Julie's World: TOO OPPRESSED TO BE FITAuthor(s): Julie HarrisReviewed work(s):Source: Off Our Backs, Vol. 34, No. 5/6 (may-june 2004), pp. 60-62Published by: off our backs, inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20838088 .Accessed: 04/08/2012 19:14

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I OPPRESSED

l

Lately, I have come to realize that I must confront

sizeism from an economic standpoint. According to the

media, now, suddenly, as a fat person, I am personally responsible for huge numbers of disability claims and for

overburdening a decaying health system. A so-called "fat

epidemic" is now being blamed for costing tax payers millions a year in Medicare and Medicaid. As a licensed health and life insurance agent in Washington, DC, I can

tell you the health care crisis is worse

than you thought, but I doubt being fat is

the main culprit. Anyway, in the insurance industry I am subjected to

articles in

professional journals as well as in regular newspapers and I can tell you I am pissed off.

But this rant isn't about sizeism. (Just write oob, snail or e-mail, if you want more about sizeism from me.

The rumors are true... I can go all night!) This rant is about fitness, which I think is one of the real major problems in this country. We are a country that will drive to the mail box and consider watching exercise on

television. We eat crap. We work too hard and don't take

vacations like people in other parts of the world. So

really, the problem is more a lack of fitness epidemic than a fat epidemic, and 1 think it disproportionately hits women due to sexism.

Women have less time. Part of this is a work-related

problem. We seem to always have overtime and too much to do during our regular hours. Those of us in the

workplace who are childless must stay and clean up the

THI PMBitM IS MOJ? A LACK OF

ffHf&S fWt*4/C THAN A FAT FPIOEMIC AND f ItNHK fJ DtSTROPQKTIONfi 17-LY

HtJS WDAftM W/f TO SEXISM

messes of those

parents who simply must pick up their kids now. We often have to work through lunches to make deadlines. Many women have work shifts that last forever

per day. Then add commute time to and from this time

consuming thing we call work. Many women also have

jobs where they cannot move around. 1 worked in a cell

phone call center one summer where we were tethered to a phone for 8 hours a day and they counted as much as 60 seconds against us. They wouldn't pay overtime if

you stayed 5 minutes late with a difficult call, but they threatened to fine you if you pulled out of the queue 2

minutes early. Use of the bathroom was also monitored.

off our backs. page 60 september-october 2003

Goddess help you if you had a bladder infection! The center was 95 percent female and none of us could even so much as stand up while taking a call because then we

couldn't work the computers. While some fields in which women tend to dominate?such as nursing or domestic

work?are very active, most of us are in positions where a walk to the fax machine is considered a hike. So the

majority of each day and the majority of our week is taken up with survival.

Part of the problem is also the home. As Arlie Russell Hochschild has proved, women have a "Second Shift" at

home, so we have double duty. Once we get off work from the job that has eaten our lives and barely lets us

keep a roof over our head, we now face making sure that roof stays there and isn't condemned by the health

department. This home shift becomes exponentially more

time consuming should you have children or even pets.

Having both pets and kids means you will never read a

complete novel front to back for years. But even if you don't have those ties, then there are volunteer commitments and religious commitments in addition to

the demands of other types of family, both biological and created. Heaven forbid you see a play or a movie once in a while or maybe travel. How many of us spend night after night getting home after 11pm and wondering where the day went, let alone last year? The home front doesn't

give us much time to exercise. But let us assume a perfect world where we don't

have to work so much at home or at paid employment. Even if we have the time, how can jf^. we access traditional / exercise modes? Women f make less money to / /Sl JM afford expensive gym

memberships. Forget

female-only space while you are sweating ^s^jf^j^^y^^^^^^^ in spandex. Those gyms >?s*J\ are really expensive. And ^BN^: | in a mixed gym it isn't

polite to mention you hate to hear men grunting, sweating and groaning next to you. Then YOU are being sexist and it is public space and he has

rights and he is a member too and blah blah blah blah. "Just leave me alone while I do this!" I want to shout. Is it so bad of me to want to only have women around

when I am exerting myself, tired and vulnerable? Is it so

wrong to not want to listen to a man say, "You know, if

you just..." like he knows me? Is it so wrong to not want a strange man to touch a muscle group and tell me how tense I am? (OK, I'm much tenser now that a stranger is

touching me in public. I was fine a moment ago and now that YOU want me to relax, I am further freaked! Now I'm not "following your orders," and I'm beginning to

wonder what else someone who would touch a stranger in public is capable of.)

