In Response to Katie Hopkins
Following her publication in the MailOnline that targets another of her beloved anathemas—“KATIE HOPKINS: This Christmas give a fat person you know the greatest gift of all – some brutal honesty!”—it would arguably be simpler for me to structure my response in line with the stance that most journalists tend to adopt against Hopkins, by criticising her characteristic use of ad hominem or arguing from a standpoint of subjective morality. My aim, however, is to expose the flaws in what Hopkins normatively represents through serving as but another cog in the “beauty myth” machine—originally envisioned by Naomi Wolf—albeit in now what I regard to be its transitional phase.
By employing an appearance-centred conception of “fatness,” her general approach evidences the taking-size-at-face-value conditioning of the beauty myth. In Wolf's original form, the beauty myth is the political means by which the historically-gendered power inequality in Western society is maintained in the face of female acquisition of power. This typically involves the perpetuation of an unattainable physical “ideal” of beauty that invokes insecurities and prescribes behaviours in women to serve this aim whilst simultaneously funding parasitic industries.
However, in its current transition—of which Hopkins serves as a vanguard—the female-directed beauty “ideal” has been replaced by a still appearance-oriented but now unisex concept of “fatness” that aims to generate the same bodily insecurities as the initial myth, but this time in both sexes. In referring to female “fatness” using the residual terminology of the original myth that denounces “fat” women as lacking beauty and to unisex “fatness” in wider connotations of employability and health, Hopkins facilitates its transition towards invoking insecurities in all persons, regardless of gender. It is my ultimate belief that this serves to augment the power domination of the once subsidiary industries via the empty ameliorations we seek in consumption.
This perpetuation of an appearance-based definition can be noted in Hopkins' use of size-related ad hominem in her article: “Jenni Murray, has had a gastric sleeve fitted and still looks enormous . . . . David Aaronovitch, is starving himself one day a week to try and shift the pounds. Yet they were both very keen that I should be the one with the problem.” This hallmark of the beauty myth, which in its original form dissects the appearance of any woman who criticises its prevalence in society so as “. . . to undermine what she is saying and . . . individualise—as her personal problem—[her] observations” (Wolf, p.274), she extends in general by equating the appearance of “fatness” with the mutual exclusivity of traits considered desirable in women or functional in both sexes. These traits include self-love—“Where weight is concerned, we encourage people to love their bodies and to embrace their curves, even if they are hanging over the side of your seat”—and employability, where Hopkins is paraphrased in an interview on ITV's This Morning as stating that she would never hire “someone [who is] overweight because they are lazy and lack ambition.”
The (desired) consequence of these equations is to induce insecurities in the reader at the prospect of being labelled “fat” which—like the original myth has succeeded in doing—cultivates a culture of destructive thinking in which “fat” becomes, for example, “a synonym for being sexually repulsive” (Reid) and has the effect that even those who disagree with Hopkins become self-conscious, such as the journalist Casilda Grigg: “But there is just one more question. I take a deep breath. ‘. . . [D]o you think I'm fat?’ . . . Katie gives me the up and down. ‘. . . [Y]ou could lose half a stone.’”
By encouraging us in her article to confront “fat” loved ones given the public cost of obesity-related healthcare, Hopkins adds an additional layer to the myth's already appearance-oriented definition where being “fat” can now involve the mutual exclusivity of health as well as beauty and employability. Thus, the image of “fatness” that the reader elicits becomes all-encompassing and volatile by spilling into every vein of one's person—employability, beauty, self-love, health. Hopkins' definition, seemingly without limits and vague in its measurability, creates a situation in which we do not know at what point we become “fat” in the eye of the myth—are we “fat” when we are clinically obese and requiring of medical intervention, or when we are clinically overweight for our body shape, or when we fail to align with the mannequin body measurements of the myth's gender “ideals”?
As one looks at one's self in the mirror in a heightened state of myth-induced self-awareness, a plethora of industries fatten through their offering of preventative measures and solutions to the indefinable and via their simultaneous shifting of the definition from one of appearance to health, and so on, just as the original myth did by offering varying solutions to an issue that kept on shifting: “From the industries' point of view, the one scenario worse than women winning at this rigged game would be for them to lose interest in playing it at all . . . A woman is scarcely given the chance to think before she must take up her burden again, the journey growing more arduous each time” (Wolf, p.102). Therefore, by avoiding any strict description of what “fatness” entails, the myth will always prevail, since just as in its original form it cared little about what “women looked like as long as [they] felt ugly” (Wolf, p.272), just so the transitioning myth keeps its definition open-ended so as to maximise the number of people who feel “fat.”
Hopkins' perspective—one of an arguably militant utilitarianism—is reinforced in her article through reference to the role of the taxpayer in “paying for new knees and new hips, often for those who have eaten themselves to a size where their joints give up.” Via such guilt-inducement, the transitioning myth employs another tool in its arsenal aimed at maximising our insecurities, which Hopkins also facilitates in her self-study documentary series “My Fat Story” for the TLC television network for which she gained three-four stone by eating “[thirteen] ready meals daily to prove how easy it was to shed the pounds” (Grigg). In recommending that “fat” people follow her example by eating 1,500 calories a day to lose weight—roughly 500 calories below the recommended intake for a woman—Hopkins implicitly suggests that our private food consumption becomes a public matter when we are “fat,” thus cultivating the same sense of shame exacted by the original myth's beauty “ideal” in which “[w]omen [were made to] feel guilty about female fat, because we implicitly recognise that under the myth, women's bodies are not our own but society's, and that thinness is not a private aesthetic, but hunger a social concession exacted by the community” (Wolf, p.187).
