how fat feels

I listen to a self-help podcast I really, really love — I’m not going to mention the name here, because of what I’m going to tell you next, but the show has helped me slog through the slimiest, muckiest parts of my psyche and unpack my intimacy issues, control issues, codependency issues, imposter syndrome, etc. In fact, there was a time when I legitimately felt like whatever I was going through, the newest episode of the podcast was magically about that exact topic, like the universe was in cahoots with the host on a mission to get my shit together.

And about the host — she’s insightful, articulate, always seems to hit the crux of the issue in a way that feels relatable. She’s also a thin, cis woman with a history of eating disorders, and occasionally (usually when I least expect it) she makes a remark about fatness in the context of failure. In fact, one of her earlier episodes is called something like “Fat Feelings” (I haven’t listened to that one), and she semi-regularly includes fatness in lists of struggles a person might be going through at any given time, something to the effect of “Maybe you’re feeling lonely, maybe you’re feeling like a failure, maybe you feel like you have no control, or feel fat, or feel like you’re never going to have the life you want.”

In the many episodes I’ve listened to, she never takes it much farther than that, and I’m mostly able to ignore the shitty little reminder that the lifelong experience of my own physicality is very regularly included in a list of traumas, trials and tribulations. Mostly, I recognize that her perspective as a thin person who struggles with ED means that fatness has always been a part of her failure narrative, the grave outcome of a series of “bad” decisions. Still, every time she brings it up there’s a millisecond where I’m taken out of the therapeutic mental processes of listening to her podcast and think about how so many people are terrified — like deeply, thoroughly terrified — of being fat, so much so that it’s regularly included in lists of other scary things, like failure and deep psychic wounding. 

Coincidentally I was writing about this, actually — how frequently I see fatness equated with failure — and not just in this podcast, but in movies and shows and books and idle comments from colleagues and friends and family, when Taylor Swift released the video for the new single from Midnights. The song is called “Anti-Hero,” and from what I can gather, the song is about her running from her demons. The video is cute — it even has bedsheet ghosts, a personal favorite.

However, there’s also a brief scene where Taylor steps on a scale and it spins and lands on “FAT.”

Her inner Taylor demon girl (?) stands next to her and shakes her head solemnly. The scene alludes to Taylor Swift dealing with society’s expectations of her appearance and, as I would learn from the wild amount of Swiftie discourse after the video was released, her struggles with ED. 

I have to imagine that an artist known for being so particular and discerning with her creative choices thought of the implications of that scene, and felt it was important to represent it that way anyways. In some ways, I get it. Taylor Swift is a thin, white, extraordinarily famous person, which means that her entire adult life has been subject to judgment and scrutiny and the expectation that she looks a certain way. Famous or not, she’s also been exposed to the same shit we all have over the years, namely the constant, unrelenting message that being fat is “bad” and being thin is “good.” And, like so many, Taylor has never actually been fat, so it’s not even that she’s weighing her lived experiences as bad or good, but rather the feeling of being fat. 

But how does fat feel, exactly?

It’s interesting, the power fat has to dictate our emotions, and how willing we are to let the thin-fat binary be the north star that guides how we feel about ourselves. If someone says “I’m feeling really skinny today,” there are a whole host of implications to that statement (success, dedication, hard work), just like “I feel fat” (failure, poor choices, shame).  If we take what fat actually is — a state of physical being, not a feeling — and use other, similar words to describe our feelings, it stops being clear. “I feel so tall today” is meaningless. “My hair is so long today,” doesn’t really pack a punch. 

And again, I get it. It’s not as simple as saying “fat isn’t a feeling,” because our brains have literally formed around the idea that fat absolutely is a feeling, and a terrible one. Like it or not, most people associate weight with value judgments, there are plenty of reasons why, and I’m always open and sympathetic to individual perspectives on the matter. All we have is our own experience. Still, question how a scale that spins to “FAT” in a buzzy music video from one of the most famous artists in the world, an artist with a fandom that quite literally combs through her work looking for a way to relate or define their own experiences — doesn’t feel like a responsibly way to represent an individual perspective. I’m sure there’s a ton of nuance to Taylor’s personal experience, but nuance is not what you get from that scene — instead, you get yet another quick hit reminder that fat is a terrible thing to have, to be, to feel. And frankly, we just don’t need any more of those.

What we do need, I think, are more interesting ideas about how fat feels, what it means, what it can be. Of course, Taylor Swift can’t create from that perspective, because she’s never actually been fat — she’s simply feared it. Instead, I offer mine, as an equally famous international pop star and someone who has also had spooky mind-blowing sex with Jake Gyllenhaal.

It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

For me, a lifelong fat person who writes extensively about existing in this body, fat has felt like everything, and nothing. Fat is the hellish portal to my deepest, most lingering trauma, and the well from which I draw greatest powers. Fat is the reason I’ve hated myself and the first thing about myself I ever learned to truly love. Being fat has made me feel so disgusting, I’ve considered stepping into the barrel of a cement truck and allowing myself to be poured into someone’s foundation. It’s also made me feel so painfully, devastatingly hot that no one can tell me shit. Fat has made me feel wrong, yes, but it’s also made me feel like I’m inhabiting the strongest, most powerful version of myself. I’ve sobbed and felt cursed to live in this body, and I’ve been overcome with gratitude that my physicality just so happens to match how big and expansive my mind and spirit actually are.

Ultimately, fat isn’t a monolith for failure. The feeling that fatness gives us is a messy, personal, ever-evolving, mind-bending beast to conquer, the final level to beat in a lifetime of exposure to shitty, manipulative messaging meant to keep us small, literally and figuratively. And at this point, after so many years hearing different versions of the same message, we deserve to talk about feeling fat in a way that goes beyond a sad, spinning scale landing on the source of our problems — because when it comes to fat, there’s so much more to feel.