Scroll down on the comments on a fat acceptance/size acceptance post that mentions thin privilege, and odds are excellent you’ll find something to the effect of “But I’m thin, and I get crap too! I don’t have ‘size privilege’!”1 Those of us who have been around the fat-o-sphere any length of time have heard this often enough our eye-roll muscles are starting to look like the Old Spice guy’s abs.
But let me take a moment out of exercising my extraocular muscles to actually address this, because these protestations aren’t coming out of nowhere.
When size acceptance activists say that thinness is privileged, we are not saying that every thin person has a hunky dory lightness and sunshine life and everything comes easily for each and every one of you. We are saying that everything else in this world favors if not you specifically, then at least your thinness, and those who are thin like you in general.
Society is systemically and systematically biased against fatness and privileges thinness. That is the well-supported theorem of size acceptance and the activism of fatties like myself.
Nowhere in that succinct definition does it say that thin women never receive body policing, that thin people all hate fat people (or vice versa), that cries of “eat a sandwich!” are any less painful or more acceptable than “put down that donut!”, that thin people don’t have body image issues, that thin women never have problems getting appropriate medical attention.
Because none of those things are true. Women of all sizes are regularly subjected to body policing, people of all sizes come in an array of bigotry levels, the pain of food-based shame is not lesser at a lower body weight, all women are at risk of having body image issues (conversely, women at all sizes might have fabulous self-images), and thin women as well as fat and inbetween can have a hell of a time getting doctors to listen to and believe them.
But? None of those things disprove thin privilege. And furthermore, they all are a consequence of fatphobia2.
Body and food policing and hateful, hurtful insults are a direct outflow of the belief that there is one acceptable type of body, and all others should be shamed (through words and pseudoscience and ill-fitting, unflattering clothes) for daring to deviate from it. And at this point in time, in USian culture (and many others), that ideal body is very thin3 — though not too thin.
Here is just a small example of ways that thinness is systemically privileged: seats are made for thin (or at most inbetween) people; most clothes (and basically ALL high fashion clothes) are made for thin people; thin women do not have to worry that they will be kept out of exclusive night clubs because of their thinness; thin people are more likely to be hired, less likely to be fired, and get paid more; thin people are not told they need to buy a second seat to fly because of their thinness, else risk being kicked off the plane; everyone in power — including medical professionals who should know better — are convinced that thin people are automatically healthier, merely by virtue of being thin; and almost all major media not only disproportionately represent thin people but artificially exaggerate thinness.
That not every thin person equally receives the benefit of thin privilege — that some, as with thin people with disabilities or health conditions dismissed out of hand because a douchebag doctor declares “you’re thin, you must be healthy!”, are actively disadvantaged — only means that the system doesn’t care one whit about any individuals, regardless of their size. Thinness is privileged; this does not mean that fatphobia is universally good for thin persons.
So, my skinny friend: your pain is real. Your hatred of the system that shames you is righteous. Your rejection of culpability in the self-esteem of fat women might be just. But your declaration that you therefore are not, cannot be privileged? Is based on a faulty understanding of privilege, its functions, and what it is like to be the embodiment of fatness in a fatphobic society. The words flung at you hurt; you may not always be able to find clothes that fit or flatter you; you may have spent a lifetime wishing for (or told you were supposed to wish for) more flesh, more curves, more bust. Those things are not any less true or real given what I am about to say:
You and those who share your thinness are not held up as responsible for everything from shorter lifespans to global warming; you and those who share your thinness can expect to walk into most clothing stores and at least find something that will meet when you attempt to button it; you can see your thinness reflected in every form of major media, held up in airbrushed form (if not in your own perfectly flawed, human way) as what all others — especially us fatties — should aspire to. You are privileged in many ways that society tries hard to make invisible to you. That you might not be able to see them does not mean they are not very, very real.
Size acceptance is for you, too, unreservedly. Every woman is a real woman, curves or no; every man, genderqueer, nonbinary person is a real person. But we can’t move forward if we can’t acknowledge the power differential; we cannot get to a place where every size is accepted if we are so convinced that all sizes are now equally affected that we are unable to shift the balance. We are all balancing on a scale, with your thinness being lifted up by the weight of and at the cost of us fatties. Only by acknowledging that imbalance can we get somewhere we can all stand side by squishy-skinny-inbetweeny side.
