Usually, it is through its anti-grossophobia collective Gras Politique that it fights discrimination against fat people. This time, it is through a documentary that activist Daria Marx, 38, describes this daily violence. Entitled Daria Marx: My Life Basically , the documentary will be broadcast Tuesday evening at 10:40 pm on France 2. A few hours before its broadcast, activist Daria Marx explained, Tuesday, in Culture Media , how grossophobia disrupts the daily lives of victims.
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"I'm tired of being told that I'm round or voluptuous because it doesn't mean anything. I have voluptuous forms and I'm fat. You have to say everything in life". Daria Marx does 56 and she assumes it. Behind this apparent self-confidence, however, hides a journey marked by mockery and rejections. And his case is not isolated. In Daria Marx: My Life as a Fat Woman, she brings in young women who also experience this discrimination.
Invisible on TV
If Daria Marx chose to direct this documentary, it is in particular to fight against the invisibility of the big on the small screen, which, according to her, testifies to a "real will of the media". "The only time we see the big ones is to say that Marie-Josiane must lose 150 pounds to get married," she illustrates. Another case clearly visible on television, according to Daria Marx: "People who do bariatric surgeries", operations which consist in reducing the absorption of food. The purpose of this documentary is therefore to reverse the trend to show "fat in their natural state".
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Children stigmatized at school
As Daria Marx says, some traumatic situations, such as school bullying or incest, for example, can cause you to gain a lot of weight. And, once obesity is installed, it is difficult to flourish as a child. "I had an EPS teacher in college, when we were doing endurance, he made us run around a stadium. He asked the whole class to do four laps. I ran slower than the others but I did my four laps, "recalls Daria Marx, in an excerpt from the documentary broadcast in Culture Media .
"When I was finished, he said: 'So now, in front of the whole class, Daria, you're going to do two more laps because you really need them.' I was doing two laps all alone in a kind of horrible silence . The whole class was watching me, the fat one, doing my two extra rounds. It was horrible. "
Street or open harassment
When the big guys go out on the street, they are moving targets for others. "Once, with Eva (one of the girls interviewed in the documentary editor's note), we pass in the street in front of three little old women. We hear them say: 'Ohlala, what are they fat! In your opinion, How much do they weigh? '"says a friend of Daria Marx in the documentary. Another harmless situation, on the sidewalk, waiting for the VTC. "We were all three, a car passes and stops at our level. The driver lowers the window and shouts 'Eh BBW!' This is the category of porn for fat people: Big Beautiful Women ", describes another young woman.
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If in the film, these friends laugh at these situations, Daria Marx wishes to qualify the microphone of Philippe Vandel. "These are micro-aggressions all day long. There is not a day when I am not insulted by a big cow by a motorist. I have been fat for thirty years so I learned to put these mockery above from my head, "she says.
In bed too, grossophobia makes its nest
Public spaces are not the only places where grossophobia is expressed. Daria Maria says that her sexual partners do not take over her body. In the documentary, she talks about these "married men with whom I dated, with whom I slept and who went out with hyper normalized and thin girls". "They did not assume so much their desire to be on the arm of a fat woman that they married a very thin woman and that they cheated on her with a fat", explains Daria Marx, in an extract diffused on Europe 1.
The medical profession pointed at
Doctors and pharmacists sometimes even find it hard to imagine that a fat woman could have sex. "We receive a lot of testimonies and people, in the association, who say that they are refused the morning after pill at the pharmacy. They are told: 'But still, you do not have sexuality. As it is weird, "says Daria Marx. Some women also have to "beg their doctor for contraception".
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The big ones spared at work
"At work, the problem is that employers have the same grossophobic biases as the rest of society," finally denounces Daria Marx. "When employers interview us, they imagine that we will be more fragile physically when this is not true."