"The dream can exist in big bodies", says Kiyémis

• I am your worst nightmare

  was published on Wednesday November 9 by Albin Michel editions.

  In this essay, author and feminist poet Kiyémis tells how pop culture and her own mother taught her to hate her body.

• “Being fat is what some people fear.

  I too have internalized this nightmare, this panic fear of gaining weight, getting bigger, and taking up space, she explains to

  20 Minutes

  .

• She denounces

  The Queens of Shopping

  where “where we see the norm being imposed live” and calls for more diverse representations in culture.

  “We really have to stop imposing on ourselves this kind of myth that everyone must adhere to and in which no one fits, suddenly we are crippled in our misfortune and it leaves us immobile.

  »

As a child, Kiyémis harbored her fear of becoming like Marion for a long time, this “chubby” school friend quickly became her “standard meter” so as not to end up “bigger than Marion”.

By taming her body then a teenager, she says that she learned to hate it and especially to compare it to that of other girls, encouraged both by television and her mother.

“She grew up in our society where the woman still derives her value from the way she conforms to the model of beauty.

She wanted to protect me from the "danger" of getting fat in a fat-phobic society… Acting like this is already being fat-phobic, ”explains the author to

.

Now fat and proud, this poet tries to exorcise her demons in

published by Albin Michel editions on Wednesday November 9.

A week after the publication of this autobiographical essay, she looks back on how she became aware of the weight of diktats.

Did this knowledge of society allow him to free himself from injunctions?

Not quite.

She offers possible solutions for the little girls of tomorrow, starting with “swinging the scales”.

In your book, you say you are a “nightmare woman”, what does this expression refer to?

The nightmare girl, she looks like me but she also looks like a lot of other women.

She's fat, she takes up a lot of space, she's fat, has wild hair... She also has a big belly and big thighs.

I insist on these parts because there are other parts that we have hypersexualized.

The nightmare woman is a woman who takes up space.

How did you come to define yourself as some people's nightmare?

I started to think about this subject after seeing a fear of women, and even some men, of gaining weight.

This fear is embedded in the smallest interactions of everyday life.

When we are going to eat, we are going to say to ourselves: "Careful, I don't want to gain weight", we have to justify the fact that we are eating because we are eating "like a fat person"... This vision of fatness is is the obsession of some people.

I too have internalized this nightmare, this panic fear of gaining weight, getting fat, and taking up space.

And then for a while I thought about it and talked about it with other friends who are big and fat like me.

I said to myself: “But in fact, we are really some people's worst nightmare, we bring together a lot of things that are rooted in people's fear.

»

How does this fear materialize?

When you're fat, you don't belong to the norm, so you represent a health and moral failure.

We do not hesitate to remind you, even if people are not doctors and cannot diagnose you.

New figures who emerge and show a healthy lifestyle like the singer Lizzo do not escape these remarks.

Some believe that their weight is due to poor health.

However, I think she is more athletic than most people, she is also a real performer.

There is a construction of this health failure.

Because people who go to drink shots every night, I don't think it's good for their health.

However, no one stops someone sitting at a bar table to say: “Say, you should have a better lifestyle.

"There is a question of morality,

However, you say that seeing artists like Lizzo or

Art should represent the world.

These artists are only now emerging and remain few in number.

I think we have to impose a standard… There is a speech that I often hear, especially in fashion, which says: “We represent perfection because we have to make people dream.

“I think the dream can exist in many bodies.

Me today in my fat body, I dream and I have dreams that have come true.

But it takes real effort.

I want to save a lot of little girls time, so that they eat life and not worry about themselves for ten years... I want to tell them: "You can be fat and live your dreams, it's 'is cool !

You don't have to hate yourself, to be traumatized.

»

You also talk about the weight of mass culture which disseminates an unrewarding image of fat women...

I grew up in the 90s when the figure of the very thin woman was the one that was most highlighted and it still is even if new models are slowly emerging.

As a child, I always tried to find an escape.

I loved watching

[

in French, broadcast from 2003 to 2007] on the Disney Channel.

Raven's character was a black woman with an interest in fashion, who gained weight over the seasons.

She had very extravagant clothes and conveyed an attachment to beauty, to the body… It made me feel good to see this young girl who was loved, who loved, who took up space, who was noisy and above all, who was fat.

But this series does not take place in France…

What has always bothered me is that these types of people are always Americans.

What does that mean for a fat French black woman?

That means that these figures don't exist with us.

It has a real impact.

That's why we talk about representation even if it's not the end, it's a starting point to change the world.

In France when we talk about fashion on television, we rather think of

In the minds of many French people, she is the figure of contemporary fashion.

In

[broadcast on M6 since 2013], she touches the masses.

It's a place where you see the norm being imposed live.

Cristina Cordula is watched a lot and even if most people say that they watch in the second degree, it stays in our bodies, in our minds… It's symptomatic of television, which remains a space for broadcasting standards that remain oppressive.

However, you believe that these standards do not lead to happiness...

That's exactly why I started writing my book.

I have friends who are white, who are thin and who are very conventionally beautiful.

They embody this standard of beauty but they are not comfortable in their own skin.

Of course, they don't experience discrimination or potential medical violence, but that made me say to myself: “Wait, we're not well even there?

What a scam!

".

I tell myself that by loving the nightmare woman, it means that you begin to love everyone.

Because you have observed that thin women also suffer from fatphobia… How do you explain it?

Yes.

I am thinking of little girls who have eating disorders, for example.

This shows that the fear of fat has an impact on fat bodies but also on thin bodies.

When we are constantly hating our body because society teaches us to do so, we are not in the best position to have relationships with others, to create, to offer something else, whether from a artistically but also politically.

All that energy is squeezed into trying to stay normal, it could be used for more fulfilling things.

What would be the first step towards this ideal society?

I think it's quite simple, it would be enough to have diverse cultural content and I think we're on the right track for that.

Contrary to what we sometimes hear, it doesn't mean without white people, without thin people, without heterosexuals, it means varied.

I think it helps a lot to see different characters being happy, loving and being loved… We really have to stop imposing on ourselves this kind of myth that everyone has to adhere to and in which no one fits, suddenly we are trapped in our misfortune and it leaves us motionless.

Is that why you call on creators to no longer produce dystopias?

Haven't we said everything about the postapocalyptic side?

I think dystopia meant a lot of things in another era, it was a very political genre that denounced excesses.

I believe that today, he has denounced them but in the meantime, these excesses are still there, authoritarian, totalitarian, warmongering... I ask myself the question as an artist of what it feels like to constantly see super productions that envisage the worst.

I think it transforms our ways of thinking... It doesn't allow us to think about another world, it contributes to fatalism and cynicism.

If we have no alternatives and if in the arts what is valued is constantly the worst, how can we think of other worlds as citizens?

We can't because our imaginations are populated by dystopias and therefore dystopia seems inevitable.

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