Your pain is real. So is your privilege. Acknowledge them both, and I promise I will do the same.
———————–
- Unless there are fewer than ten comments, or the blog moderator is especially strict, or especially lucky, you’ll also find “But don’t you know fat is unhealthy??” and “You’re just looking for an excuse to stay fat, you lazy cow!” ↩
- Combined with sexism, ableism, classism, and all the other isms. ↩
- That body is also white, moderately curvy (or “womanly”, as though women don’t come in the most fabulous array of shapes) if female — and moderately muscular if male –, cis, not obviously disabled, near-perfectly symmetrical, free of overt blemishes or scars, young (but not too young), not hairy, and so on. ↩
Thank you for this post. <3
Well, another Win post. The Old Spice Guy reference only sweetens the deal.
I hate, hate hearing “eat a sandwich”. So much. By the way. Thanks for referencing it.
As a recent post on Sociological Images suggests, some sensitivities and self-education rather than broad brush-stroke statements will further anti-oppression movements.
Thanks for the great post, Arwyn.
THANK YOU for writing this tonight. it comes at the perfect time in my life. i cant really put it into words what is happening, because all of my words have already been spilled elsewhere, but it is so important for this to be written. and read.
Excellent. Certain people in my life like to come out with “real women have curves” or “real women ain’t a size zero” then go on to criticize thin women for not eating and not being as sexy as curvier women. (because we all know being “sexy” to everyone else is our ultimate goal in life! *eyeroll*) I always try to point out to them that, actually, women who are very thin and straight up and down flat as a board are very much REAL women as well and could very well be absolutely happy with their body how it is so wouldn’t want to change just because you think they should “eat a sandwich”. When I point this out I think people are often shocked. I believe they were trying to complement my (fatness) “curves” in a roundabout way and win points for being accepting of my fat iykwim.
Love your writing. <3
Brilliant post! I’m a thin woman and I tend to think that the shit I get for my thinness is mostly sexism; body-policing is something that women have to deal with every day on any number of levels, because a lot of people think our bodies are public property. So just like people feel the need to tell me unsolicited how I ought to do my hair or that going without a bra is ‘slutty’ (never mind that I’m much more comfortable without one) or that whatever I’m wearing is ‘weird’, they also tell me that I’m too thin. When people comment on my weight, they’re not doing it because they have a problem with thinness per se, I don’t think; it’s just common or garden sexism that happens to be coming out in comments about my shape. I definitely have thin privilege; fatphobia is a whole extra thing of its own, and of course fat women get a double dose of it. So… I’m glad you wrote this. I think you’re right on the mark.
Ariadne — I tend to think that the crap thin people get is largely sexism, too (including when thin men get — if they’re not big and muscular, they’re not “real men”, right??), but in a form that uses the fact that body size is a Thing (Thing is an official term, don’tcha know) to enact its sexism — which makes it a part of the Thing that is size discrimination. We’ll all still get shit until kyriarchy is g.o.n.e., of course, but without fatphobia, that shit wouldn’t manifest in comments about your size, I don’t think.
Thank you for this. I have an acquaintance who took up running a couple of years ago, partly for fitness and partly because she loved it. She wore (I estimate) a US size 8 clothes before she started and was in her early 20s (and still had a bit of a baby-faced look.) As she got more into running on a daily basis and lost a visibly noticeable portion of her body fat (which coincided with her face maturing a bit), she started getting all kinds of body policing from her female co-workers, especially the ones that were old enough to be her mother. It started with mild concern-troll comments, moved to them constantly bringing her food, and came to a head with one co-worker grabbing her by the shoulders and saying right in her face, “STOP LOSING WEIGHT!”
She was rightfully upset and posted about it in her blog. I felt bad for her, but was floored by her assertion that no one would ever say “STOP GAINING WEIGHT!” to a fat person. I wish this article had been around then to help me articulate my attempt at “I feel for you, but you’re kidding me about not seeing that fat hatred is everywhere, right?”
