The vision of fat women exercising, it has been argued, rarely enter the minds of the average person today (Schuster and Tealer 2009). The ‘working-at-being-fat’
myth held by most people dictates that people choose to get fat by eating too much and avoiding exercise; working out is then viewed as the punishment, the penance for their previously ‘bad’ behaviour. However, like so many other assumptions made about fat people, the belief that they do not exercise is untrue.
‘Nothing to Lose’, the dance show rejects this notion and critiques mainstream discourses about the moving fat body by placing a fat dancer on the stage.
Similarly, Kath uses her fat body to resist these notions, highlighting the power that moving and shaping space has.
Sitting on the bus I had caught from right outside my hostel in the middle of Brisbane City, I got a text from Kath. “Hi Tayla! I’ll meet you at the station. You can’t miss me, the pink hair kind of stands out!” Pink hair or not, I felt like I already knew Kath, after all, I had been following her blog for over a year by this point. As the bus pulled into the station, I spotted Kath immediately. Dressed in a pink and red dress, her bright pink hair was in pigtails and colourful tattoos adorned her arms. The first thing I noticed about Kath was her infectious smile and laugh, as soon as I had introduced myself to her I was put at ease. We made our way to a café she had chosen for us to have lunch at through her small home town where she pointed out different areas of her town to me, “that’s the cat that always comes and visits me at my house!” and “that’s the library where I work!”
In our interview, one thing became clear to me. Kath loves her bicycle. Before she found fat acceptance, Kath got it into her head that there was something wrong with her body and embodied the notion that fat people don’t, and can’t, exercise.
She had convinced herself that she couldn’t travel, that she couldn’t cycle and that she couldn’t have her own bike all because of her body shape. After finding fat acceptance, Kath realised that using her bike could not only be a form of leisure and enjoyment, but also a form of resistance and activism.
So I bought a bike and she’s beautiful and she needs more flowers and pink. But when I went to buy it I was so worried that they would be like
‘oh no a fat lady won’t fit on a bike’ but I read a review of this place that said they were really nice and informal so I went there. My weight was never mentioned, they just asked how tall I was and if I was comfy and it was never an issue… but I had built it up in my head that I would go along there and I would be shamed because I had been shamed before just buying clothes and sporting gear! I ride into the city and back again now and I would never have believed that I could do that… it’s only when I look back on photos that I realise the headspace I was in and if someone
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had shown me a photo of me riding my bike all the time and told me I would be like this now I wouldn’t have never believed it! So that’s what this photo is for, it’s going against that statement that fat people don’t exercise.
Kath has used her bike and her body to draw attention to the often overlooked role of the fat body as fit and healthy in western society. In analysing this act of resistance, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s insight that “the body is our general medium for having a world” (1962:146). It is important to note this act of movement here as it demonstrates how bodies are able to actively participate in the agency of selves, and thus the social meaning that they constitute. Lois McNay (1999) argues that embodiment is discussed as a set of unstable potentialities. Because the body is constantly reconstituted and inherently unstable, the body is the starting point for challenging assumptions that specifically locate the body as a site of ultimate truth or authenticity about that person. In the act of biking, Kath has rejected the notion that a fat body must not exercise and has instead used her body to challenge societal assumptions about it.
Figure 30
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Conclusion
This chapter has allowed focus on the visceral, social, visual and spatial aspect of the fat body. The visibility of the fat body and its negative social connotations have harmful and stigmatising effects for fat individuals, as argued in Chapter Five. This leads to a change in the way that the fat body moves and dwells in the world. While there are many ways that the fat body moves, throughout the participants’ narratives it became clear that hiding and negotiating space in public was a common way of managing the fat body. This is due to the social construction of the fat body as ‘failed’ and as ‘wrong’. Furthermore, I argue in this chapter that despite focus on the fat body as unhealthy, and recommendations that fat individuals exercise in order to lose weight, the social construction of the fat body as ‘wrong’ or ‘abnormal’ in western society has led to industries such as fitness centres excluding fat bodies from their facilities. Although gyms claim to welcome fat bodies, the equipment, members and artwork within them only cater to thin, ‘normal’ bodies and thus exclude fat bodies from feeling comfortable and safe within the facilities. In analysing Kath’s practices of biking, I argue in this chapter that the moving fat body can be a powerful act of resistance toward these social exclusionary practices. This chapter demonstrates the impact that social constructions of the fat body have on embodied experiences of movement and offers an ethnographically rooted way of approaching, writing and thinking about the body.
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