Biscuits and other stories
I had a moment over the holidays when I felt myself slip back into old ways of thinking. I was at my friend’s house for a brief overnight visit, mainly comprising lengthy debriefs about our lives over wine and curry.
Not long after I arrived we settled down to begin sharing stories over a cup of tea. As is polite and I’m sure was happening the world over (one biscuit eaten every minute) she offered me a biscuit. Well I say biscuit, but it was more like one of those big chocolate chip cookies available in the bakery of most leading supermarkets (I’m not here for brand promotion). It was shortbread, covered with a dusting of sugar and one half was smothered in dark chocolate. It looked delicious and my lizard brain immediately responded with a ‘yes’, I am definitely having one. I took the biscuit, but just as I went to pop it in my mouth, my friend snapped the lid back on the biscuit tin without taking one for herself. To my utmost horror I realised that she WASN’T. HAVING. ONE. Not even a small, tokenistic biscuit to stick two fingers up at the diet gods, circling like vultures at Christmas. The betrayal, the deception, the knowledge that she had broken the fat contract. The contract that says if we’re going to get fat, we’re going to do it together. Go down as one, holding hands, straight into the shame well. And here was I, plummeting down, biscuit in hand, sure in the knowledge that the only person getting fat was me. Alone in the shame well forever.
And all this over a biscuit.
I’m glad to say that this moment of spiralling shame lasted less than a minute, in which time my rational brain managed to kick in and talk me out of the shame well. To reassure me that a) It’s just a biscuit and it is ok to want and indeed consume a biscuit, that b) even if my friend ate the very same type of biscuit it wouldn’t be any kind of protection against increased body weight, because of things like say, metabolism, exercise regimes and other things we may or may not have consumed during the day. That c) If we both did become fatter as a result of eating one biscuit, it would be ok and nothing bad would actually happen. Our thighs might be bigger, our tummies might protrude more but that would be OK.
The very fact that I had this rather convoluted reaction to something as simple as a biscuit, and that I have thought about it enough to now be writing about it, should tell you something about our culture. I’m hoping - indeed assuming - that you understand something of what I’m saying. And I’m sure that if you’re a woman it probably resonates a bit harder.
I first started thinking about fat in a different way when I was studying to become an antenatal practitioner. It was one essay in fact that really opened my eyes as to how I thought about fat and why. Why we castigate ourselves - out loud to friends and to ourselves as part of our internal dialogue. During my research I learned about the ‘weight-centric health paradigm’ of our society and in particular, our health care system, that keeps the focus on the individual’s ability to lose weight, often diverting our attention away from underlying health issues that could cause much greater harm to a person than a few extra pounds. And how in maternity care women’s fat and even the fat of their unborn babies, result in them being forced down systemically dictated and enforced pathways that can lead to devastating outcomes.
I learnt that most things we know about weight are grossly misleading - that risks of body weight are horribly inflated (and benefits ignored), that risks of being underweight are largely absent from the discourse, and that the entire concept of BMI is both outdated and frankly ridiculously unscientific. Certainly not a tool to be swallowed wholesale by anyone working in health care.
As I delved into research papers and books on the matter, I found myself going straight down the rabbit hole (a happier place than the shame well) and ended up at the racial origins of fat phobia via a historical account from Sabrina Strings. Through her work it became clear that fat was used as a means of othering black women around the time of the transatlantic slave trade and creating the ideal of the thin, white, pure american woman. It was a tool of subjugation - to ensure that white people worked to differentiate themselves from black women - and that black women were stigmatised and oppressed.
How wonderfully effective this othering has been. So effective that nowadays we are utterly obsessed with thinness and what it connotes. So obsessed that we cannot see the wood for the skinny little trees. We cannot see that the reasons for our body shapes are not only multifacted but are also nobody else’s business. That diet culture quite literally feeds a bloated industry that serves no-one except, you guessed it, the capitalist machine of white supremacy. And in feeding that machine, our attention remains diverted away from the actual tools of oppression, from the real and present dangers to our lives, like climate breakdown, like the west’s forever wars, like Israel pulverising Gaza.
Just think of all the things we could be doing if we weren’t thinking about our ‘extra pounds’. Just think of how much more time we might have if we weren’t devising regimes to remove body weight. Just think how much happier and healthier our children might be if we didn’t perpetuate a culture where their bodies are the thing that define them. If we focused more on what we can all do together, rather than what we are doing as individuals. What might the future look like then?
So the next time someone offers you a biscuit, if you want it, eat it. Eat it without comment. Bring yourself back from the shame well. Show your children that the biscuit is indeed utterly delicious, to be enjoyed and savoured for now and forever.