Courtney — I’m pretty well convinced that “No one would ever say…” is always wrong. I’d place astronomical bets that someone, somewhere has and would and will say it, especially if it involves discrimination against a marginalized (or marginalizable) group.
Agreed, someone somewhere would almost definitely say it. I think what the acquaintance was trying to get at was that it would be considered much, much ruder to say “stop gaining weight!” because gaining weight is seen as so incredibly shameful, whereas losing weight is assumed by default to be desirable. (So in terms of how it is perceived, it would be kind of like saying “Stop giving so much money to charity!” vs. “Stop spending so much on porn and drugs!” Maybe you *are* giving too much to charity but it is still generally a good thing.) It is likely that the person who said that to her would never have said the other thing because it is beyond her rudeness threshold.
Or, maybe she wasn’t trying to say that at all but I still think that’s the underlying reason for what she was talking about.
This is so right on. And I’m saying this as a thin person who a) understands body-based self-hatred AND b) understands that I do not simultaneously know what’s like to get shit from society as a whole. Yes, I may not wear something revealing because of my own belief that I’m “too big” for it, but I’ve never had the experience of getting hateful stares for wearing that item. We should all, as women, embrace fat acceptance and size acceptance in general, but those of us who are thin do need to understand that we do not know what’s it like to be fat in a fat-hating society, even if we can imagine (just as I’m white and don’t know what it’s like to be black, no matter how hard I try or think I can).
So yes – it’s not ok to tell a skinny woman to eat a sandwich. She has a right to the body she’s living in. But that extends to everyone, and it’s a much much bigger issue for a much much larger segment of the population, who are being told to NOT eat when they’re hungry, in much more hurtful ways. We don’t have entire network TV shows devoted to gleefully punishing skinny people into gaining weight, etc, etc, etc.
No one has ever told ME to eat a sandwich – I’m not THAT thin. But no one has ever been cruel to me about my weight. That is an enormous privilege, and I recognize it. I still want to fight for every woman to own and love her body and be respected for it, but I understand that I’m an ally and not at the front lines. I hope that when I say I “get this” issue, that’s understood. I DO recognize my privilege.
Either king of body image policing is terrible. But I have a related pet peeve: airlines keep leaving less room per passenger, who is assumed to be the ‘average’ size. Ugly looks, amybe even hateful comments, can be ignored.
Pain from the same size fits all assumptions built into airlines is harder, in my opinion!
And it doesn’t just affect the overweight–ask anyone over 6 feet tall how comfortable flying is for them!
LOL! My husband is 6’7″ and he always butts his knees against the seat of the person in front of him so they can’t lean their seat back. That man hates flying – he looks like a folded up accordian.
“overweight”???
The phrase “extraocular muscles” cracks me up! :)
I am thin, sometimes medically underweight. I can promise you there are under no circumstances any long-term negative social consequences for my thinness. Zero.
The most I’ll ever get is the occasional question from a friend on how much I weigh (out of “concern”), or possibly a co-worker will offer me all the leftover cookies after a birthday on the assumption that it’s less unhealthy for me to eat junk food than a fat person. Even then, any negative comments I receive are based on thin privilege. The body policing generally contains a thinly-veiled assumption that I’m “lucky I can eat whatever I want”, that I’m somehow making other people look bad in comparison, or that I’m a rival for sexual attention.
And that’s exactly what thin privilege, fat hate, and “eat a sandwich” are all about – pitting women as rivals against each other for the position of the most sexually desirable object. In short, it’s dehumanization to the worst degree.
This is a great post, and I’m glad you feel this way, especially about the ideal body. I’m thin, but I’m not white, and I barely have boobs, so when I look at ads and models I’m happy that I’m thin at least, but for the most part they hurt my self esteem as well.
I would just disagree that all fat acceptance people subscribe to the same view of thin privilege as you do. There are FA writers out there who do not believe that thin women can have body image problems.
Luxe — I didn’t say that all fat acceptance advocates subscribe to this view of thin privilege, only that they should. ;)
And thanks.
the point is not that all FAs feel the same way about size acceptance. the point is that body discrimination affects everyone negatively. i don’t think the writer of this blog ever said that she was the Honorary Representative and Mouthpiece of the Fat Acceptance movement.
