Ignore

One of the things fat people are told is that we should ignore bad feeling against us and go merrily on our way. As if that is all we have to be concerned about.

What many of us have realised and said is that ignoring fat hatred doesn't work, I've agreed with this myself.

Is that the full story?

We have all been inculcated with fat phobia, whatever our weight. Those of us who are fat were in a different position we were not disliking or hating someone else, but ourselves. Just as thinner people don't want to get fat, we didn't want to remain so, being called fat had the power to upset because we were being reminded that we were what we didn't want to be, despite our efforts. We felt trapped, which often produces despair.

The hurt was from trying to mentally separate from our inner fatness, only to be constantly rejoined with it by being reminded. The insult was created by the shared basis of ideals. Don't be fat be thin. Only when you do not share that view, can you ignore

As long as you share the fat phobic consciousness, ignoring it is very difficult indeed, most of the time. What makes ignoring insults possible is not sharing the same basis of assumption or still being stuck with the (undoubtedly for many people) traumatic aftermath of all this. 

Only when you no longer wish to exit yourself and formulate another consciousness about yourself, your self esteem and worth can you ignore that which is now becoming something that is outside yourself.

Only when you have separated your view from that of the ignorant can that distance make it possible for you not to be dragged around by others hooking into the way you feel.

So yes, ignoring fat hating is possible, in fact I'd say it's necessary. By that I'm not saying don't fight, it's more that we probably do need to get to a position where we are secure in our own understanding of things.

Without that, we will continue to keep operating on a shared agenda, which means we are part of it and therefore cannot ignore it.