Fat Anger and adrienne maree brown Pt. 2

Dear Reader, I was angry. 

I was so angry that adrienne maree brown, in a course on radical permission, was speaking most tenderly about intentional weight loss.

I talked about adrienne maree brown’s comments about losing weight in the group of friends and colleagues with whom I was following the Radical Permission course. I warned them what was coming in the first talk. 

I talked about it with my wife. I talked about it with my bestie. I talked about it in one of the groups of fat religious professionals of which I was a part. Of course I talked about it in therapy. I talked about it a lot. I just couldn’t believe it. That was the thing. Once my anger had burned off, incredulity was still there. 

I had the usual questions. If she thought she had to be smaller, what would she think of me, were we ever to meet? What did she mean by saying that there were few places to discuss intentional weight loss? 

And now, here I have been, writing about how ambivalence has kept me from writing. I won’t sully fat liberation spaces by discussing intentional weight loss (IWL) there. What does that say about my commitment to fat liberation? I’ll always be fat, there’s no doubt there, but does setting out to lose weight call a whole set of my ethics into question? 

And it’s easy to say, “It’s just about bodily autonomy.” But the choices we make with our bodies speak loudly about what we believe, what our hopes are, and how we see the world.

Fat people need spaces that are clear and free of talk about IWL. We need spaces where we can be free to be ourselves in and as the bodies we have and are. We need spaces where no one is talking about how fatness needs to eradicated, changed, made less. No “obesity epidemic.” No conflating correlation with cause. No adherence to ridiculous markers on the racist, statistically fucked up body mass index. No ignoring the shit we put up with all the time, just for daring to take up more space than is allotted for any individual human. No assuming fat equals unhealthy, and especially no valorizing health as a virtue above all other virtues, the thing we owe the ones we love.

Choosing Another Path

And yet, I decided I needed to give myself permission to pursue intentional weight loss with a semaglutide. I decided that the benefits could be greater than the risks. With my size and health concerns, I decided I had little to lose but some mass. Or some mass and some comfortable self-assurance. If you’ve read this blog to date, you know this stuff already. 

I, like adrienne maree brown, am having to give myself permission. I have to allow myself to acknowledge that I could take some of the load off my delicate knees. I could improve my mobility overall, with PT and pushing gently against my boundaries. Maybe I could fit into chairs in more public spaces. Maybe I could have fat oppression be a little less—just a little—of what I experience every day. 

Maybe I could even get a pretty bra, for goddess’s sake! Maybe.

I’m still having to give myself permission to allow these thoughts and desires room. To allow them to take up space! And I hear adrienne’s statement differently now. I can feel what is happening in my body and imagine that something similar is happening for her. Maybe I can just meet life as it is being presented to me and follow what I feel and think is right. Maybe I can even feel good about those choices.

I don’t know, but maybe?

An Apology

Maybe I can live in the colors between red and violet (no grey for me!) — the green of the spectrum, as it were. The color of life and growth. Maybe I can acknowledge that there are others colors I can perceive, and (probably at least as important) know that there are colors I cannot. 

So adrienne maree, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being able to see and hear you as more than a figure, someone constrained by the boundaries of my politics. I’m sorry for demanding that you not live in the green, but take up only the space I had allotted you, space that would support my views. I’m sorry for remaking you in my own image.

And I’m sorry to myself. to my body, heart, and mind. I’m sorry for insisting that one political position (by which I mean a position concerned with power, oppression, and liberation) should constrain all my choices forever. I’m sorry for living in a box. For making my heart and mind take up less space by ignoring my hopes for how my body might move in space.

And I hope this experience can help me listen better. To acknowledge the many circumstances in which I don’t know! I don’t know everything, but I’m making the best decisions I can for now. I just don’t everything that goes into anyone’s experiences and choices. I just don’t know, but I’m showing up and taking up space.