Want to consider another layer of intense body-policing and fat hatred and thin “eat a sandwich” shit?
Add pregnancy to the mix.
If a woman’s body wasn’t considered public property before, it is now. Thin women are told to eat, eat, eat (but not too much, you still have to make sure you can get your post-baby body back quickly after the birth), and fat women are told that they shouldn’t eat hardly at all, as the baby can live off of their “stores.” What the hell?
If you carry “small,” you’re doing something wrong. If you carry “big,” you’re definitely doing something wrong. But on a societal level, women who are fat before pregnancy receive scorn on all sides, from the medical community to the media to sometimes even their own families.
This is wrong, guys.
HEAR HEAR!
Sometimes I feel like the backlash against fat-phobia has gone way too far.
I’m a bigger woman (size 18 US), and working to reduce my size because guess what? I’m not healthy (it’s affecting my health, I’m working with my doctor on it). Instead of finding support among other larger women like myself, suddenly I’m accused of working for the enemy.
We talk about how fatphobia so pervades Western culture, why don’t we instead address the culture of non-exercise that’s leading to the epidemic? EVERYONE could stand to move around more.
There’s two major flaws here though. Lack of exercise does not = fat. And fat does not = unhealthy.
For some, yes. But there are women who lead highly active lives and are still fat. There are extremely unhealthy women who are thin as rails.
If your weight is affecting your health, then good for you to take steps to counter it. But that alone is not what makes you “working with the enemy.” No, that comes from the assumption that lack of exercise is what makes everyone fat and that fat is unhealthy in everyone. Your assumptions are not only wrong, they also further the stereotype that all fat people are lazy and unhealthy.
@Summer
Very well-said.
@Catharine
Thank you for your comment. I absolutely support you taking whatever steps you would like to improve your health. However, do know that your language and worldviews about fat, dieting, and OTHER people’s lives (or what you imagine them to be and the prescriptive measures you apply) will definitely be challenged if they are found to be harmful or part of a larger crappy status quo.
I think many women (not all) who are fat and say they need to diet are also buying into the “Fantasy of Being Thin”. So when the culture of dieting and “there are too many unhealthy fat people in America” get called into question in ANY way – be it rigorous scientific study, or pieces of FA solidarity, or anecdotal stories of liberation from body hate – some people get very angry their Fantasy is being threatened. I am not saying this about you in particular Catharine – I simply don’t know. I’ve seen it a lot before.
If you personally want to make ANY steps to improve your health I, personally, a fan of FA writers like Arwyn and many more, support you on this.
You wrote:
“EVERYONE could stand to move around more.”
I have about eight levels of problem with this statement. I don’t know where to tell you to start but this page might be a good place to start. Not everyone CAN move around more and not everyone should be REQUIRED to, to meet some kind of baseline respect (that our culture currently does NOT afford the obese). This is a clumsy analogy but would you like me to come into your home and audit your lifestyle for environmental stewardship, or “perfect” parenting strategy, or appropriate tidiness and lack of clutter? How about if I did this every day and so did LOTS of other people? Like I said – a bad analogy perhaps, but maybe it gives a glimmer into how invasive body-shaming (especially on women, POCs, PWDs, and other marginalized groups) is for so many.
Do you want to be a part of all that?
I am an active, able-bodied, size 14, healthy, happy woman who has benefitted from FA more than I could write here without being considered taking WAY too much of your time and Arwyn’s space. I will say this: looking into FA deeply, and absorbing and reading and listening, will NOT result in you “giving up” and becoming some sort of monster. I don’t know you – but I personally guarantee it. :-) FA has *only* made me more compassionate, healthier, happier, more understanding, more loving to ALL women (yes, even dieters). I am not at some end destination but FA has improved my life and the lives of women I love tremendously.
Couple of problems with your post there.
First one being, no one is saying that you cannot attempt to lose weight, especially if you are doing so for your health. If your weight is negatively impacting your health, by all means – do what you need to do in order to help yourself live a more comfortable life. This goes for anyone of any weight, be it losing or gaining. No one is saying you are working for the enemy by trying to do what is healthy for you.
