The word “zaftig” (Yiddish for curvy, voluptuous) is one of my favorites. It’s a word I’ve often heard with a positive connotation, reminding me of some of the pictures I’ve seen of my great-grandmothers who came from the shtetls (pre-Holocaust Jewish villages in Eastern Europe). A former partner of mine once told me a story about how his grandfather put an ad in the personals in the newspaper, using the word “zaftig” to describe the kind of shape he preferred.
Though “zaftig” (curvy) bodies and eating heartily are, at times, embraced in the Jewish world, we are not untouched by anti-fat bias. Many of us are familiar with the common desire for Jewish mothers to feed their kids, probably rooted in the scarcity of food during times of poverty or persecution. In this light, some Jewish communities are pretty food-positive, the opposite of the diet culture messages we get from mainstream society about eating less. But even after leaving Bubbe’s house well-fed and satisfied, we get hit by the diet culture semi-truck barreling down the road at 80 mph.
We live in a society with a painful amount of anti-fatness. In recent years, we’ve had more acceptance around different sizes, but only to a limit; people in the largest bodies on the fatness spectrum are still marginalized, and the healthist belief that “It’s okay to be fat as long as you’re healthy” is deeply ingrained in our cultural fabric. (An alternative is “It’s okay to be fat, period,” because you don’t know someone’s health by looking at them, and health is not an indicator of worth.)
But it’s easier for me to say this as an “average” sized person. There is much collective work that needs to be done so that people in larger bodies or those who don’t fit oppressive beauty standards are treated with respect. We need to expand the standards to include all bodies, not shrink ourselves to fit into them.
In learning about anti-fat bias and unlearning my own fatphobia, I wrote a song called “Rocky Mountains” about body acceptance.
In June of 2021, I was on a songwriting retreat with some of my closest friends. We got an artsy, funky Airbnb near Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, built by a woman in her 60s and managed by her family. I felt totally in my element: mountain views, good friends, creativity. I was able to see myself a little more clearly.
The morning after we arrived, I was feeling really relaxed and cozy in the master bedroom as the sun poured in through the windows. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. The word “zaftig” came into my head. I wrote it down and then started to free-write. Looking at the mountains outside, it occurred to me that my body shared some similar features.
You can listen to the song here.
