A few months ago, I went to see a show and when I got to my seat, I sat down. Or rather, I tried to sit down. I realised quite quickly that I couldn’t fit into the seat. It wasn’t “a bit tight” – I was absolutely unable to get my bum in between the two armrests. For a moment, I panicked. I considered if I could just, sort of, sit on the armrests. Maybe I could seem like one of those cool people who choose to sit differently on a chair to impress people, like a new teacher in an 80s teen film.
I found an usher and said, “Excuse me, but I seem to be too fat for your seats.” The usher wore the facial expression of someone currently having the worst shift of his life.
A few minutes later, I was led to the front of the stalls. At the end of the third row, they placed a tall chair. A stool. Throughout the show, I sat raised above the entire audience. Like a lifeguard. Or a princess. Or maybe as a warning to the rest of the audience about what will happen to them if they finish their popcorn.
There is a loneliness to being fat and I am obsessed with it. I want to understand what effect it has on us fat people, when an entire society tries to find the balance between pretending that we don’t exist and making sure that it won’t accommodate us.
I have just finished writing my book, Happy Fat. It’s part memoir, part self-help, part everything I know about fatness and my own fatness in particular. My friend Scottee – an artist, writer and fat activist – is one of the main people who introduced me to the idea of Fat Liberation and Fat Acceptance. He showed me that I was not alone in my fatness.
This weekend, 20 fatties will compete in a beauty and talent pageant at Shoreditch Town Hall called Hamburger Queen, with me as the head judge and Scottee as curator and host. I am very excited about being a judge. I once judged a competition for new comedians. No one had asked me to, I just did. Anyways, Scottee and I met up to talk about the meaning of an event like Hamburger Queen and the meaning of fat community.
I tell Scottee about my experience in the theatre. “There are these moments of fat survival that people never really have to acknowledge, right?” he says. “Going into a theatre: will I fit into the seat? Have I got an aisle seat? Is it going to be really hot in there? Having to think about the clothes you’re going to wear that night. Things like carrying deodorant around with you constantly and being really aware that you don’t want to be like the socially fat person, like, sweating and smelly.”
It’s not that people don’t want to hang out with us – they do. They just don’t want other people to see. I tell Scottee about something that once happened to me: I heard a comedian on a podcast joke about how fat women can’t get laid till everyone is so drunk that they can’t see straight. The hosts laugh and, in the best bro-manner, agree with him. I sat listening to that on a bus, blinking so quickly I thought my eyes were about to fly away from my face. Approximately three weeks before the comedian said that on a podcast, he had begged me to come by his house to have sex. He was sober and he had laid rose petals on the floor and the radio played my favourite album. But maybe that’s less funny on a podcast than pretending that fat people aren’t sexual beings. I don’t even think he thought about me eventually listening to that conversation. Because somehow, fat people not being sexual beings, is somehow true, even if they’re someone you’ve slept with yourself recently.
Scottee nods: “And when we’re fat-shamed, we’re often on our own. We’re often on our own in a public space, being shouted at, or we’re often on our own with our GP who’s telling us we need a gastric band when we’re just there because we’ve got an ingrown toenail or something. When we’re waddling down the high street decapitated by a news item, we’re on our own. When we’re on our own, we’re picked off.”
When I talk about being fat to people who aren’t fat, people feel uncomfortable. People can only just about handle it when I preach about how hot I am, how I love my fatness, how I adore my body and how I think it’s beautiful. People either clap their hands at my “bravery”, flat out refuse to believe me or become infuriated because it goes against everything they’ve been taught.
But when I talk about the negative experiences – the seats I don’t fit into, the men who mock my body on podcasts as if they didn’t just recently beg to see it naked and the abuse shouted at me in the street – their go-to reaction is to deny it. “Oh, you’re not fat” or “You have a pretty face” or “Just ignore them”. Thus sweeping the uncomfortableness and the ugliness out of sight.
“The analogy that I use,” says Scottee, is “the world navigates around our bodies as if they’re twice the size … We then, because of that, have this weird body dysmorphia which tells us our body is three times the size they are because of how the public interacts with them. Travelling here, I’m on a commuter train coming from the suburbs into central London. There are no seats, absolutely no seats, people are standing, people are cramming on. But the seat next to me is free. Because people think they are going to catch diabetes or like, high-cholesterol or perhaps an interesting personality. You know what I mean? It’s so interesting. Constantly, the world is signalling to you, the whole time, that you’re too fat. We don’t want you to be seen.”
I nod so hard that my head is about to come off my shoulders and all of my chins are wobbling cheerfully. Yes, yes, yes. It’s not that I’m excited about Scottee’s dreadful travel experiences, it’s that I’m hearing someone tell me about my own experience. Something I rarely get to hear. With our thin friends, we rarely get to discuss the things that hurt. Because it’s uncomfortable and swept under a rug.
In 2013, when I had just discovered fat acceptance but while I was still doubting that it was something I was allowed to feel, I got an email inviting me to Hamburger Queen. A beauty, talent and culinary pageant and competition just for fat people. I was invited to be a judge. When I turned up, I saw a room full of fellow fatties. I saw fatties dress in all the wrong ways – sequins, colours, crop tops, short skirts and horizontal stripes. I saw fat people eat cake in public, I saw fat people dance and sing, I saw fat people laugh and smile. The whole evening felt like taking a deep breath for the first time in my life. Like suddenly, you’re not the only person sitting on a tall, awkward stool in a room full of normal chairs. Everyone is right up there with you.
That’s the space that Scottee creates and it’s the same space I’ve wanted to create with my book. A space where we can acknowledge our fatness and celebrate our fatness. Where it’s not a bad word or something that makes people tense up. Because the fact of the matter is: Fat is a descriptive word. It’s neutral. And treating it as a synonym for “lazy”, “unattractive”, “unintelligent”, “desexual” or “bad” is both incorrect and tiring. It means that we need books and shows where fat isn’t a negative – fat is something you flaunt, celebrate, glorify (yes) and most importantly: acknowledge.
Hamburger Queen is at Shoreditch Town Hall, London, on 8 December. Sofie Hagen’s book Happy Fat is out in spring 2019 when she is also on tour.
