“My eating was an issue from the beginning,” Miriam Notowicz says: “I was the little fat girl and my mother was the beautiful thin woman.”
Girls as young as five say their dream for the future is to be thin, or definitely not fat. With this in mind, the hashtag #Bodypositivity was a liberation cry for heavier people. Who are these fat people keeping up the fight for fat acceptance and against fat phobia? And what kind of courage do heavier people need to raise their voices in public against the discrimination of their body shape? A report by Susanne Bruha.
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Is it because of my big body or because I’m black is it because my physical disability it was signaled to me very indirectly you just don’t belong here that’s how it is fat people just don’t belong here Just arriving at some place a semi-public place like a doctors and seeing the chairs and knowing if I sit on those chairs now I’m going to be in pain okay Miriam Works in Berlin City Administration and has written a children’s book about her experiences as an overweight woman
The title translates to fat girl pinkapoo likes to wear bright colors and flower patterns and funny shoes can walk through the streets like that and think people are staring at her because of her clothes and not because she’s fat crazy fattest I’ve got all three of you the same
Skirts and you look the happiest filthy lamps Miriam is 50 years old today she has a grown daughter when Miriam was born her weight was normal for a newborn today she has a good relationship with her mother but that was not always the case my eating was an issue from the
Beginning first of all my mother was always very slim and because of that I always felt like I was juxtaposed against her I was the little fat girl and she was the beautiful thin woman and the sales clerks were always completely taken aback when I said we’re looking for something for my daughter
Then they’d say oh well that’s your daughter that was a recurring situation I started in daycare very very early at eight weeks and I think I was just so overwhelmed with it all in general that food became a safe space for me because it had a comforting aspect safe space aspects garb Age over and again over and over a voice will come from somewhere saying a fat pig or such like what effects it’s important to them that they have to announce to the world that they find someone fat is I think the person who’s fattest probably the person who knows that they’re fat
It ruins any nice moment you’re having and then for that person it’s over but the mum perhaps definitely for me it resonates for much longer foreign Thank you final shaming originated in an era of slavery in colonial times it was the image of a fat black woman who could perform didn’t ask questions did a job she was a mother producing children as many children as possible who could also then serve the system it
Was the big black mama big black mammal the outer Blue Cafe Shaming and for the acceptance of fat bodies using art texts and workshops like today with some art students I started photographing my big disabled black body making self-portraits there were things I could discover which I don’t normally allow myself to do when I look at the mirror
It was a huge huge relief the feeling I was liberating myself mother is from Namibia in 1978 during The Liberation War she was severely wounded she was pregnant with Leia at the time Lya was born in the gdr with several disabilities she developed splendidly or maybe too splendidly
I was definitely one of the first black babies that this Hospital saw and there were definitely assumptions that I shouldn’t get such a big mama body they should give me less milk which is also kind of sad when I think about it to have already been on a diet as a baby
You know your body shouldn’t be fat that’s the message from birth onwards Maya is one of the 46 percent of women in Germany considered overweight it means she has a higher body mass index than 25. the percent of overweight men is as high as 60.5 while men can sometimes pass it off as being masculine Laya as a woman experiences strong denigration
I often find people looking at me if I was annoyed I’d say staring sometimes I don’t know where the rejection comes from is it because of my big bodies or is it my disabled body it really annoys me their struggle against fat shaming isn’t loud there’s no uprising of those who
Are fat shamed disapproval of heavier physiques is simply the social consensus I notice it when it comes to getting appropriate seating space and how can fat bodies get medical care without immediately being told but that’s because you have a big body or because you’re fat
Or be able to go shopping in the stores and not always having to shop online because the shops don’t stock larger sizes foreign And that’s it now you can relax theater director Katarina Bill is having a 3D scan she wants to have a fat suit made of her body a fat suit is a costume that thin actors wear to play fat people my first experience with fat suits was when I was
20. I was an assistant director at the xiaobuna here in Berlin a big theater and they used open fat suits to show how fat Americans are and they were really really bad situations that I still remember today and in the brakes couldn’t always get out of the suit so
Fast so they just quickly grabbed a road sat down at the table and started gobbling it down making it as disgusting as possible and roaring with laughter and I sat there as a fat 20 year old and thought okay wow I’m still here by the way but I didn’t say anything of course
If it’s important yeah it’s important because that’s where the form has to go we live in a society hostile to fatness fatness is vilified that people are strongly discriminated against so what happens when bodies that are considered very valuable where unworthy bodies how much fat is funny are you ready try try and
So done the taser is the idea is that because my body is fat a suit is automatically a fat suit and so it’s the ambivalence in between that we’re interested in costume designer Tatiana couch will tailor the fat suit Katarina wants to use it to shoot videos for social media Four weeks later Katarina’s fat suit is finished she’s now wearing a second skin made of silicon they’re shooting today the videos are voiced over with texts that I read myself with original quotes from interviews we’ve done with people who are involved with fat suits in some ways
Something like in this piece there is a lot of violence and they want to portray that violence in a comically exaggerated way with gender-neutral people who somehow embody something poorly content lazy full the plan is for them to rip off each other’s arms and legs and to have big blood stains everywhere
Heavier people are becoming increasingly visible such as an advertising or on the social media channels of activists like Katarina or Leia but these are still exceptions in our everyday lives that people continue to be discriminated against me personally I wish for a society that can respond to my body as just one body
Among many others not a special one or a wrong one and not a body that needs correcting and I think that’s a way in which we can reshape our ways of seeing ideally I’d like fat people to have good lives and to have equal opportunities I
Know a great many fat people who have very hard lives you can do it for 80 years or so but then you’ve never really got to know anyone either
Video “Fat shaming – Fighting intolerance | DW Documentary” was uploaded on 05/30/2023 by DW Documentary Youtube channel.