Second, people are of various weights for various reasons. There is no one or root cause for being fat or thin, especially across entire nations, because everyone’s body is different. To assume that there is one is ignorant of how the body works, and to assume it’s an epidemic and respond as such kind of just adds to the body shaming and fatphobia. All such a concept is doing is adding to the pile of problems with fatphobia and body shaming.
Third, the assumption that everyone can move around more, or stand to move around more, or exercise in general? Way to throw ableism into the mix.
Oh – and, I’m sorry for misspelling your name in my below comment. I should have double-checked.
What? Everyone (fat and thin) needs to get more exercise (even triathletes?) but fat acceptance is somehow a threat to this, with all their warnings about people (and their doctors) assuming they are healthy/don’t need to exercise because they are thin? What?
i don’t see you as the enemy, but are you sure that your health problems are being caused by fatness? your doctor may say so, but many doctors subscribe to a non-HAES, pro-weight loss view of health. remember that something correlated with fatness is not necessarily being caused by it. there has been some reserach done on this.
if you aren’t exercising or you’re eating a lot of unhealthy food, good for you for changing your habits. but just decreasing the number on the scale may not be of much help.
i also don’t really understand the part about how you’re not receiving support from other fat women. i know plenty of fat women who are very into weight loss (my aunt is a big proponent of Weight Watchers, although i’ve never seen her lose much weight), and despite the bad statistics on dieting, many fat people blame themselves when their diets fail.
I also don’t think you should assume that most fat people have the same issues with exercise that you do, or that lack of exercise alone is responsible for the rise in obesity we’ve seen. a big problem is the homogeneity and processing in most of our food industry, and the rise in eating disorders and weight cycling due to fatphobia in the media and a higher-anxiety lifestyle in general. I don’t think we can ever tell why someone is fat just by looking at them (or just from knowing that they are fat).
This is something I’ve desperately needed to hear. It’s something I’ve been struggling to balance, the body shaming I experience and the pain I feel from it while still trying to recognize my privilege.
I’m sorry by the way for this comment not having more insight to it. I need to mull over it in my head.
Another excellent post. Thanks for your great explanation about thin privilege, that makes a lot of sense to me. I appreciate you acknowleding that women of all sizes can be spoken to cruelly and suffer emotional damage from comments about their weight/size. But we all need to recognize how the world is built for thin people.
You rock, Arwyn. That is all.
I just found your blog via a friend who posted your letter to white lactivists on facebook. I had to read more and am super glad I did. Your articles are SUPER and I love the book reviews. I can’t wait to read more, but I do have to work… Thanks!
So yeah, your blog in general has really inspired me. You know my feelings about this post already, I adore it. And more importantly your blog has opened my eyes. Can’t wait to see more!
This is a powerful post, and rings so true to me, as a woman who spent my twenties unconsciously benefiting from thin privilege, and now, in my late 30s and fat, is shocked to be experiencing its opposite. When I was thin I did not realise how much of a free pass I got on many body- and health-related issues. I did not realise that I walked through the world wearing my invisible cloak of thin=normal=healthy wrapped around me. Now, I am a fat woman, not fat enough to attract the most vile of fatphobics (I don’t get mocked in the street, as friends of mine have had occur) but certainly fat enough to be exposed to the judgements of doctors, comments of friends and relatives, difficulty with shopping etc. It’s a really and measurably different experience to stride the world as a thin woman as compared with a fat one. Well, for me it has been, anyway.
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that cries of “eat a sandwich!” are any less painful or more acceptable than “put down that donut!
I’m not a big one for overemphasising the privileging of thinness-which is not always the same as thin people actually having privlilege-however, being told to “put down the donut” etc., is not as painful as being told to stop eating or whatever.
When you spend the whole of your life enduring diets that are not only painful and traumatizing, where all your hopes of either acceptance or the relief of escaping stigma are dashed time and time again.
All the time convinced that it is totally your fault and your immorality, they are deliberately invoking all that. It’s a painful reminder of what you think of as the failure of your character of your soul.
Everything hinges on your ability to fight starvation off. To be told this can be utterly devastating, unless you’re anorexia, I find it hard to see the comparison. I don’t wish to trivialise thin women’s experience, but they should not get competitive over this as it is unseemly and encouraging them to do so is yet again devaluing fat people’s experiences. Which just becomes self defeating.
