A musing about the fat body, and the violence of being perceived as morally incorrect. Content warning for weight loss and talking about being fat.
[Fat critical comments on this post will be ignored, posters may be blocked. Fat hating comments will be reported, posters will be blocked.]
I just found out about "scopophobia" - the morbid fear of being stared at. I know some people can't deal with looking at photos of people making direct eye contact, but that doesn't bother me. For most of my life though, social anxiety has been present and a large part of it is about the fear of being seen and acknowledged.
In a weird way, I have always felt invisible OR hypervisible - I have no idea how that works but it is what it is. It might be that I don't consider myself to be real, and when I am acknowledged it's confronting and shocking to me? I remember feeling like a ghost when I have been really sick.
When I was a lot fatter it was even more of an issue for me and I don't think that's imaginary - people dismiss and discount fat people's existence but they also target fat people to ostracise and embarrass them. My social anxiety was absolutely at its height when I was very fat.
At my current body size, my anxiety about being hypervisible has mostly evaporated. I must stress this part though: I do not think that reducing the body is the solution for this phobia, the issue is cultural. It is fatmisia (fat hatred). My social anxiety has always been present but the cultural hatred and exclusion of the fat body aggravated my existing mental disorder.
When you leave the house and can't fit into seating, find clothes that fit, doctors dismiss your valid health concerns and blame it on fatness, people look at you and even say hateful things to you/ about you... you don't feel welcome in the world. The world doesn't want to include you. I think that falls into a failing of our culture, an active malevolence and violence against the fat body. It's not necessarily a mental disorder.
