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WHY FAT LADY SO MEAN TO BABY-MEN

@malcolmjamalwarlock

I'm Lindy West.
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thisisthinprivilege

You notice it when you're thin.

I spent a year being skinny, and it was like being in a different world.  

People wanted to sit beside me on the bus, I got asked out on dates, and I got told that I was pretty.  People commented on my weight loss constantly. 

New acquaintances and strangers, and health care providers also spoke in really cruel and troubling ways about fat people, because they thought I was thin for real, like them. 

Now I am fat again, and I just feel the SILENCE from strangers and new people.  They are clever enough not to say cruel things to my face, but that silence is deafening.  I know that strangers and health care providers are saying terrible things.  I heard it from them when I was thin.

I feel like I’ll never trust anyone, like I want to hide from everyone.

Thin privilege is not worrying that strangers hate you.  Thin privilege is not feeling the barbs of others words, or knowing that those sentiments can still exist in silence.

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therackgirls
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fatphobiabusters

A lot of people tell us that the messages this blog sends are offensive, cruel, dangerous, unfair, evil, hateful, deadly, terrible, “hilariously bad,” “cringey,” whatever. They insist that the things we are trying to tell people are wrong, and we should feel bad for sending these messages.

Let’s take a look at some of the messages we want to get across to our followers, and see why they are so bad, shall we?