Those allied to FA should not have to keep reassuring thin women all the time, especially by negating our own experiences to pretend equivalency with theirs, if it isn’t apt.
wriggles — I would say that if you don’t want there to be competition of pain or marginalization, don’t compete with your pain or marginalization. Thin women have told me a thousand times that “eat a sandwich” (and other food/body policing expressions) is extremely painful to hear; therefore, I believe them. I don’t need to compare our pains, to declare mine or theirs worse. It is unwanted, marginalizing (particularly against women — I have never heard of someone telling a thin man to eat a sandwich as a form of body policing) pain; it is, therefore, unacceptable. That thin women also receive privilege from their thinness doesn’t necessarily make that particular pain any less.
(Each of these things is particularly individual, as well: for example, I have never dieted, and am about as free as an American woman can be from diet-mentality. So snide remarks about my food choices are unpleasant, but are not particularly triggering for me. I have a very thin friend who has been known to have panic attacks when people remark about her food choices. And I’m supposed to dismiss her pain as less than mine? No; having a competition about this sort of thing is completely non-productive.)
As for this: “Those allied to FA should not have to keep reassuring thin women all the time, especially by negating our own experiences to pretend equivalency with theirs” — I agree. But neither should we act as though they experience only happiness and light, belittle their pain, dismiss their lived reality. We don’t have to compete at all. Fatness is marginalized while thinness is privileged; and under this system, people, especially women, of all sizes are at risk for and may have experienced unacceptable crap relating to their weight. These two statements aren’t in any way contradictory. And it isn’t pandering to thin people nor negating fat people’s experience to say so.
While thin men might not be told to “eat a sandwich”, they certainly are told that their body is not “okay” in other, perhaps more subtle ways. (And I know you never denied that… it just seemed an important thing to mention.)
That said, I think the reason why thin men are generally not told to eat a sandwich is that eating disorders are still (wrongly) perceived as something only females get. Very thin women are often assumed to be anorexic, no matter what the actual evidence other than their weight is, and at least a sizeable minority of people still believe that anorexia can be cured by simply deciding to eat more (which is, of course, totally screwed up). Since anorexia is supposedly a “girl’s disease”, a lot of people don’t make the same assumptions about very thin men and instead attribute his size to other factors… or at least I think so.
i agree that it’s harder to be fat than thin in our culture, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reach across the aisle- it’s right, and it’s better for the growth and image of the movement.
Personally, i see thin people’s relationship with size acceptance being similar (not the same, and not in a negative way) to men’s relationship with feminism. Liberation from gender stereotyping and discrimination will free both women and men, even though women are more marginalized by them than men; in the same way, size acceptance will help both thin and fat people, even though fat people are more marginalized in our current system than thin people.
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Thank you so much for this post. I am a thin-bodied person who is an anomaly in my family. I definitely grew up with catty comments and a low-level of constant disdain from my larger (female) family members. I have always been aware of my body privilege mostly because my family members wouldn’t let me forget. In high school and college people would tell me “you’re so lucky you’re thin,” when in reality I was really living a very unhealthy lifestyle. It disgusted me that people cared more about what I looked like than how healthy I was. I got so many undeserved praise and notice and it made me sick to get this treatment after seeing how my family members were treated. Thin privilege is very real and it harms everyone.
this is perfect. thank you.
however, being told to “put down the donut” etc., is not as painful as being told to stop eating or whatever.
Crikey! I meant to say, being told to “eat a sandwich” is not as painful as being told to “put down the donut”.
I liked it better the first way. I don’t think it’s either possible or useful to compare the painfulness of “eat a sandwich” vs “put down the doughnut”; the pain will be so contingent on individual experiences. OTOH, “put down the doughnut” (implied: “and eat something healthy instead”), while it can be horrendously fraught, is marginally better than being told not to eat at all – policing of food choices could come in part from genuine concern; disapproval of eating altogether is hard to read as anything but hate.
don’t think it’s either possible or useful to compare the painfulness of “eat a sandwich” vs “put down the doughnut”
That’s kind of the point I’m making, but from a different direction, why make the comparison in the first place?
cries of “eat a sandwich!” are any less painful or more acceptable than “put down that donut!”
