The Joy of Movement – Conditions Applied

This blog is the second of our series of blogs on the experience of fatness in urban India, and is written by Vallari Shivkumar.

I want you to close your eyes and picture someone dancing, someone on a jog, someone on a stage, and lastly someone moving through grocery aisles. What do these people look like to you? What aspect of a person do you first consider when you think of movement? If it was all thin-bodied people –  why did this happen? 

As a fat person, my brain also pictures ‘thin’ people in these scenarios. The thin body as an ideal standard has become so normalized, that we picture a specific type of body performing certain actions like, people walking, and dancing. running, swimming, or people at the gym.

 

The Pervasive Fat Identity

I did not know fat was an identity until it was directed towards me as I grew up. One day it stuck and stayed and started to look like not being able to find clothes my size anymore, being picked last in sports teams, and being teased about it. It soon became a term others used and it felt like more than just a descriptor. It felt like a character assessment, a negative one. 

Fatness as an experience doesn’t occur in isolation. It affects multiple aspects of a person’s being and life experiences. The body has always been a topic discussed in public and private spheres.  Human bodies have been conceptualized, illustrated, re-presented, explained, and interpreted politically for centuries. Different material cultures lived it differently, used different technologies, medical interventions, scientific expectations, and cultural controls, and incorporated it into different production and consumption patterns.

Fat people are reminded of their ‘fatness’ constantly and made to feel like that is all of who we are and that our value is associated with how our body looks. It becomes the first thing we have to acknowledge about ourselves. For example, a fat person exists in class not just as a student but also as someone who is fat and is constantly made aware of that. The size of chairs and tables is uniform to a thin body and as we grow up the space we occupy starts becoming quite visible. Every time a fat person sits on a table and someone makes a “careful, it’ll break under your weight” remark, and every time one has to squeeze themselves sideways because the passage isn’t wide enough as we move between rows of chairs and tables that are not built for someone like us.  People give dirty looks when a fat body asks to share a seat on trains or buses. Research shows that people feel anxious, dissatisfied, and out of place when their clothes are too small or their seating is too tight. There is a double consciousness of identity that occurs. This double consciousness refers to a person living their identity as a student and living their identity as a fat person reinforced via different agents of socialization as well as institutionally. 

Even spaces that are meant to be fun, can feel restricting. Places like amusement parks and trampoline parks have weight limits that exclude a  part of the population on the basis of their body type. Amusement parks have seats and belts that don’t always fit bigger bodies.  Trampoline parks in India have varying weight limits from the lowest being  85kgs to the highest of 150kgs. For amusement parks, the seats and belts can often be not big enough for fat people. For example, Aqua Imagica has weight limits for specific rides whereas Imagica does not mention weight limits but has height limits for specific rides. It is essential to add weight limits as it is necessary for the safety of the individual and it is also necessary to examine and acknowledge how these manufacturer designs make these spaces inaccessible to fat people that make up 23%  of the Indian population. 

 

To Move Or Not To Move?

Active Movement as a fat person is a whole other ball game. There is a difference in perception of a fat person moving vs a non-fat person moving. The assumption is that a fat person moves to get ‘thin’. Whereas, a non-fat person is free to have a multitude of purposes. Even if a fat person actively moves for a different purpose, fat movement is always met with stares and opinions, either to point out flaws or to say that our movement should be for one purpose only: to get thin.  For fat people, there is pressure to fit societal norms and to move but it is dictated by what others think fat people should be doing. Developing a healthy relationship with movement becomes challenging. This creates a vicious cycle of  dilemma about ‘am I moving my body to get thin?’ or ‘am I moving my body so that I can take care of it and understand it better?.’ I am unsure of my motives because I experience the way my body gets treated vs the idealized ‘thin’ body gets treated. 

When people see a fat body, they automatically assume its function is faulty. What is it about squishy and jiggly bits in a body that garners that reaction? Why does a body that may not be fast or flexible undeserving of space and access to movement spaces? 

These questions perplexed me as I engaged in my preferred form of movement over the years- dance. Dancing has always been something I’m passionate about but my journey with dance hasn’t always been the easiest. As much as I find joy in it now, there have been moments associated with this form of movement and expression that have led me to believe that my body isn’t the right kind of body for dance. I have had instructors ask me to lose weight, make me stand at the back during a performance, and ask me to switch to a different style because my body can’t make clean lines while dancing or if I told relatives that I have joined a dance class they would always comment on how it would help me lose weight. I may not have been the best dancer, but most of the time, the comments made had more to do with my body than they did with my actual dancing ability. It led me to believe that I can only dance well if I have a specific body type, which was ‘thin’. Now, I dance because it helps me connect with myself, it’s a creative outlet, and it is also a form of movement that helps me connect with people around me. In the dance industry, there is a hierarchy of body types that exists. For example,  Ballet as a style demands and perpetuates a certain body type that is ideal for dance. It took time and my on-and-off relationship with dance and my body to fix itself. Perceptions like these have led to fat people shrinking themselves and not going after things and opportunities they may want to because the belief is that their body doesn’t move the way it is supposed to.  