  • Your value and worth as a person is not based on how sexy or attractive you are, how much other people desire your romantically or sexually, how healthy and fit you are, how skinny you are, how well you fit into society’s beauty standards, how perfect your body is, what body shape or size you have, etc.
  • Your worth as a person is based entirely on the fact that you exist, and you are a person.
  • Because you are a person, you deserve to be treated with the same amount of respect, kindness, dignity, and appreciation as people who look differently than you or are healthier than you.
  • No one’s worth should be determined by what others think of their health, appearance, etc.
  • Even unhealthy and unattractive people deserve basic human rights.
  • Being fat does not make you unattractive, undesirable, unworthy, unlovable, or unimportant.
  • Being unhealthy does not make you unattractive, undesirable, unworthy, unlovable, or unimportant.
  • You cannot tell how healthy someone is just by looking at them. Invisible disabilities, chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, and other such problems exist. You also can’t tell anything about someone’s diet, eating habits, exercise routine, etc., from just looking at them. It’s incorrect to assume all thin people are healthy, eat right, and exercise, and that all fat people are unhealthy, eat poorly, and don’t exercise.
  • A person’s worth is not determined by how healthy they eat or how often they exercise. A person shouldn’t have to live by your standards to be valuable or to be treated with respect.
  • There are valid reasons why someone might not eat well. Living in a food desert, being too poor to afford healthy meals, having sensory issues around certain foods, and having specific dietary needs for medical reasons are just a few of these reasons. You shouldn’t judge people for what they eat, however, regardless of the reason. People are allowed to eat whatever they want, and it’s none of your business.
  • If how you treat people is determined by how they look or how healthy they are, that’s shitty and bigoted and you should reexamine your position on these things and try to change your behavior.
  • People find different things attractive. Society tries to claim we all find the same things beautiful and if you don’t fit in society’s idea of beauty, no one will find you attractive or lovable, but that’s not true. People find fat people beautiful all the time. Fat people find love and have sex and have friends all the time. Being fat will not prevent these things from happening to you. If these things are things you want, you can have them.
  • Feeling hungry is natural. Feeling full is natural. Thinking about food is natural. You don’t need to punish yourself for these feelings or thoughts. You’re not a bad person for wanting to eat, for wanting to stop eating after you’ve eaten a lot, etc. Eat what feels right to you; don’t force yourself to eat more or less because you’re worried about your weight, worried what others might think, etc.
  • You need food to live. Food is fuel. Food is not the enemy. 
  • Your body is not your enemy. You don’t have to hate it. You need to take care of it and appreciate it for all it has done for you. How you take care of it is up to you and your personal needs. Pushing your body past its limits, starving it, overworking it, etc., are not taking care of it. 
  • It is possible to love your body. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible. 
  • Even if you can’t love your body, you still shouldn’t punish it or mistreat it. 
  • Your body has done many great things for you. Maybe it fights off diseases well. Maybe it helps you achieve goals like running certain distances or climbing certain heights. Maybe it just holds and protects your organs. Regardless, it does some good things for you. Appreciate it, and do good things back.
  • Even the most body positive people have days when they feel bad about their body. It’s okay to have bad days. It doesn’t make you a failure. Just don’t take those bad days out on your body.
  • You and your body are not to blame for the way other people treat you. If people hate you because of how you look, they are the problem, not you and not your body.
  • Fat people are not to blame for the way others abuse us, mistreat us, mock us, harass us, bully us, discriminate against us, etc. Society is. Changing our bodies won’t fix society.
  • Society likes to create standards for what it deems beautiful based on racist, fatphobic, antisemetic, misogynistic, transphobic, intersexist, ableist ideas. Meeting these standards can often be dangerous, unrealistic, or impossible for some people. Instead of trying to change how we look to meet those standards, we should be eliminating the standards all together.
  • (Content warning: rape, fatphobia, suicide, starvation) Fat people experience all kinds of horrible treatment simply because we are fat. People think it’s okay to tell us we are lucky if we are raped or sexually assaulted, to pay us less because of our size, to charge us more for clothes, insurance, and other items, to give us poor healthcare, to refuse us service or treatment, to give us subpare medical treatment, to turn pictures of us into memes, to photograph us without our permission and laugh at the pictures, to suicide bait us, to stalk us, to bully us online, to make blogs dedicated to mocking and insulting us, to make us the butt of the jokes we see on tv, to exclude us from their friend groups, from tv shows, from magazines, etc., to simply hate us for existing, to tell us we deserve to die, to demand we starve ourselves, and more. None of this is our fault and none of this is okay. People who think these things are okay are bigots, and like all bigots, should be called out and educated. People should not find this behavior acceptable or allow it to continue. There is no excuse for it, there is no defending it, and there is no reason to blame fat people for it. We are not responsible for others treating us badly and we deserve to be treated better.
  • The discrimination and oppression fat people face is not less serious or less important than other forms. It is very real and it hurts many people. It also intersects with other forms of oppression like racism and misogyny to hurt already very marginalized individuals. This should not be ignored by social justice advocates or feminists. Fat people matter, our issues matter, and we deserve to be heard and taken seriously.
  • Thin people shouldn’t tell fat people that our issues don’t exist, that our issues don’t matter, or try to correct us about what issues we actually face. They also shouldn’t argue with us when we tell them when something is offensive to us, and shouldn’t try to compare our issues with theirs.
  • Thin people have body image issues and are sometimes bullied for their bodies. That’s wrong, and there is no excuse or defense for this. But their issues do not need to be brought up when talking about fat acceptance, they are not more important than fat people’s issues, and they are not equivalent to fat people’s issues. There is a time and place to talk about them, and fat people’s posts are not the time or place.
  • We are not saying thin people don’t matter, that thin people are bad people, that thin people are unattractive, etc. That would be wrong and unfair. What we are saying, though, is that fat people matter too, that fat people are good people too, that fat people are attractive too, and that thin people should not be treated better than fat people just because they are thin. People should be judged on their character, not their looks.
  • Fat people should be prioritizing their mental and emotional health over how thin people feel about their bodies. Our mental and emotional health matter.
  • If our therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, and other healthcare professionals disrespect us, make us feel unsafe, etc., we are allowed to complain and find new providers.
  • No one should have to put up with being treated like they are worthless, like they have no value, like they don’t deserve to live, etc. Everyone has a right to love themselves and demand respect.
  • Many of the things society wants you to assume about fat people are wrong. We aren’t all the same. We aren’t all lazy, greedy, slobbish, ugly, unsanitary, rude, etc. We aren’t bullies, or the comic relief, or loud, or any other bad thing you might think. We are people, just like you. And we deserve to be seen as we are and appreciated as we are.
  • Fat people deserve positive representation in the media. We deserve to have role models. We deserve to grow up knowing we can be the smart one, the love interest, the hero, whatever we want to be. We shouldn’t always be put into negative roles that limit the possibilities for how we see ourselves.
  • Fat people can be anything and do anything. We are amazing, extraordinary people. Being fat is not a bad thing.

Those are just a few of the messages we want you all to get from our blog.

Funny, I don’t see any bad, dangerous messages there. 

-Mod Bella 

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