Fat stuff

Here’s a quick reminder to all the thin people out there: stop talking about fatness and fat people as if fat people didn’t exist and we weren’t literally right here.

Mostly I see this done whenever thin people talk about ”the obesity epidemic” or ”childhood obesity”. You are a bunch of thin people, a bunch of thin news anchors, a bunch of thin researchers, a bunch of thin commenters online…. Where are fat people’s opinions? Where are fat activists’ opinions? Is it proper journalism to only acknowledge the thin people and their words and their research?

Thin journalists and public figures and news anchors and what have you, milk money out of people by fear-mongering with fat bodies. Famous media doesn’t even want to talk about research that contradicts current ideas of fatness, or fat activists’ words, because readers’ (or watchers’/listeners’) hatred and fear gives them more money (and also less criticism). It pushes this one-sided narrative of fat people’s bodies onto us that thin people control almost completely.

Was the man who on public television said that fat people should try the diet of concentration camp victims, a fat person himself? F*ck no. But we give voice to people like him instead of giving voice to actual fat people (…reminds me of something called oppression).

Whenever you talk about fat people or fatness or weight, remind yourself that we fat people are literally right here. Your audience will never consist purely of thin people.

If you're on instagram or other visually oriented social platforms, follow fat people!! I mean everyone should, but especially other fat people. It's so easy to underestimate the effect it has on your mind, simply seeing people who look like you thriving and expressing themselves in the spaces you frequent. Take any opportunity to remind yourself and anyone else who needs to hear it that the type of body you have belongs in the world.

There was a while in grad school (which I did in one of the whitest states) where I started having pretty severe “race dysphoria” ie seeing my skin as too dark too ugly etc because I was just constantly surrounded by white people and didn’t have anyone else in my life or in my media. My (white) therapist’s recommendation was the same as the above: follow more black and brown youtubers and instagram accounts, reach out to my family and grade school / college poc friends for video calls, and generally try to pull more people who looked like me into my line of sight. It did work wonders, and now I’m totally recovered from this extremely weird bout of internalized racism.

I imagine being other types of marginalized can be solved (or at least helped) the same way.

I forget my source so this may not be entirely accurate but I remember hearing that an individual’s concept of beauty will tend to be the average of everyone they see. This would be one reason it’s been so damaging to have a single race and essentially one body type dominating so much visual space—it artificially skews the data pool in your head, in the heads of an entire society.

Fortunately it seems like it shifts quickly and easily when you shift the inputs!

i realllly don't like it when shows consistently have fat characters and only fat characters eating fast food/too much/in inappropriate situations

it's so common too!!!! and there's never any skinny character who acts this way it's always only the fat characters.

diet talk is so inexpressibly nonsensical the instant you know anything about "the human body" or "nutrition" or if you think about it for three seconds

"this is a great, low-calorie meal for meal prep!"

okay how do I explain this to you. "calories" is the part of food that makes it food. you actually need calories to stay alive. so "low-calorie" is the opposite of a selling point. kind of makes it sound like I'm going to be putting in a lot of time and effort just to not be nourished

"I then immediately ruined the nutrition of the broccoli by pouring cheese all over it, but, hey, I tried"

okay hang on tight because this is a tough one. I'm going to try to explain the concept of "addition" to you. so the broccoli has a certain amount of calories, vitamins, and other nutrients in it, right? and the cheese has a certain amount of calories, vitamins, and other nutrients in it. and when you add the cheese to the broccoli, well... the nutrition of the resulting food can be found by adding the contents of both of its components to each other. I hope this helps

I think I'm enjoying British dramas more than anything US based right now because they do this thing where they let the occassional human being look like a real person and not a low-level supermodel.

I know beauty standards are fucking horseshit and that television isn't real life, but I was just trying to recapture the comfort of watching a Marvel movie and I couldn't help but notice that even the extras don't get to look real.

Am I to believe that there are ZERO fat people in New York FUCKING City when the Avengers have to do some Avenging?

Not one? The whole city went to the medspa last week?

When did we start doing this? Obviously it's a shift that happened in inches, not miles, but what the fuck. Watch any of the beach scenes of Jaws. Or, honestly, any crowd scene in most movies made before 2000. Guess what you'll see?