For fat people, movement is a double-edged sword, if you do it people have opinions, and if you don’t do it people have even more opinions. Hatred and insults are passed as thinly veiled comments of concern. When fat people dare to work out in public, we’re ridiculed at best and harassed at worst. Ironically enough, movement is considered crucial to a fat person’s very existence and validity as a person.  The lack of movement is considered the core cause of fatness. This belief led to Zerodha– an organization launching health-based initiatives in their organization that monetarily incentivize a calorie loss program and a low BMI. The issue with this is that, even though the intent may have been to promote movement at work from home during the pandemic, the relationship between movement and health is skewed when it is measured via calories and BMI. BMI is a flawed way to measure health. Incentivizing a measure of health that is inaccurate leads to an unhealthy relationship being created with one’s body and exercise and spreads misinformation about what is actually healthy. 

There’s a lot of privilege associated with fitness; it takes time, money, and access that most people don’t have. Most fat people don’t go to gyms or exercise classes, even if they really want to because they have to jump a lot of hurdles and more just to get there. It is widely believed that fat people are lazy and ignorant, and simply don’t want to get up from the couch and do some physical activity because they are too lazy and ignorant. A nationwide survey in America by the International Health, Racquet, And Sportsclub Association found that about a third of the respondents said they were too intimidated to work out at a gym. Most treadmills (as well as bikes, stair climbers, and other gym gear) have weight limits between 90kg and 140kg. Also, activewear is scarce, and it doesn’t come in plus sizes (Nike added plus sizes in 2017). Fat people aren’t being kept out because of their fatness, but because of anti-fat bias.

 

No Space To Fit In

Even though people tell us to lose weight, they don’t want us in their spaces, which includes pretty much anywhere but our own homes. Even after one does make peace with moving their body, for whatever reason, the issue of ‘space’ still stands. Spaces that encourage movement feel inaccessible because it feels like there is a set standard to what is acceptable in those spaces like public parks, gyms, pools, playgrounds, and fitness and movement classes. It‘s extremely intimidating to enter a space in which one feels like one doesn’t belong and is occupying too much space simply by existing. Research has indicated that fat people often cope with such experiences by simply excluding themselves from sports and exercise. 

Fat people, alongside all others, have been pushed to believe that fat people are unlovable, undesirable, and should not be seen or heard. They’re there to talk about, not to be talked to. It’s only natural that people who are fat would look ‘brave ‘if they saw, wore clothes, ate in public, and participated in public life the same way non-fat people do. It is exhausting to be considered ‘brave’ when one is just trying to live their life. ‘Brave’ is not awe, it is a reminder that fat people existing and living their life is an anomaly. I just want to live my life without constantly worrying about how my body is going to inconvenience the world around me.

There is a need for changes to make it conducive for fat people to have access to space and movement. For example, athletic wear for fat people, policies against weight discrimination, educating/training to check and acknowledge anti-fat bias for teachers, instructors, and trainers, and support groups and circles where people with similar body types can move together. Physical–spatial cues can create exclusion, but the effects of these are aggravated when combined with an apparent lack of sympathy or understanding from the audience watching the physical struggle. It is important to create awareness around the structural needs of fat people and accommodate for those needs in manufacturer designs. As Aubrey Gordon (Your Fat Friend) author and activist put it best,  my body may stay fat, but it will not stay still. 

 

Thank you for reading this blog, which is the second of our series of blogs on the experience of fatness in urban India. This blog series is a part of our upcoming research study on Fatness in Urban India, focusing on building counter-power narratives on the experience of fatness in Mumbai; as well as developing an evidence base for documentation of the discrimination and oppression faced by fat people in urban India, with a focus on 

 

(1) built environments

(2) health and medical infrastructure

(3) careers – educational institutions and workplaces

(4) intimacies and interpersonal relationships

 

Further, we hope to document the ways in which fat people embody different physical-emotional conditions. Finally, we hope to use this research study to co-create recommendations for changing norms, policies and infrastructure to meet the needs of fat people in urban India. 

 

To become a part of this study, please consider participating in our data collection process by giving us 30-45 minutes of your time in an interview. To learn more about the process, check if you are eligible and to sign up, please visit: bit.ly/OFC_Fatness_Study

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice

Shifting Away from a Single Narrative of Care

Hello!

