Fat, Hate and Hypocrisy

So, Christina Aguilera is apparently disgustingly fat:

That’s right, fat. She has curvy hips, fleshy thighs, big breasts. She has had a baby, been through a divorce. She’s not curvaceous, nor womanly. Let’s put aside the fact that she is not a teenager, and she is not a model. Nope, she is just fat.

Well, I am calling BULLSHIT to that. Earlier this week, Miley Cyrus spoke out against members of the media and blogosphere who had bullied her for being “fat”, posting this tweet in response:

along with this photo, as a way of emphasising the damage fat taunts cause to women’s self-esteem:

(Oh and by the way, this is what “fat” Miley looks like):

Calling these women fat is disgusting.

It is disgusting that so much of the hate comes from other women, and it is disgusting that in the year 2011 we have travelled such a short distance when it comes to valuing women for more than their appearance.

Last month, Victoria’s Secret model Adriana Lima, one of the few supermodels in the world, admitted that extreme exercise, food deprivation and partial starvation were part of her preparation for the annual Victoria’s Secret show, and made it possible for her to look like this:

The hypocrisy of the media’s response to these admissions is outrageous in the extreme. Lima was castigated for telling the truth, for admitting that that ideal body didn’t come without starvation. The message? Be thin. Don’t admit the truth. Suffer in silence. We all do. Don’t admit that no matter how “ideal” your body shape is, it will never be ideal enough.

Women everywhere, all around you, are suffering every day as a result of the media and its insistence on labelling normal-sized women who live their lives in the public eye “fat”.

As a teenager, I watched my 15-year-old friends vomit their food, cut and starve their bodies and drown their body-hatred in alcohol and substances. That is how much they hated their growing, changing, beautiful burgeoning bodies. That’s how much they wished they could make themselves disappear.

As a woman in my mid-twenties, I now watch my friends struggling to find a middle ground in which they don’t hate themselves for eating food, for having breasts and hips and thighs, for being able to pinch their flesh between their fingers.

Our definitions of what is healthy and normal for women have become so disordered.

I can say that with some certainty when a woman who stands 157 cms tall, weighs about 50 kilograms and wears a size 6-8 (AU) is lambasted for being fat. Yep, I’m talking about Christina Aguilera.

I think the time for sensible discussion about what constitutes “fat” has passed. We have had those discussions and we are collectively more conflicted, more tormented than ever. We have endlessly debated what the ideal body shape for women is, and how to be it. We have all stood by and watched the bullying. We have all been part of the problem. We have all been guilty of calling our friends fat behind their back, of judging women we know nothing about, of buying magazines to witness the endless, mindless procession of “I was miserable fat and now I am happy thin” stories. (I’m looking at you Kelly Osbourne and Ricky Lee Coulter):

I’m sick of the hate, sick of the sadness.

I’m not advocating for fat, or skinny, or healthy or obese or underweight or overweight or curvy or lean or toned or whatever it is you are or want to be.

I’m calling for an end to the media’s hatred for and derision of women.

I’m calling for the end to our OWN hatred for and derision of women. I’m calling for women everywhere to stand together and refuse to buy into the “fat” bullshit. Be your own hero. Throw out the gossip magazines and their pathetic “lose five kilos by Friday” diet guides.

Stop calling other women fat. Judge them for their brain, their personality, their talents and attributes, their kindness, their ability to laugh, their intellect.

Stop judging them for their flesh.

Be part of the solution.

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