Sofie Hagen - Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright Sofie Hagen 2019

Sofie Hagen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Illustrations by Mollie Cronin (Art Brat Comics).

This book contains health- or medical-related materials or discussions. The content is the opinion of the author and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

This book is based on the authors experiences. Some names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed, reconstructed or disguised to protect the identities of those involved.

All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and the publisher to trace the copyright holders of the images and material quoted in this book. In the event that the author or publisher are contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and the publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.

Cover photograph Matt Crockett

All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and the publisher to trace the copyright holders of the images and material quoted in this book. In the event that the author or publisher are contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and the publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008293871

Ebook Edition March 2019 ISBN: 9780008293888

Version: 2019-04-18

To the canaries in the coal mine

Contents

H i, I am fat. I am also thirty years old, Danish and a Scorpio. I am a person who only recently felt adult enough to buy non-plastic plants. I have owned more instruments (three) than I have learned to play (zero). My favourite colours are red and purple. I have worked in an antique bookshop, a bakery, a sex shop (where they either believed me when I said I was older than I was, or just didnt care), a video store (from which I stole sweets), a posh grocery shop, a kindergarten (from which I got fired when the children asked me to pretend to be a Sleeping Grown-up and I actually fell asleep for an hour), and various charity organisations as both a street fundraiser and a telemarketing fundraiser. That was my last normal job before I started doing stand-up comedy. I have won a few big stand-up comedy awards such as the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. I have a poster on my wall of a flying llama saying Que Pasa? and I laugh every time I see it. I had my first article published when I was thirteen. It was about the pop singer P!nk and it was in a Danish teen magazine called Vi Unge. I had my first two-page spread published in a free newspaper called MetroExpress when I was fifteen. It was about How to Be the Best Westlife Fan. I love musical theatre and I love going to the cinema alone. I prefer dogs to cats. I also prefer dogs to most humans. I am many, many things other than my weight. I am sure you are too. I dont wish for my fatness to define me any more than I want Kindergarten Sleeper, Westlife Fan or Dog Lover to define me.

But when people see me, they see the fat. They judge and notice the fat. Despite this, they rarely say the word fat. That is why its part of the title of this book. FAT. I say it as often as I can. FAT. In the hopes that the more I say it, the less scary it will seem. We all have fat on our bodies, its only the volume of it that differs from person to person. Fat is essentially energy. Fat is protecting our organs. And fat is just a descriptive word. The negative connotations came later; hissed at us by a parent, shouted from a moving vehicle, or written in yellow all-caps letters on the front cover of a magazine as a warning.

A lot of effort is put into denying fat. Phrases like You have fat, you are not fat and I am not fat, Im just easy to see. The intention is sweet, but it does nothing but reaffirm that fat is bad. This is all called fatphobia. The fear of fatness. This is a message we see constantly from adverts on television, through fat characters in movies who either dont exist or are portrayed negatively, through your mother asking if youve gained weight with a sneer, your friends talking about their new diets, the high-street clothes shops not catering to a size bigger than 12, through the lack of fat people on the covers of magazines and the constant news stories telling us that the obesity epidemic is coming to get us all. Everything has the basic underlying message that it is positive to be thin and negative to be fat.

Of course, if a woman is thin, she will be wrong in other ways. She will be too thin, not the right shape of thin, not the right height, not have a large enough gap between her thighs and she needs to smile more but not too much, because that would be slutty. She needs to laugh but not at her own jokes, preferably mens jokes. She needs to wear a dress thats not too long because then she is a prude but also not short because then she is a whore. Her breasts have to be big but not vulgar-big and not big in length. And she most importantly has to never complain about these extreme and impossible beauty standards and societys wish to make her into an accessory.

There is a growing amount of pressure on men to look a certain way as well but usually, they are given a slightly bigger pass than women are. Yet, even if they do get a big pass, fat men are still not allowed to be fat. Fat is frowned upon, regardless of who embodies it and regardless of how much they embody. Trashy magazines will find even the slightest bulge on the stomach of a celebrity swimming in the ocean and plaster her all over the front cover of their magazine as an example of someone breaking the rules: by not staying thin.

Fat is perceived to be an exclusively negative thing. And it isnt. And it doesnt have to be.

Thats the essence of this book. Fat is not an inherently negative word. Fat is, if anything, neutral. But it can be beautiful, it can be loved, it can be absolutely magnificent. You can be fat and sexy, fat and healthy, fat and happy.

I love my body. I love my stomach with all of its red stretch marks hanging like an impractical bum bag over my thick, fleshy thighs which spread out and drape slightly over the sides when I sit in a chair. My double and, sometimes, triple chin. The jiggly flesh on my arms where there are, in theory, somewhere deep down, triceps. There is so much fat there that I can grab a fistful of it. My body is many, many fistfuls of fat. When I wear a bra, bulges of fat pop out right above the strap under my armpits, creating side boobs. My cheeks are thick, so thick that when I smile, they almost cover my eyes completely. I smile a lot. I would tell you how much I weigh, but I dont know. I stopped weighing myself years ago.