Welcome to ‘Decolonizing our Practices: Conversing about Care’, a three-part blog post series. This series is a culminating conversation between Tangent MHI and One Future Collective as a part of our collaborative initiative, which was undertaken in October of 2021, to work towards decolonizing the perceptions and practices of mental health in India.

This is the third and final post of this series – ‘Shifting Away from a Single Narrative of Care’. Join us on this journey, and explore ideas around care as a process versus a product, care in communities and how one can try to shift away from normative performances of care. [Please note that for the purpose of readability, the speakers’ responses have been divided into paragraphs.

Each new response begins with their name (Ankita and Anvita), followed by their initials (A.B and A.W, respectively).]

Disclaimer: Before you go ahead, we would like you to remember that this conversation is informed by the personal and professional stances of the speakers, by their respective socio-political location, and by the resources, they have been able to access. We recognize that this is not the only way one can think about the ideas mentioned here. We would encourage you to bring your perspectives, share your thoughts, and any other resources in the comments below!

 

Ankita [A.B.]: (continuing from the earlier conversation)…This also brings into perspective how deeply ingrained into our system, the idea of care is and how the personal is always going to be political in one way or another, right? I wonder which systems benefit from the singular and magnified focus on individualised care? There are a couple of answers that come to mind. One would definitely be capitalism because we’re riding on the productivity high that we need every individual to be a productive part of society. And this is how capitalism ensures productivity – it markets these ideas, provides a space for care, of course with terms and conditions! I give you care and you get my work done.

A.B.: Another industry that, uh, benefits from this is the mental health industry to be very honest. As much as we’ve been realizing the importance of mental health and therapy, over the last two years, I also realize that therapy tends to be seen as one of the most, uh, legitimate forms of taking care of oneself. It also creates this clear power dynamic within the industry, and between the industry and the people who are seeking care. This was spoken about a number of times, both in our conversations with mental health practitioners and in our conversations with individuals who access mental health services. Thus, even when we talk about individualized care, or “self-care” as we call it more popularly, it also keeps the power with mental health professionals. And it might be very easy for even a mental health practitioner to miss out on the fact that, um, an individual evidently does not exist alone and in a vacuum, but this person exists as a part of a system and has multiple factors influencing them. 

A.B.: This brings me to the next question that I wanted for us to talk about. Over the last couple of months, we’ve been trying to learn as well as unlearn. What I want to ask you is that, if we were to unlearn and try to make a shift away from this individualized form of care, what can be some of the next steps? Or where do you think we can redirect our attention?

Anvita [A.W]: I absolutely agree with what you shared! An individualized approach to therapy ends up placing the onus of healing on the individual without taking their social reality into consideration. People can work on themselves as much as possible, but it’ll never truly make a difference if they continue living in a system that is against them. The notion of productivity that we spoke of earlier is also born from this individualized responsibility of taking care of ourselves. And what you said about the mental health industry, too, absolutely. When healthcare becomes more and more privatized, we accept it as a marketed transaction for a privileged few, instead of holding the state accountable for an inadequate public health infrastructure or working towards trying to improve it; to make it more accessible; to question these power dynamics.

A.W.: A conversation we’ve had a lot at OFC–especially while discussing the ongoing COVID Mental Health Project–is that oftentimes, um, service provision can be a reactive way to provide care. And, of course, during times of crisis and even otherwise, seeking such services can be so helpful. Seeking therapy has really helped me heal and grow. But we cannot stop our efforts there. What would it mean to have more universal and preventative forms of care where we create–co-create–cultures that are compassionate and just and equitable? So, instead of always responding to a mental health issue after it arises, we’re reducing its overall chances of occurring in the first place? And so much of this would involve unlearning ideas that we’ve believed all our lives. 

A.W.: I think it’s also important to acknowledge how deeply institutionalized these beliefs about care are, as you’d mentioned earlier. It’s like when we’re born, there are already certain norms about how our parents should take care of us and, ever since then, we grow up internalizing what we see–in our homes, our schools, our TVs, our media, public places, everywhere. So, we would need to restructure our institutions in a way that there’s more awareness about how the current ways of, you know, providing and seeking care are not always helpful for everyone–especially for people in the margins. We would need to go beyond just the field of mental health service provision and collaborate with other sectors. We would need to think about how we are forming educational curricula; how organizations are developing policies; how our laws are being made. And we can’t just gloss over structural inequalities when we consider all of these. We would need to consider how even our most personal ideas are actually shaped by these structures. And we would need to reflect on not just the structure of these institutions, but also the kind of culture we cultivate in them. 