Here food, as “the primal symbol of social worth” (Wolf, p.189), is subtly used by the myth to denounce the social worth of “fat” people, since by virtue of their size they are encouraged to restrict their portions unlike thinner individuals for the sake of their community. Combined with the aforementioned vagueness of the all-encompassing “fatness” definition, this provokes the (desired) consequence of once again putting the reader on high alert, regardless of their actual size, because almost anyone can be labelled “fat” under the definition and thus have their food consumption turned into a public issue. We can already see the culture of public shame that the myth has instilled in us in the case of Lindsey Swift who was ridiculed by a van driver who sang Mika's “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)” when she was jogging (Driscoli). By inculcating a sense of guilt at being “fat” within a society in which our bodies are no longer just our own, our insecurities deepen at the fear of others' perceptions which plays into the ever-hungry myth's hands.
The transitioning myth employs an additional guilt-inducement tactic, but this time in the form of self-responsibility, via Hopkins' assertion that “. . . obese people are the architects of their own misfortune”—the (mis)construction of agency as choice. Just as the original myth “[succeeded] in making [women] feel as guilty as possible” via its beauty advertisements that portrayed “[t]he sole moral responsibility for her aging or shape . . . [to rest] in [her] hands” (Wolf, p.96), just so the current myth conditions us through its “choice” motif to feel solely responsible for being “fat” under its definition, as employed by Hopkins: “ . . . [F]atties have the one thing disabled people don't have. They have choice. Nobody's forcing them to shovel food in their faces.” We have choice, we are told, and yet this depiction of the self, which neglects its being situated in a wider public sphere, (wilfully) ignores the underlying industry impulses that influence its exercise of free-will. By focusing on this sense of uninfluenced “choice” via which one's failure to accord with the changing prescriptions of the myth can be labelled an issue of self-responsibility, we are encouraged to ignore the extent to which our subconscious behaviours appear “to follow . . . the interests of power itself” (Hemmings and Treacher).
By emphasising this apparent “choice,” Hopkins ironically highlights the core issue at the heart of the myth—its absence—since when it comes to deciding whether or not to play this rigged game, the myth's conditioning, so heavily ingrained in us, leaves us with no choice but to. In accordance with Wolf's evaluation of the pressures of the original myth, where she states that “women will have a real choice about cosmetic surgery only when: [i]f we don't do it, we can keep [our] livelihood; . . . [i]f we don't do it, we can keep our identities, . . . [and if] we don't do it, we can still keep our places in the community” (p.258-259), it can be realised that as the myth transitions we would also have a real choice about whether or not to lose weight only if by not losing it we would not be judged by a prospective employer, we would keep our identities without judgment from the outset, and we would still keep our places as equals in our community.
Following Wolf's observation that “[a]dvertising has begun to portray the male body in a beauty myth of its own” (p.289), it is my prediction that there will occur a transition towards a perpetuation of physical “ideals” for both sexes, of which the current shift from “beauty” to “fatness” is just the beginning. The consequence will be equivalent to that of the original beauty myth, but this time in both sexes, involving the inducement of insecurities in individuals about their alignment with the shifting “ideals” and others' impressions at their inevitable failure to do so. A mutual distrust will arise in the self-other interaction where the self will be suspicious of a positive reaction or compliment from the other given the indoctrinated mutual exclusivity of “fatness” with any desired traits, as noted as a consequence of the original beauty myth: “I knew I could not possibly see him as I was now, with my stomach hanging over the top of my underpants, with my thighs that chafed together . . . I would have to do so much before I could see him. For I knew, and in knowing this, I hated him for a moment, that without my beauty he would not love me” (Wolf, p.173).
In line with the aforementioned, the self will be tempted towards consumption, just as the cosmetics and weight-loss industries directly profited from the original myth. Hopkins, by emphasising her ability to lose weight in “My Fat Story” without any deference to such consumerist solutions, other than a pair of trainers, ironically augments the strength of the myth's claims, since individuals will believe it to be just as possible for them to reach the “ideal” but, given their individual circumstances and the volatility of the “fatness” definition, many will find it difficult to do so and will inevitably buy into industries' branded promises.
As the insecurities of both sexes deepen with the changeability of the myth's “ideal,” it is my prediction that the power of these industries will grow to dominate over man, the reality of which is (unwittingly) emphasised by Hopkins: “As Generation Y leaves university more thinned-skinned than ever before, we are less likely than ever to tackle difficult issues head-on. Big news: Life doesn't come with a safe space.” Through investigating the realities of the current transitional phase, an explanation can be elicited that points to our being thinned-skinned because the myth has conditioned us to be insecure with its unattainable “ideal” and to life being without a safe space because the consequence has been the creation of a culture of self-scrutiny in which the constant turbulence of a changing “ideal” makes us judge ourselves and fear the judgment of others.
Why defend Hopkins' stance with reference to freedom of speech when the myth conditions our society not to uphold freedom of the body? Just as Wolf considered, how can we have freedom of either when much of our journalism is funded by the very industries that profit from the insecurities induced by the myth? We need only look at the MailOnline, “the world's most popular English-language newspaper website” which in 2014 offered brands “sponsored” articles at £65,000 each (Adler) and in the same year was reported to be expecting its U.S. advertisement revenue to surpass £10 million (Sebastian), to observe the fattened myth in its element.
*This article was originally published in the LSE’s The Beaver online in early 2016. The author has decided to republish it on this platform as the overall message is still believed to be pertinent today.
Article tags: | identity | beauty myth | consumerism |
Katie Hopkins, as she appears in her 2015 TLC documentary, ‘If Katie Hopkins Ruled the World.’ Image source: TLC
The beauty myth has arguably entered a transitional phase. Image source: Everett Collection / Shutterstock
The open-ended definition of “fatness” perpetuates the beauty myth by keeping us guessing. Image source: MEDIUM
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