This is a comparison, why? Why not say they both hurt, why say, “any less painful”.
the pain will be so contingent on individual experiences
The indviduality of experience doesn’t mean there are no generalities. Fat stigma has made it’s mark on fat people in general and there are a cluster of actions taken and effects from those actions that do not include every one, but that fact alone doesn’t erase the generality of experience. I tried to explain it here , (I rambled on a bit so I’m in the process of trying to edit it down).
“put down the doughnut” (implied: “and eat something healthy instead”)
That’s if you except the premise that perfectly well made food is bad and others good. And furthermore, that if you wish to eat, what is labelled ‘bad’ food, substituting it for what you don’t want, because it’s healthy is an effective solution. I can’t say I do.
wriggles — this is the last time I’m going to say this: if you don’t want comparisons to be made, don’t make comparisons. I fully agree that the food-shaming thin people and fat people receive in general have different actions within society, making life harder for fat people than thin people. But it is not acceptable to say therefore, as you did in your previous comment, that “being told to “eat a sandwich” is not as painful as being told to “put down the donut”.” There is no point to this kind of pain-comparing, so please stop it.
And to clarify, what I said was: “Nowhere in that succinct definition does it say that… cries of “eat a sandwich!” are any less painful or more acceptable than “put down that donut!”” Which, in fact, is not making a comparison, but saying that Fat Acceptance/Size Acceptance is not about comparing hurtful comments and declaring one “worse” than another.
Later I said: “the pain of food-based shame is not lesser at a lower body weight”, and this may or may not be true in any given instance — for some people, the protections of thin privilege may mean that those hateful words hurt less than they might for someone whose body is more marginalized. But for some people it might hurt as much. There are many thin people I know whose pain on hearing food-shame is worse than my own. My point is, and always has been, that words that attack and shame can hurt, and it is incredibly wrong to say that any individual’s pain is “lesser” or “not as important” because they occupy a more privileged place in society, and collectively remarks against them do not have the same profound marginalizing effect as they do upon another, fatter group.
So please, stop putting words in my mouth, and stop dismissing or trying to measure others’ very real pain.
I went and read your post, and tried to post this comment but kept getting an error. Here is what I wrote:
I’m really trying to understand why we are disagreeing on this. Here is my reading of what you are saying, in the comments on my post and here (phrased from my point of view, because otherwise it’s too complicated):
The statement (mine), that we shouldn’t try to compete for which sort of food-policing statement is more painful is coming across to you as a statement that there’s no difference between levels of pain inflicted from those statements. And so you are trying to say we shouldn’t compare the individual pain [which, side note, is frustrating me, because I don't think I am]. And further, you are saying, that the sort of statement I have made is overly-placating to slim people/women, at the cost of creating space for fat people to speak our truths and have our own pain and experience acknowledged and centered for once.
Am at at all correct in that reading?
Assuming I am (and please correct me if I am not), here’s why I have been disagreeing with you: First, I do not think that I said what you think I said. I did not say that all cases of food-policing hurt equally, nor that they function the same to cause the same level of societal marginalization. Second, I don’t think that the space for fat women to tell our stories needs to come at the cost of thin women to tell theirs — yes, fat voices are marginalized while thin voices are privileged, but misogyny and body-policing happen to then women, too. We don’t need to center their voices (and I don’t think I was in this post, although I can see an argument that I was), but we don’t have to dismiss them, either.
I consider it similar to the “men are so dumb they suck at housework hyuck hyuck” “jokes” — yeah, they’re about/against men (who have privilege), but they FUNCTION to keep women in the domestic sphere. They are a part of sexism and how it operates in society. So when I protest those “jokes”, it isn’t about protecting poor widdle men’s feelings, it’s about opposing ALL forms of misogyny.
When thin women are told to “eat a sandwich”, because they’re “too thin”, I protest in part because the pain of these women is real (just as real as any fat woman’s pain, forget comparing “amounts”), and in part because it is part-and-parcel of fatphobia, and perpetuates the idea that there IS an “ideal body”, that we all have an obligation to achieve it, and that weight is dictated exclusively (or, y’know, at all) by food consumption — which are all ideas that hurt fat people.
