CAN YOU BE FAT AND HAPPY? – September 14^th 2005

 

Tess Stimson, 37, author – weight 10st. 

 

at may be admired in some cultures – although these days even the Polynesians and Samoans have probably succumbed to the pressures of Vogue – but the harsh truth is that it certainly isn’t in ours. We may admire fat people for their talents or wit, but none of us actually want to look like them.

 

The fact that the diet industry is worth billions of pounds a year suggests that fat people don’t want to look fat either. Whether we like it or not, most of us still believe that you can’t be too rich or too thin.

 

Every week sees a new fad diet book flying off the shelves – the Greek diet, the Zone Diet, the thirteen-minute diet. It’s noticeable, however, that despite their protestations not one curvy Hollywood star has brought out a tome entitled ‘How to Gain Four Stone in a Month and Win The Man of Your Dreams.’

 

Fern Britton, one of our highest-paid female stars, is the latest student to graduate from the Glad To Be Fat academy. Do I really believe Fern is happy? Quite possibly, given her vast bank balance and apparently fulfilling family life.

 

Do I think she’d be happier if – all else remaining equal – she miraculously lost fifty pounds? Absolutely.

 

Let’s be clear: this isn’t some anti-fat rant. I abhor the current pressure for women to be thin to the point of emaciation. Blessed with Fifties-style curves myself, I’m deeply aggrieved to have been born in an era that doesn’t appreciate the rounded swell of breast and buttock that in a different age would have made me a style icon.

 

But that’s not the point. The pressures on women to be thin today would test the resistance of a deep-sea Atlantic submersible. Most of us simply don’t have the self-belief to withstand them.

 

When I was expecting my first son, I started wearing maternity clothes almost from the day I conceived, such was my paranoid determination to make it clear I was pregnant rather than fat. I didn’t mind too much about gaining weight during my pregnancy – four-and-a-half stone – because I had such a cast-iron excuse for it.

 

But after the baby was born, I stared at the reflection of my fat self with something akin to horror. You only have to be on the receiving end of the contempt reserved for fat women – in shops, in restaurants, on the Tube – for short time to realise how deep the fattist streak in our society goes.

 

Fat women are seen as self-indulgent, incontinent, unable to restrain themselves. They are perceived as less competent and less intelligent than their thin sisters. This prejudice is then legitimised by pseudo-concerns over health. All this on top of the usual difficulties everyday life brings. Who would honestly choose to be fat in such a world?

 

It’s a cruel myth that fat people are merry, which Fern herself does nothing to debunk when she says she’d like to be remembered as a ‘jolly old soul’. But, as one friend of mine who regularly tips the scales at 18st says, it’s just a default mode fat people revert to as a means of defence.

 

‘People expect you to be all warm and jolly. Thin women are bitchy, fat women are soft and cuddly and kind. Fat women make jokes at their own expense because it hurts just that bit less than someone else doing it for you.’

 

Health issues aside, in an ideal world we would celebrate the human form in all its diversity, from the skinny size zeros to the gloriously fat size 32s. But we don’t.

 

Being slim won’t guarantee happiness, of course; but in today’s world, it’ll certainly tip the odds in your favour.