Fat people!

People with bad hair!

People who look tired and like they just rolled out of bed!

Can we just...I mean. Look. I know that no one wants fat people to exist. But we do, okay? Since we're never going to get Main Character representation, can we at least pepper a few of us in the extras scenes every once in awhile?

If you're on instagram or other visually oriented social platforms, follow fat people!! I mean everyone should, but especially other fat people. It's so easy to underestimate the effect it has on your mind, simply seeing people who look like you thriving and expressing themselves in the spaces you frequent. Take any opportunity to remind yourself and anyone else who needs to hear it that the type of body you have belongs in the world.

There was a while in grad school (which I did in one of the whitest states) where I started having pretty severe “race dysphoria” ie seeing my skin as too dark too ugly etc because I was just constantly surrounded by white people and didn’t have anyone else in my life or in my media. My (white) therapist’s recommendation was the same as the above: follow more black and brown youtubers and instagram accounts, reach out to my family and grade school / college poc friends for video calls, and generally try to pull more people who looked like me into my line of sight. It did work wonders, and now I’m totally recovered from this extremely weird bout of internalized racism.

I imagine being other types of marginalized can be solved (or at least helped) the same way.

PLUS SIZE ASIANS EXIST

“People were just smaller back then”

Nope. Fat people have always been here, aren’t going anywhere, and have always been beautiful and worthy of respect.

"Fat liberation is a scam" fat liberation isn't selling you anything 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm begging you people to stop seeing absolutes where there aren't any. Fat liberation is largely about dismantling the absolutes.

When we say "fat people can be perfectly healthy", some of you hear "all fat people are perfectly healthy" when the point is simply that weight and health aren't synonymous. It's more complex.

When we say that health looks different for everyone some of you hear "health is completely meaningless" when the point is actually just that it's more complex than either/or. YES, intentional weight loss can be the right path for someone! Look, I Have Said it! The problem is, there's a widespread myth saying it's the right path for everyone. That's not the case.

When we say health status does not indicate your intrinsic worth and should be irrelevant to how you're treated, some of you apparently hear "there's no reason to care about your own health", which is just bananas. Learn better reading comprehension.

Fat liberation is a political movement based on no absolute claims about health. Literally the point is that fat people deserve social equality regardless of health status. "Health is complex and individual" is a full on fact, but ultimately it's also beside the point.

The only absolute in this movement is that fat people are People and worthy of equity and basic respect. That's what you're objecting to when you say you're against fat liberation.

someone: this beauty standard was constructed with specific political purpose, and effectively dismantling the power structure that justifies itself through it requires us to give up using aspects of the body as a metaphor for morality or social worth

the notes:

ok so you acknowledge that fatness isn’t inherently unhealthy. health at every size, fat athletes exist, etc etc.

but are you normal about fat people who ARE unhealthy? do you still respect us? do you still advocate for our access to healthcare? do you still see us as valuable?

are you normal about people whose fatness is due to disability?

are you normal about people whose fatness is just due to lifestyle—those of us whose fatness is, actually, “Our Own Fault”?

it seems to me that “you can be healthy at any weight” is kind of like “curb cuts also benefit moms with strollers”—it’s true, and worth pointing out, but it’s stopping short of actually advocating for the people whom the conversation is actually ABOUT.

curb cuts ARE useful for many kinds of people, but they’re NEEDED for wheelchair and mobility aid users. you CAN be fat and healthy, but that’s not WHY you should treat fat people with respect. fatphobia/misia is bad because we’re human fucking beings with the same rights and needs as thin people, not because some of us meet an arbitrary benchmark of “healthy”.

consider your attitudes toward ALL fat people, not just the “good”/palatable/healthy ones. it’s natural to have these kinds of unconscious biases, but that’s exactly why it’s so important to examine and rethink them.

the stereotype of a fat bully picking on skinny kids is kinda funny to me because that’s literally the exact opposite of reality

Amber Riley airing out some truths.

My girl 🥹

AN OG !!!! LIKE THAT'S ONE OF OUR FOUNDING MOTHERS