Thank you for continuing this conversation with me.
Wonderfully said. Your last two large paragraphs gave me a grateful sob of recognition and gladness.
I’m thinking through what you’ve said in order to try and see if I can find a way to illuminate what I’m saying and to see how if I have, mis-read you. I think the key to the latter is I’m not accusing you, it’s more about considering where I think your admirable desire not to mimize the pain of body issue for thinner women may lead. IOW, the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
It’s difficult to know where someone is coming from just through a few interactions, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to link to an earlier post I wrote considering issues I had with the term/concept of’thin privilege’, which I subsequently worked out is not the same as the privileging of thinness.
Sorry about my comment situation, it’s an on-going source of frustration which I hope to get assistance on, soon.
exactly!
About ten years ago I developed a severe jaw condition called TMJ that left me in too much pain to eat solid food. I was in constant, torturous pain and dropped twenty pounds. I got so many fucking compliments about my “gorgeous” body I couldn’t stand it. One woman asked me to share my secret, and I told her that all she needed to do was hit herself in the jaw with a hammer. Repeatedly.
A friend of mine, someone who preaches to all about how much she loves her “curves”, actually choose to have her jaw wired shut for two weeks to lose weight. The pressure that society places of people of all shapes and sizes is just horrible.
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Just discovered your blog. Thank you for a very interesting post! Well said.
I also agree with Cassandra that the body policing (of all body types) becomes particularly intense during pregnancy. I know from my childbirth advocacy work that thin/petite women receive an awful lot of policing about what they “should” be doing/eating, how much weight they “should” be gaining, and about how they are going to “have” to birth simply because of their size, just as we fat women do.
Our society can be very overbearing about policing women’s bodies….of all sizes…..and that policing can often become particularly intense during pregnancy. In my birth advocacy work, it’s my observation that this policing is often particularly intense with fat women….but also often with thin women.
Thanks for acknowledging that thin women are on the wrong end of discrimination, too.
I’m a moderately tall, very thin woman, and I’ve taken crap for it since being a kid. I’ve gotten treated as if I had a physical disability and even had people tell me to get medical help not because I was suffering any symptoms, but purely because someone happened to ask my weight or saw me in a sleeveless shirt. I’ve had medical practitioners act all apocalyptic about how very thin I was when it was my brother who was there to see them, not me. I was actually forbidden to lift *plastic chairs* in high school because my teacher assumed that with my ‘tiny frame’ I was too weak and would hurt myself. Yes. Plastic seats, that weigh about as much as this soft drinks can I’m currently taking a sip from.
Yet if I even slightly alluded to a heavier person’s weight, people responded as if I’d just confessed to abusing a child. You don’t do that! It’s wrong! You might hurt her precious self esteem! How dare you, you evil, evil violator!
So it tastes very acid to me when I hear about how the world is so friendly to my ectomorph-ness, when I am fair game for all sorts of disrespect whereas the slightest allusion to a heavier person’s weight is a social felony. I get that it sucks to be a natural endomorph in a society like ours, and you take all sorts of crap for it, but it doesn’t make it okay to level charges at thin people too and it certainly doesn’t mean that we have it easy.
I have low thyroid and lymphedema and I am so sick of thinking about weight. It sucks to have been biking for a year and have lost 110 lbs. of partly fluid (that shouldn’t have been there in the first place) and to also know that it’s still not good enough and that I’m still “fat.” When people complement me on my weight loss, it’s always followed by “keep it up” and it doesn’t feel so great. I mean, thanks for the complements, but I’m just so emotionally numb right now.
When I watched “All My Children,” it was kind of hard to relate to a large part of the female cast that looked to weigh around 90 lbs. I even read interviews where some of the actresses touted their healthy diets that enabled them to achieve their physique. I would not tell them to eat a sandwich, and they did have beautiful faces, but, honestly, I do not aspire to have all of my ribs sticking out either. I’m sad “All My Children” was canceled, but it did bother me that the actresses on the show seemed thinner than on other soaps. At least have some size variety on TV
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it sounds like you’ve got a really healthy lifestyle, at least where exercise is concerned, so congratulations on that. regardless of your lifestyle, i wish you the best of luck with your illness.