by Anonymous
How many fat female philosophers do you know?
One day as I scrolled through my Instagram, my major path into the body positive community, I found myself asking this question. I’ve been around academic philosophy for about a decade now. Other than myself, I can think of only one or two people who would fall into this category.
To be fair, the first thing that I think about when I meet a colleague is not their body type. However, it strikes me as strange that upon reflection I could think of almost no fat female philosophers. I decided to ask a few trusted colleagues how many they could think of. Again, the silence was rather stunning.
In academic philosophy, we often wonder why there seems to be a shortage of women and minorities in our field. There are many theories about why this is the case and exactly what we should do about it. I am actively involved in these discussions in my role with the Women and Minorities in Philosophy chapter (MAP) at my institution. In all of my experience, albeit somewhat limited, I have never heard someone bring up fatness as a minority category in our field.
If I think about how many fat male philosophers I know, I can fairly quickly think of a decent list. We might quibble here and there over what precisely counts as “fat” but similar quibbles can be made about racial and other minority categories. I would say that the majority of my male colleagues are not fat, but I can at least think of a few cases without too much strain.
Why are there so few fat female philosophers? Why have I, as such an individual, never even recognized this? My immediate realization has come from my engagement with the body positive movement. Although somewhat controversial, this community originally emerged to help the most marginalized kinds of bodies become more visible and permissible within society. This included groups such as the heavily obese, the disabled, and ethic minorities. Today body positivity has become mainstream, but at some cost to the original aims of the movement. Now people talk about body positivity as though it is about learning to accept the fact that your arms are still flabby despite diligently lifting weights every day.
I have learned a lot about my own society and my own experiences by engaging in the more intellectual side of the body positive community. On the surface, my Instagram feed looks like a bunch of mostly naked fat women. And to some extent, this movement is about normalizing the physical features of fat bodies. The more we see these images and describe them as good, the less we instinctually find our own similar features bad and problematic. However, the visual elements of the movement are not the most significant for me.
Accounts such as Tess Holiday @tessholiday, Megan Crabbe @bodyposipanda, and Jes Baker @themilitantbaker feature a lot of interesting content in the captions of their images. Their posts often reflect on the struggle of accepting oneself when you live in a society that constantly demonizes your physical characteristics. In an environment where the only permissible way to be a fat woman is if one is actively engaged in dieting and exercise with the goal of permanently eradicating her fatness, it is nearly impossible to remain at peace.
These are reasons it can be a challenge to be a fat woman in society at large, but why is it a challenge to be a fat female philosopher in particular? My best guess is our field’s emphasis on rationality. The popular view is that there is significant empirical evidence supporting the necessity of maintaining a moderate weight. Rationally, there is only one thing to do if one is fat: stop being fat.
Apparently, this applies most stringently to the female members of the philosophic community. We all know that David Hume was a bit on the heftier side but today’s superstar female philosophers, like Martha Nussbaum, are anything but. Of course, Nussbaum has never explicitly declared herself to be a body type role model (as it turns out very few people actually explicitly state such things). But, it is worth noting that in addition to exercise being an important component of how she lives her life, she has actually published about this feature. This New Yorker article was designed to be read by a large audience, reaching far more people than the traditional philosophy journal. Whether intentional or not, this has contributed to the idea that not prioritizing exercise, especially as a female philosopher, is a kind of failure. One of the values of society today is that exercise is the enemy of fatness. If failure to exercise is failure to live rationally, and fat people don’t exercise, then fat people fail to live rationally. While I am not trying to criticize Nussbaum for her choices, minimally, this publication did not contribute to making space for fatness in our field.
The body positive community has brought into doubt many of the empirical claims made against fatness. For example, simply being fat does not necessarily indicate the nature of one’s overall health. Although statistically there are more people with type 2 diabetes who are overweight, simply being over-weight does not mean one has type 2 diabetes. The health of a human being cannot be determined simply by their physical dimensions. Additionally, many of the studies which have shown that being fat is the worse possible thing one can be have been conducted by fatphobic scientists. The chance of bias in these contexts is significant.
