Love in all sizes

Nov 08, 2024

Word in Progress - Karen-Michaela Tan

Growing up in the public school system, my brother Chris and I both had special friends through our secondary years. Mine was Harlizawati, while Chris’ buddy was Azizi, a rangy, wiry kid who loved sports and was burnt to a deep mahogany brown from the time he spent on the football field and running track. Azizi hung out at our house a lot, and was well-loved by the family for his easy-going manner and eagerness to help. He had a big, broad smile which took over most of his face, resulting in his nickname, ‘Gigi’ (teeth).

Unlike Harliza who moved away from Kampung Kerinchi when she married, Gigi continued to live with his mother. He remains unmarried, and is a loving, dutiful son to his ageing remaining parent. The only thing that has changed in the near 30 years since he and my brother left La Salle Brickfields has been Gigi’s weight. A series of sports mishaps have caused him to be unable to do the sports he loves, and this inactivity has made him gain weight.

As the owner of an editorial provisions firm, I am sometimes in need of photographers for projects. Gigi had become a photographer after training in graphic design. I engaged him for a project, and was happy to see the commitment which defined him in his teens continued in his professional life. However, on the next, markedly bigger and more exhausting project, I found that my old friend struggled with having to run between venues to take photos. By the end of a long day, he was hobbling, his feet throbbing in their too-tight sneakers. Yet, he was as cheerful and as earnest as ever, insisting he was okay to continue with the job the next day. Knowing the days that followed would be even more fast paced, I antagonised about what to do. In the end, though it was unplanned for, I hired another photographer on the pretext that the client was pushing for the photos and that two shutterbugs on the job would allow Gigi to stay in one location, sit down and process the photos taken at that venue while I ran ahead with the other cameraman for the next series of shots.

After the project ended, Gigi sent me an invoice for an amount that was 30 per cent less than the fee we had agreed on. When I called him to tease him that he was getting old and had forgotten the actual fee, he told me that he knew he had slowed down the process and knew that another photographer had not been budgeted for. He was lowering his fee to defray my costs.

I refused to entertain any talk of such a thing and told my old friend as much. As it turned out, the client was very pleased at the work produced and asked specifically who shot some particular photos. They were Gigi’s, and he was asked to take on another assignment which was far less strenuous than the first. From that project’s earnings he gave me back the cost of hiring the extra photographer, and expressed his thanks for my subtly helping him out.

It was hard, he said, to be limited by how heavy he was and how cumbersome the weight was in some photographic situations. He confessed that he had been desperate for work at the very time I asked him to come aboard the project, because his mother’s hospital bills had been higher than expected.

He also shared how ashamed he felt when he was passed over for jobs because clients needed a more agile or quick-moving photographer.

In this age of body shaming, it is so common that people with weight issues are painted collectively as having no self-control, with tendencies towards gluttony and sloth. There are no accounts in the Bible about overweight people aside from the obscure king Eglon of Moab in the book of Judges, so I do wonder what Jesus would have thought about the epidemic of obesity sweeping the world today. Would He have equated girth with laziness, or condemned an obese person for greed?

When Jesus was asked of the blind man in John 9:1-5, “Who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered, neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

While not equating obesity with a condition as debilitating as spina bifida, or as life shortening as sickle-cell anaemia, obesity sufferers can be both pitied or condemned depending on the person in judgement. I question why there needs to be a defence of the way we address obesity if it is an illness or a disability the same as blindness.

I reckon that while blindness is viewed as a tragedy (because who wittingly stabs themselves in the eye with a sharp object?), obesity is viewed as the result of individuals who lack the ability to stop eating. This is where most of the unforgiveness comes in. Questions like ‘why don’t you just stop eating?’ or statements like ‘exercise more’ belie the complexities of the condition.

Obesity is a multifactorial disease. A disease. Not something that happens to someone who likes their Twisties a little too much. It can be caused by a lifetime of subsistence on cheap, ultra processed foods because a person or family lives in such economic insecurity that even if there was the availability of fresh vegetables and meat, the lack of proper cooking facilities, or even cooking gas might make it impossible to prepare healthier food.

The packing on of weight can also be psychiatric. Women who have been sexually abused have been known to eat themselves into a protective shell of fat so as to make themselves abhorrent to men, thus preventing the likelihood of another physical attack. Less than healthy coping mechanisms, reactions to stress and a slew of other mental health conditions can also drag a person down to the underworld of obesity.

Our challenge as Christians is not to judge. Even if our inner Pharisee brands an obese person a drain on society and a waste of health care resources, as followers of Jesus we are taught to have compassion. For underneath the extra weight is a person made in the image and likeness of God who deserves the chance to make a sustainable living for themselves and their dependents, and be judged on the merit of their work and not their size.

(Karen-Michaela Tan is a poet, writer and editor who seeks out God’s presence in the human condition and looks for ways to put the Word of God into real action.)