Last week I had the privilege to speak to the activist Tigress Osborn, she is the current director of NAAFA (National Association to fat acceptance) in the United States and is a known fat activist. I had a very interesting 30 minute conversation with her and got her consent to record the conversation so I was able to make much better notes after we completed our conversation.
- The Organization of NAAFA has done a lot of great things for people over the years since its founding in 1969 and the reason for its founding was because the founders wife was considered a fat women and suffer from severe criticism and her husband got so upset he decided to do something about it and his reaction was to create this organization. “It has been a comfort to people, a source of education, a source of confidence, but also a space for advocacy and political activism fighting size discrimination”.
She started to be involved in the organization when she was 18 and there were local chapters even if they are not in place today in Boston where she went to school and she took part in a workshop for fat women even though she was not fat at that point but that was her identity and her families having been a bigger teenager and looking different to what fashion magazines told her she was supposed to look like and she knew from her family history that being fat was going to be a part of her future. After this she was not involved for many years but being aware that there is an organization out there which spoke out to fat people and it made her question a lot about weight loss and diet and think about if it was okay to be fat or not. She also talked about the context of the time she was a teenager having Richard Simmons on TV and Americas biggest looser which really impacted body culture and the relationship to it.
After a while she moved to Oakland, California and she created a nighttime event which was a plus size club event and it was a hip hop party which was centered around women of color and fat women which lead to fashion events and an interesting thing about Oakland is that there is a multigenerational community of movement having to do with marginalized bodies. The way that she got involved with NAAFA was the creation of the fashion show and this is how she got her foot back in the door which lead to her becoming a member of the board and now she is the director.
One of the main questions I had for her was what the appropriate vocabulary was when talking about bodies fro her perspective since she has worked with people from different body sizes, what she recommended is that one should really follow the person one is speaking too lead or asking them directly because people have very strong opinions about the word fat but another one which I thought was more neutral but clearly I was wrong are the words overweight and obesity. There are more neutral ones but each one comes with its own issues such as plus size, higher weight and larger bodied however plus size feels very gendered to a lot of people as being a female expression and it is also a stigma because there is normal and then there is plus size another one that could be used is straight size however it is not really known and mostly used in the fashion industry and no were else. For thin people she normally just says thin or people in a normative body because even if you feel negatively about your body you might have a body with is accepted by society, however there is also the pathologizing of fat bodies and giving them all the same medical designation when talking about over weight and obese and it is not just a description of the body. Fat activists are opposing to the idea of obesity being a disease because they feel they should not be called sick if they are not really sick and then used as ana example in order to sell and prescribe things as well as having lies being spread about them.
She spoke about the fact that it is a civil organization and even if being fat causes every single problem on the world there is no reliable way of changing somebodies body and even if I have a disease I still have rights and deserve to have a safe work environment, being paid fairly, accommodation and for space to be made for them. They also question if it is a true medical condition? However there are a lot of people who were traumatized with the word fat and feel as if obesity is the first time that they are told that being fat is not their fault and why is this even a question there should not be any fault when it comes to this. What they are arguing is that fat should be used in a neutral word and just be used as a word for description such as having brown hair. Fat activist will always use the word fat because they are a part of the fat liberation movement.
there was one example she spoke about where there was an organization that wanted to collaborate with them but these people in the meeting did not feel comfortable speaking or saying the word fat and it is hard for them to understand that it is not possible to distigmatize a word that you are not even able to say, this is also a problem when it comes to journalists in the way that when they call her a fat activist they put in quotations next to it that this is how she prepares to be referred to and this is important and also interesting because why should this be explained.
Another example she spoke about was the fact that when her nephew was little she did her best to have the word be neutral and there was a Santa apron and she asked her nephew who should wear it and he said that it should be Tigress because she is fat and so is Santa and she stayed calm and choose to accept that and then find a way to explain to him that other people might feel bad from him sayin that because there is trauma around the word and at times it is almost like a type of slur.
I also asked her about the relationship between fat phobia and eating disorders and she explained that there is a tremendous connection and we have to understand that eating disorders are very complicated and they should not be looked at as it only there being eating disorders because we live in a world that is anti fat, what is really interesting is the fact that when someone is overweight if they have behaviors that would be considered eating disorders in people who were thin and they are told that they can figure it out later when they have lost the weight.
She gave me the advice that I really need tomato sure that I analyze and think about the assumption I might have when speaking to people as well as assessing what their assumptions might be trying to look at some blind spots and look at areas of study from different perspectives.
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