A.W.: Also, our communities play such a key role here. I think, even during the pandemic, it was so lovely to see people making mutual aid efforts, amplifying SOS calls, and organizing sharing spaces to support each other; to stand in solidarity with their communities. During a time when people were experiencing collective grief and trauma, so much of the healing was happening in collectivities, too. I would love to hear your thoughts as well.

Ankita [A.B.]: I don’t think there are, like, a lot of different things for me to add. I agree that it’s of essence to start noticing, learning and practising cultural forms of care, which we haven’t previously seen as important because it hasn’t been portrayed to us as such. To also start respecting that “care” can shift its meaning for different individuals. For someone it can be sharing memes, for another, it can be reading a book and for the next person, it can be cooking for people they love. It doesn’t have to be glamorous. It doesn’t have to be visible. It doesn’t have to be–definitely does not have to be–expensive! 

Anvita [A.W]: Yeah!–A few days back, a team member of Tangent was telling me about this book on transformative justice that they’d recently read. And we went on to talk about holding space for feelings of guilt and shame. Even that can be such an important part of care. And the other day, in one of OFC’s meetings, someone said, “failure is a form of resistance to the capitalist system,” which was so moving. Accepting our failure can be a form of care and healing and liberation for a lot of us! Okay, you can go ahead. Sorry for interrupting you!

Ankita [A.B.]: No, absolutely! I think it’s a very, very important point. Failure is a manner of resistance. I think it’s important to remember that, because it’s easy for us to forget, so thank you for bringing that up. So we’ve just moved into the fag end of the conversation. How do we continue to keep this conversation going? What are some of your thoughts on that?

Anvita [A.W]: Would you like to take that up before I talk about it?

Ankita [A.B.]: Yeah, definitely! I also think about how much privilege we have to be able to even have this conversation. You know, there’s a privilege in that fact that we are here and having this conversation and we have access to things that are making it possible for people sitting in different parts of the country to be interacting with each other. If we want to keep continuing the conversation, it’s important for us to remember that we are going to fail and it’s fine. We’re going to stumble – that’s fine. We need to remember that different people might be at different levels of having this conversation. Our end goal might just be that we are trying to do away with a system that tells us that worth is based on productivity or on money or status indicators. I’m genuinely happy about how people are creating more resources based on lived experiences. And I think both Tangent MHI and OFC, have been trying to do our bit in sharing and curating resources. That is one thing I’m really glad about. Something that I would really love to see is for this conversation to keep on happening across intersections, across, language intersections, most importantly, and across intersections of like, all kinds of socio-political identities. So, I think that is what I had in mind. Yeah, I would love to hear what you think. 

Anvita [A.W]: Thank you, Ankita! I think you’ve covered everything that I had in mind. Also, I love what you ended with–about language intersections. And it may help to take this to different spheres of our lives, too. As in, not just having this conversation with those in the field of mental health, but also talking about it with our parents or our grandparents, you know, and understanding their experiences to explore these ideas across generations as well. I think we could continue having this conversation by holding it–formally or informally–within our micro-communities and in our social circles. It’s just a small start that would grow over time–is, is, is what I would hope.


Conclusion: 

Thank you for accompanying us on our dialogue around care! This is the concluding conversation of our blog post series. 

 

To access resources that have shaped our ideas of care, please find our resource list here. You can also find the summaries of our Sharing Circles 1, 2 and 3 with Mental Health Professionals here, here, and here, respectively; and that of the Participatory Workshop for Mental Health Users/Survivors here.

This blog also marks the concluding resource of our collaborative initiative, ‘Decolonizing our Practices’. We hope you found resonance in these spaces and that all of us continue to keep this conversation alive within and around us. Thank you!

About the Speakers

 

Anvita Walia is a student, researcher, and eternal learner. She is a Senior Program Officer at One Future Collective, a feminist social purpose organisation with a vision of a world built on social justice, led by communities of care. To know more about OFC’s work, please click here.  

 

Ankita is a listener, a mental health professional and one of the co-founders of Tangent Mental Health Initiative. Tangent MHI began in 2020 and works in the field of mental health service and advocacy. Their work is informed by the values of intersectional feminism, inclusion and accessibility. To know more about Tangent MHI’s work, you can click here.

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice

On Breastfeeding and Staying Away From Baby Formula

1

I am the soil, the filaments of the roots, the cradle of the shade.

It’s my power to nurture, pouring love

Into the beauty I held inside me.

Anyone that claims, my nurturing a burden,

Masquerading their fear of my power,

Their reluctance to redefine their ideas about shame

Shame not me, as I breastfeed.

Shame you, you failed your soil. Continue reading “On Breastfeeding and Staying Away From Baby Formula”

Mapping and negotiating power

Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world

Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice