realistically do more.