The Divine in Us All (Part II)

Before we get into the topic of the day, I can't believe I'm going to make it. It was touch and go there for a while. But holy shit, I can't believe I made it. 

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming, I want to spend a bit of time on the topic of fatphobia. After yesterday's post, I figured it was worth examining the historical origins of fatphobia, in the hopes that I would find something different. 

And I think I did. 

According to Dr Sabrina Strings in her excellent book, "Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia", fatness was seen as a by-product of the interplay between climate and culture. Not only was one's size seen as a result of their cultural norms, but then this largesse was contrasted against the examiners' culture in an attempt to justify their feelings of cultural superiority. As a result, in the Ancient World, fatness functioned as a mirror and justification for one's prejudices. This is most apparent in how Hippocratic authors, described the Scythians (an ancient nomadic people who lived on the Eurasian steppes as having “moist, flabby and ‘effeminate’ bodies,” while the Greeks were blessed with “manly hardness.” This idea was built upon by the Romans, who would cast their cultural others as the “bloated and luxuriously decadent – sensuously ‘soft’ foils to the putative ‘hardness’ of Roman virtue.” 

As a result of this interplay, fat becomes moralized. To be fat became bad and othering. Despite the reality that to be fat did not mean you are an “other” or “inferior,” but, more likely, that you had wealth, and did not have to physically work. Nevertheless, the ‘othering’ effect of fatness, as a way to distinguish your "superior: culture over the "inferior" culture of your neighbours, would become a mainstay of how we would treat fatness. Yet when you look at Ancient Greek statues of women, they are bigger than what we consider to be a "normal" size. They had fat, rolls, and cellulite. Given that these statutes are meant to represent an ideal, this suggests that the ideal for women in ancient Greece was more forgiving than our own. This suggests that while the Ancient world moralised fatness and condemned its existence in others, they did not extend this castigation to their own people. 

Perhaps this explains why, centuries later, the condemnation of fatness became a commendation. In the Renaissance, fatness was praised. You need only look at depictions of the female body from this era to see that women were – for want of a better word – normal. Fatness contributed to beauty and desirability; both as a social and artistic matter. And as Europeans began their empires, and began engaging with new and different kinds of bodies, these bodies expanded their understanding of beauty, fatness and desirability. In 1528, famed painter Albrecht Dürer said of the African physique, in a line reminiscent of a J. Cole or Kendrick line: “I have seen some amongst them whose whole bodies have been so well-built and handsome that I never beheld finer figures, nor can I conceive how they might be bettered, so excellent were their arms, and all their limbs.” 

Yet as Dürer praised black bodies, he did not elevate their features to the singular beauty. Instead, he believed that beauty was found in everyone and in everything. Therefore, his job as an artist was not to exalt one beauty over the other but to identify the differences in beauty for all mankind to see the standard of beauty and desirability. According to Dürer, “The Creator fashioned men once and for all as they must [sic] be, and I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men.” 

This is different, right? A recognition that the divine in us all must mean that each of us is beautiful and desirable and worthy of affection, compassion and praise. And from the 16th century, no less. It makes me wonder why people would want to keep this acknowledgement to themselves. Given what happens next in human history, I would understand why people could not recognise the divine in everyone. Especially in those they oppressed and subjugated, as it would mean that they are oppressing the divine. And nobody wants to harm God, right? 

Yet in their attempt to absolve themselves from their sins, they limited what it meant to be a "good" human being. They had to constrict what it meant to be a person worthy of respect and dignity. And the people in power used every difference they could to enable these restrictions. Rather than insisting upon humanity on the basis of our similarities, they created a system that would always highlight our differences and reward those who fell on the right side of those differences. Essentially, a binary, mutually exclusive system of determining my worth. 

And it is far easier to insist upon my humanity inside this binary, than outside of it. It is far easier to expand the definition of the "right" kind of differences than to do with the systems of differences altogether. For it would mean doing away with norms that were established, propagated and enshrined over centuries. It would mean creating something new, and unknown and that's terrifying. Especially for those who have benefitted from parts of this system for generations.

Still, this isn't an excuse for not trying to create a world that recognises and uplifts the divine in all of us. As we become more willing to acknowledge and legitimise the pain experienced by people in the out-groups, we must turn this acknowledgement into action to redress this pain. Put simply, we must put this empathy into practice. 

Otherwise, what's the fucking point?