The Virtues of Fat Suffering

Why must losing weight appear so difficult?

While aimlessly scrolling TikTok I quickly fell into a self-shoveled rabbit hole wherein Ozempfluencers¹ urged their followers to ignore people who think weight loss medication is the “easy” route. Before these videos, I had no idea how rampant weight loss medication shaming was. Shaming women about their bodies and the choices they make to alter them is not surprising, but being in the shadows of the body-positive movement may have clouded my perception a bit.

@ashrowe86Heres to the ones thag try to guilt trip or have rude comments . #saveit #semaglutide #ozempicweightloss #injectionday #endometriosisawareness #bridgesidetelehealth #highbloodpressure #mounjaro #ozempicjourney #noshame @Bridgeside Telehealth

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

The shaming reflects an expectation for weight loss to be difficult, or at least for it to be a strenuous process for the person at the center of the discussion. But what is that? Why is there an expectation that fat people stop being fat, and also that they do it in a challenging way? In a recent issue of “De-Influenced,” Heidi Kaluza writes about the time and energy she spent on skincare that would heal her cystic acne:

“The money spent acted as proof that I recognized my physical shortcomings and was working hard to improve them. I believed that my acne wasn’t only a nuisance to me, but to everyone who had to look at me. Therein lies the power of the patriarchal beauty standards and those who are enslaved to them, which we all are to varying degrees.” 

The connection between this quote and influencer urging is tangential, but there is a pulse. Kaluza identifies two silent cores of beauty standards, the first is what we’ll call (1) Performance Prerequisite. Or, the act of changing one’s appearance in the digital age demands detailed skincare routines, sweaty gym videos, or homemade dressing for neatly portioned salmon salads. The second core idea is the (2) Penance Party or the belief that whatever we dislike about ourselves is an unfair punishment to those around us. These two points circle each other like moons and have contributed to the audience's expectation that the subject is sorry for ever being fat (i.e. Not Attractive) and that they will publicly display their efforts to “fix” themselves.²

Penance: Voluntary self-punishment inflicted as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong.

@abbeyskitchenPSA: Your body is not an indicator of your moral worth. Nor is how you “achieved” said body. #ozempicweightloss #ozempicjourney #mounjarojourney #mounjarocommunity

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

In the instance that Performance Prerequisite + Penance Party collide we get the Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, a masochistic performance of penance for some unnamed and some imagined sins. But more on that in a different newsletter. What the Ozempfluencer videos present is the acknowledgment that there is an expectation that fat people perform the “hard work” of losing weight. However, the videos I saw reject that expectation and thereby tell the “suffering” viewer that they won’t apologize for ever having a fat body. They don’t care about participating in unassisted weight loss for the benefit of these angry audience members, only their own.

1. Am I trademarking this?? 

2. Obviously all public displays of beautification are not in service to an unnamed audience as penance. We can choose to document our beauty practices for ourselves and share them for fun.