I am certainly not claiming that being fat is good for one’s health. Although as Megan Crabbe often points out, especially for those who have suffered from eating disorders, it may be much healthier to be fat than to dedicate one’s existence to ceasing to be fat. I am quite confident in claiming that being fat is not intrinsically irrational. But, I am not so sure that my fellow philosophers would agree.
1) Best article title of the month. Concise and catchy, a great combination.
2) My guess is that body type preferences are rooted in the male mammal biological imperative, to create as many babies as possible. Females are scanned to evaluate those most likely to have a successful pregnancy. Again, this is a guess. The point here is that there is probably more going on than just prejudice, and thus moral sermons may have limited success in overcoming this form of bias.
3) The best thing ever to be invented for people who don’t fit cultural definitions of beauty may be the Internet. The net allows us to get to know people before the opportunity for beauty bias can arise as an obstacle. I discovered my own bias after being great friends with someone for a few years online before they sent me a photo which was not at all flattering. I realized that in 50 years I’d never known anyone that unattractive, and that I’d been missing out on some smart funny people. My bad, my loss, lesson learned.
“Of course, Nussbaum has never explicitly declared herself to be a body type role model (as it turns out very few people actually explicitly state such things). But, it is worth noting that in addition to exercise being an important component of how she lives her life, she has actually published about this feature. This New Yorker article was designed to be read by a large audience, reaching far more people than the traditional philosophy journal. Whether intentional or not, this has contributed to the idea that not prioritizing exercise, especially as a female philosopher, is a kind of failure.”
= = =
This just strikes me as outright Orwellian.
You acknowledge that Nussbaum does not present herself as a “body role model” — whatever that is — and that all she has done is talk and write about how important a part of her life exercise is, which is perfectly legitimate. But then comes the key pivot:
“Whether intentional or not, this has contributed to the idea that not prioritizing exercise, especially as a female philosopher, is a kind of failure.”
It has not “contributed” to anything. You — and maybe others — have decided to take it that way. And it’s beyond unfair to saddle Nussbaum or the New Yorker or anyone else with that.
But then we get the escape-hatch afterthought:
“While I am not trying to criticize Nussbaum for her choices, minimally, this publication did not contribute to making space for fatness in our field.”
Sorry, but that’s exactly what you just did.
If today was April 1, I’d think this was a parody of contemporary grievance-politics. I mean, “fatphobic scientists”? Really?
So let’s start with the weight topic, and use that as a launching pad to explore deeper underlying issues.
Why do we care so much about what other people think of us?
For example, why do we so often care about what anonymous strangers say to us on the Internet, even if we ourselves are also anonymous? Snoopydog27 says that Buttheadsky45 is stupid, and people start getting upset. Why?
One reasonable theory is that we are a social species which survives primarily by organized cooperation, thus being respected by the group can be a factor in our physical well being. Ok, that’s true enough, but this is just a tactical concern. What if each of us had a billion dollars? We’d probably still care if the group declared us ugly, stupid, smelly etc, right? We tend to care what others think about us even when there is no practical reason to do so. Let’s keep digging.
This phenomena of caring what the group thinks seems to be universal, a social reality in all times and places. If true, that would seem to rule out cultural factors as the source of our caring about group opinion, given that such factors vary widely. If true, the universality of the caring about opinion experience suggests that the source of our caring arises from some factor which all human beings have in common.
We’re talking about a psychological experience here, and what we’re all made of psychologically is thought. What is it about the nature of thought that creates this emotional experience of caring about other people’s judgement of us, even when there is no practical reason for us to care?
Should this line of reasoning continue?
To vote yes, join the conversation.
To vote no, do nothing.
Thank you.
I do think being fat disadvantages a woman much more than a man. And I do think that being fat is a big disadvantage in academia, though we pretend to be above such prejudices. But I’m skeptical that women philosophers are disproportionately slim. There are a lot fewer female than male philosophers. So it’s much easier to think of male philosophers who are X (fat, short, redheaded…) than female philosophers who are X. If you go to a conference in a subfield of philosophy that tends to attract more women (history of philosophy, applied ethics, feminist philosophy, for example), you will meet a lot of women philosophers, and I think you’ll find that plenty of them are fat.
