Kate Manne: "People who are slightly overweight live longer"

BarcelonaFor as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be thinner. It's one of the first confessions this philosopher and professor at Cornell University has made to Irreducibles (Captain Swing), a book in which personal reflections give way to a broad analysis of how fatphobia acts as a factor of inequality and oppression.

Let's begin, like the book, in London.

— I was invited to do a tour for my previous book, a great opportunity. My first thought was, "I'm too fat to be a feminist in public."

Because?

— Being fat diminishes your authority, especially for women. And I had to talk about misogyny, about patriarchy. I was worried about the comments and insults about my body that could hurt me. But above all, I was worried that they would simply see a fat body and not listen to me.

Why do you say that fatphobia is structural?

— Look at the number of sectors in which it has an impact on people's lives: education, health, access to public spaces, employment... It does not only affect interpersonal environments, it is a systemic set of oppressive forms.

Give me some examples. How does it affect work?

— One of the most illustrative studies compared an overweight woman, a cousin, an overweight man, and a thin man. Participants came from different sectors: university professors, shopkeepers, salespeople, and manual laborers. They were given virtually identical dossiers; the only difference was the photograph. The thin man was always the favorite. The overweight woman, the least favored.

Is it a factor equivalent to race or sex?

— I think so. It's an undervalued aspect of systemic bias. And we've become more aware of misogyny, sexism, and classism—at least some of us have—but fatphobia is a form of oppression that intersects with all of them, and I don't know if we have the same level of awareness.

You say it's the bias that gets worse.

— It's the only form of implicit bias that Harvard researchers have found to be on the rise, compared to race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and disability. It tells us one thing clearly: we're not making progress, and we're even going backward.

Jane's story is very tough.

— She started losing weight, but when she consulted doctors, they told her she still needed to lose more because she was overweight. It turned out she had cancer that had spread to many organs. It was too late to treat her. While not astonishing, it's a shocking story.

Isn't that surprising?

— People who have lived with an obese body their entire lives often find that doctors don't see beyond their weight. And this shapes all other thinking, because they are unable to see that the symptoms may not be related to body size.

Are overweight people less healthy?

— People with obesity, yes. And those who are underweight, too. But there are many studies that say people with a BMI (body mass index) between 25 and 30, that is, overweight, live longer. Some body fat is protective.

What do you think about BMI?

— It's a very problematic measure, among other things for the reason I just mentioned: overweight people have better disease and mortality rates. Do you know where BMI comes from?

Where from?

— It's based on 18th-century Flemish military personnel. Why should we maintain the average body size of those 300-year-old soldiers as the standard today? And these charts have essentially been adapted to Anglo-Saxon culture using early 20th-century insurance company tables. Many people think it's a measure of a healthy weight based on their height, when in reality it tells you what the average body size was years ago, with the conviction that this should be the standard. It's absurd.

But we all want to be thin and we reject fat people.

— Fat bodies often evoke visceral and physical disgust, even towards ourselves. And physical disgust is easily confused with moral disgust. So we turn the fat body into something culturally repulsive.

And what does this imply?

— People tend to perceive fat people as less virtuous because we often mistake disgust for moral condemnation. We then try to rationalize it, assuming that fat people are lazy or don't try hard enough, when in reality they have often dedicated significant time and effort to trying to lose weight.

In fact, the body is largely determined by genetics.

— It's almost as hereditary as height. Approximately 70% of weight is determined by genetics, and 78% of height. Can you imagine telling someone to try harder to be taller?

How does it affect the heterosexual male gaze?

— Misogyny thrives on fatphobia. I think it serves a particular purpose: it allows women to be categorized inversely to their body mass. And it's useful from a patriarchal perspective.

Because?

— Privileged men believe they have the right to be with women who provide them with more social and sexual capital. How is this determined? By how beautiful and thin the partner is. So weight becomes an indicator of the capital you can bring to a man within a patriarchal society.

But men can desire fat women.

— There is a TikToker She always says, "Men date other men." What she means is that it doesn't matter who they're attracted to. There are men who will be attracted to larger women but will have relationships in secret or without telling their friends, because the person they date has to be respectable in the eyes of other men.

The sexual chapter is one of the hardest. You hint at abuse by a teacher, and how you couldn't say anything.

— There is something devastating and common when you are not positioned as a desirable woman, because if I am not attractive, no one will believe that someone could have abused me.

You describe an extreme case in Canada.

— The judge did not find rape in the case of the overweight woman. In his written statement, he said—literally—that she had a pretty face, but that because of her figure, because of her body shape, she might have felt flattered by the attention the man had shown her. And this served to justify that she had consented.

What is the hogging?

— A practice in American fraternities, where they compete to see who sleeps with the fattest woman. A horribly exploitative practice in which these men seek out overweight women to compete with their male friends.

How can we learn to accept our bodies?

— I don't believe in the body positiveI think it's difficult to be positive about our bodies all the time; I also don't believe in the body neutralitywhich is the idea of ​​accepting the body as it is, and that's it. I propose something I've called body reflexivity.

What is it?

— Your body is yours, and the other person's body is theirs. It cannot be subject to quantitative evaluation, because it is simply the vehicle for living life. It can be a source of pleasure and pain, but the key is that we should not classify it, compare it, or rank it.

In the midst of all this, Ozempic arrives. What do you think?

— It has democratized thinness. But I worry that we're seeing more and more trends of extreme weight loss. In Hollywood, it's no longer about being thin; you have to be extremely thin. And at the same time, I feel compassion and solidarity with people who suffer from fatphobia and may find in these drugs a way to reduce the harm.

You say that your body has taken things away from you.

— Dancing without shame, enjoying swimming at the beach or in the pool…

But you end the book by saying that you've bought a swimsuit.

— And I've spent a week at the beach with my husband and daughter, enjoying the waves.