Fat Liberation and World Hunger By Janey Meyerding Mass starvation of women is the modern American culture's equivalent of foot binding, lip stretching and other forms of women mutilation. "Both a fat person and a slim person would feel constant hunger trying to live on 1600 calories per day. But whereas this food intake would be considered 'undereating' or 'semi-starvation' for a slim person, it is exactly what nutritionists mean by 'overeating' for a fat person--who remains fat on it...Mass starvation of women is the modern American culture's equivalent of foot-binding, lip-stretching, and other forms of women-mutilation."--Aldebaran (then Vivian K. Mayer, now Sara Fishman) We live in a culture which uses food as a weapon. Through both economic and cultural means, the dominant culture seeks control over what--and how much--people eat. In this country, we are culturally coerced into eating habits (e.g. meat, sugar, coffee) which are both unhealthy for ourselves and impoverishing for others around the world (not to mention extremely oppressive to other species). Our food consumption patterns support huge corporations; and at the same time, these patterns lead us further and further from knowing what our bodies really need. I believe that most people in this country--the "middle" classes as well as the poor--have lost control over their own eating. In recent years, people have been working through three movements to regain control over this aspect of our lives. Some work through a health and healing analysis: natural foods, naturopathy, food coops, the study of food combining, etc. Others study the forces controlling food production and distribution worldwide, working toward a coherent international analysis of hunger causes and cures. And yet a third group works through the radical analysis of the fat liberation movement. Many individuals sincerely concerned about hunger in the world would read the quotation which heads this article and respond: "how trivial to worry about the hunger a fat woman feels when she goes on a diet!" I believe, however, that the issues involved in world hunger/in starvation are deeply connected with those addressed by the fat liberation movement. For that reason, I want to share some of my thinking about food and fat oppression. Like money, food is supposed to be a "personal" subject in this society. Common sense tells us that, for most of us, the amount of money we have determines the amount and quality of food we eat. That is a political fact of life. And yet consider how many people don't think of money in political terms at all. Money has been mythologized and emotionalized precisely in order to disguise important political realities. And the same is true of food. Many people's feelings about food are very complicated and are rooted in childhood experiences. As a result of this, large numbers of us grow up with very strong and conflicting emotions about food: love and hate, pleasure and guilt. Food may be one of the few physical satisfactions available to us as children. And yet we are taught the lie that it is eating which makes people fat and that being fat is being ugly, unloved, and morally reprehensible. The medical lies of fat-oppressive ideology (e.g. "overeating is the cause of obesity") are very effective in reinforcing the guilt many people feel about their eating. Unfortunately, they seem especially effective at reinforcing the guilt and confusion of otherwise politically conscious people, who tend to externalize their guilt feelings and incorporate them into their political analyses. The U.S. is represented symbolically as a fat pig, and its rulers, of course, are "fat cats." In theory, these symbols reflect the degree to which the U.S. monopolizes (over-consumes) the world’s resources. In practice, the use of fat-oppressive symbols and terminology is symptomatic of a general f ailure to move beyond the culture’s personalizaition/mythologization of food in order to develop a realistic analysis of an increasingly vital political issue: monopolistic corporate control over the use of world resources and the distribution of food. It is absurd to blame fat women for the hunger in the world, but many people indulge in that absurdity. Thin women may eat as much as they want. Fat women, who are believed guilty of over-eating regardless of how much they actually consume, are seen as greedy and thoughtless and lacking in concern for the world’s hungry. Because this fat oppressive stereotype is so pervasive, there are a few basic facts which can never be repeated too often: 1) Fat women typically do not eat more than thin women. In fact, many thin women eat more than many fat women and a naturally thin woman may remain thin while consuming twice as much food as a fat woman on a starvation diet. 2) When a woman who is naturally, healthfully fat reduces her food intake to the point where she is losing weight, she is literally starving. 3) According to a U.S. government study of the nutrition of black and white women below and above the "poverty level," the group of women which eats the least (i.e., poor black women) has the highest ratio of fat members, while the group which eats the most (e.g., wealthier white women) has the lowest ratio of fat members. 4) There is more than enough food produced on this planet, even in those countries with the highest proportions of hungry people, for everyone to eat well (i.e., for everyone to consume ample protein and more than 3000 calories a day, which is the U.S. average). Food is a political issue. One function of the ideology of fat oppression is to divert our attention from the politics of food and keep us fixated on food as a purely personal matter. It is necessary to renounce the confusing, personalizing distortions of fat-oppressive ideology in order to confront strongly and consistently those who are responsible for hunger around the world. Fat liberation is about empowerment (regaining power and control over our lives), and empowerment is a vital step in any movement or process of social/political change. The research and analysis done by women in the fat liberation movement illuminates crucial connections between fat oppression and both sexism and classism. Moreover, by maintaining and perpetuating lack of control over our daily lives--for thin women as well as fat women--fat oppression inhibits the development of a responsible political strategy for challenging the world-wide control by patriarchal institutions over patterns of over- and under-consumption. (And when we are considering wasteful use of resources, we should include also the colossal "anti-fat" industry--"diet" foods and drugs, "figure salons," etc.--which consumes billions of dollars and billions of woman-hours every year.) I believe, indeed, that fat oppression is a major cause for all women in this country of the self-hate that is the strongest force holding the class of women in bondage to patriarchal culture. Therefore I do not think it is necessary or possible to rank fat oppression as a "less important" or "less urgent," priority than any other form of oppression. Freeing ourselves and our sisters from self-hate is work that must be concurrent with all other struggles. In today’s patriarchal culture, women’s self-hate is a form of mutilation that weakens us just as surely as foot-binding did in times past. NOTE: This article first appeared in a different form in Out and About in the early 1980s.