[Editor’s note: Name intentionally withheld] I have explicitly, and repeatedly, lost weight because I think it is a professional disadvantage to be overweight. It is not generally accepted in society, especially for women, and so it is not generally accepted for women in philosophy, who always stand out anyway. Good article!
[Editor’s note: Name intentionally withheld] I think that asking your colleagues to comment on other women philosophers’ bodies and tell you which ones are fat is pretty gross and may explain their ‘stunning’ silence.
I can think of lots of fat philosophers of every gender – maybe your own internalized bias as to who counts as important and visible is showing?
As others have pointed out elsewhere before me, discussing a particular woman’s body this way is pretty gross. Nussbaum doesn’t need to have her body scrutinized like this. As you point out, she never asked for that,. Yuck.
Finally, why ‘female’ philosophers as opposed to women in philosophy? Is it really their genitals/dna that matters? This is some pretty objectifying language.
I’m a feminist and I am very committed as both a teacher and an activist to boosting body diversity and fighting fat phobia but I cannot get behind this creepy article.
[Editor’s note: Name intentionally withheld] People who inhabit larger bodies are constantly forced by circumstance to think about and acknowledge their size. To suggest that we cannot even speak about things like body size is to silence this disproportionately disadvantaged group. The world doesn’t allow such folk to forget, and you may find it gross to have to face that reality, but nothing can improve if we forbid discussion because it makes people like you uncomfortable.
Dear Anonymous,
I really liked your choice of picture for your blog post. Could you please tell me where this sculpture is to be found and who it represents?
The picture was found at Pixabay here: https://pixabay.com/photos/lake-constance-lake-water-nature-1937138/.
It was taken at Lake Constance, which sits on the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. On Wikimedia commons, the caption accompanying the picture says “A photograph of a statue created by Miriam Lenk called ‘Yolanda’. It represents a fat woman who stands confidently. The artist says that Yolanda ‘occupies the available space and does not care about any objections.'” You can see details here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yolanda_by_Miriam_Lenk.jpg.
“These are reasons it can be a challenge to be a fat woman in society at large, but why is it a challenge to be a fat female philosopher in particular? My best guess is our field’s emphasis on rationality.”
Why are we a priori blaming the field? Couldn’t there be a host of other possible explanations?
“simply being fat does not necessarily indicate the nature of one’s overall health.”
The evidence is pretty clear that obesity is a chronic illness. It does affect one’s overall health. Here’s the CDC on this: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/about-obesity/index.html#:~:text=Obesity%20is%20a%20common%2C%20serious,%2C%20productivity%2C%20and%20military%20readiness.
“Although statistically there are more people with type 2 diabetes who are overweight, simply being over-weight does not mean one has type 2 diabetes.”
Of course it doesn’t mean so, but obesity is known to be a causal factor for type 2 diabetes. It’s not mere correlation. Here’s another link of the CDC on the matter: https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/library/features/diabetes-causes.html#:~:text=It%27s%20true%20that%20being%20overweight,can%20help%20lower%20your%20risk.
“The health of a human being cannot be determined simply by their physical dimensions.”
BMI is a decently good indicator for certain purposes, but contemporary medical practitioners use more exact indicators, like body fat percentage. However, BMI is strongly correlated with various diseases, as the CDC again notes: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/index.html
“many of the studies which have shown that being fat is the worse possible thing one can be have been conducted by fatphobic scientists.”
No evidence at all is offered for this claim. An alcoholic may analogously claim that “many of the studies which have shown that being alcoholic is the worse possible thing one can be have been conducted by alcoholphobic scientists.” The evidence that supports the scientists’ claims are not evaluated, making this a very elementary example of ad hominem fallacy.
“The chance of bias in these contexts is significant.”
No argument is provided for this claim.
“especially for those who have suffered from eating disorders, it may be much healthier to be fat than to dedicate one’s existence to ceasing to be fat.”
Only if such a dedication is by unhealthy methods, like fad diets or poorly planned exercise regimens.