And let's not get into the types of clothes it appears you are expected to wear in a gym. What is the point of

having underwear-like items OVER your leotard-like body suit thing? I don't like thong underwear as underwear? but as useless outerwear over a body suit that encourages an invasion into my hiney in public?is it just me who sees how wrong this is!?! Did I mention that such

clothes, especially for large women, are expensive? We are lucky now to have plus-size catalogues such as Junonia in which to find exercise clothes at all. Before

that, there was nothing. But Junonia isn't cheap. And then one great exercise is swimming but do you think I'm comfortable exercising in a swimsuit in front of men in

general? True, we can exercise outside of a gym. Assuming

no disabilities, we can walk outside. But then there is the issue of weather. If

tyou live in California,

maybe this is not a

r not safe. In summer I have to get up at 5:00 a.m.

weigh over 200 pounds and I walk 5K per day and stretch for 40 minutes each day. (In

theory, I don't exist, the fat chick who is fitter than an

anorexic girl. Remember thin

always means fit?umm, walk the

eating disordered ward in your nearest hospital to permanently dispel that fantasy from

your mind.) Anyway, you would think that hour would be a reasonable hour to walk. Sometimes even at 6:00 a.m. it is 80 degrees and code orange air quality but that is the best time to walk in summer.

So, no, you can't always be outdoors to exercise.

off our backs. september-october 2003 page 61

Then there is the safety issue. Many of us don't live in

neighborhoods that are safe to walk in much after dark, which is when we are home during winter. I am lucky in

that I can walk around the White House nearby and know

that something like 17 different law enforcement agencies are watching me, so 1 doubt 1 will be mugged. How

many other women can say that? But let's not forget the actual eating component in

this issue. What about food? A lack of time and money affects this. Healthy, good food is difficult to get. Often, we just don't have the time to go to the store and cook

from scratch. And for people who live alone, like

myself?the permanently dateless?it does seem silly to

cook much. (Actually I have

days, but that can be tiresome

four nights and several ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ lunches in between.

Then what about the emotional issues with a woman's body? What does

being large mean to me? Did anyone think to ask what was harder and what was easier about being large in this

society? Maybe part of me likes being large in that it

shields me from a lot of male attention in many ways. It

is an odd thing but I find men can't think a girl is pretty (read traditionally attractive and thus thin) and really respect her ideas at work. Most of the time they can't even remember what she said, but I have seen them

remember what color bras she wore which day of the week. I'm not even sure what color bra I have on right now, but darn it, men do discuss these things?or so I

have overheard. To the best of my knowledge, my underwear has never been a topic of conversation at any

job site and I have tended to be taken seriously by males in the work place. I have changed size over time from size 14 to 28 and all stops in between in the last four

years. I have found that my size seems to be a factor in how seriously I am taken. While it is true that there are

always situations where women are excluded and ignored no matter what their size, I would rather have at least some semblance of respect, which I get only when

larger.

And it isn't just at work where being large can be a shield. Maybe many women don't like being stared at on the train or chatted up when we sit down to read in the

park, and being large provides that protection in this

country. (Warning: not so much

protection in other countries, I

know.) So maybe some women

like what being large does for us, even though being large can be

emotionally painful in some ways and economically disastrous in

others: for example, large women

experience discrimination smaller women don't. Clearly there are trade

offs being made, but how dare

anyone question my choice of battle to fight and when.

And while we are on the topic of talking about

these people being blamed for everything, does

anyone ask how to

"fix" the problem for us? Do they ask how we can support

women in getting fitter? Surprise?the answer is no. We are just held responsible for the fall of western civilization (Yeah team!) by simply being large. We are

the problem but apparently there is no solution but to berate and blame us.

Because women have to work harder and longer hours for less money, we have less time and money to eat

right and fewer opportunities and places to exercise

safely, therefore the "fat epidemic" is a feminist issue. I won't even bother to go into how "epidemics" are

defined by the Center for Disease Control, which does not recognize FAT as a disease. But I must add, fat isn't

contagious. 1 swear. OK, I'm not a medical practitioner of any kind?but this one I'm really sure about.

off our backs. page 62 september-october 2003