The Fat Acceptance Movement: Why Fat Shaming Has To Stop

"I'm sorry, but I don't treat fat people," a fertility specialist told Jen. "I know weight can impact fertility, but fertility issues can also impact weight. And that one comment just hit hard during an already painful time." Sylvia suffered from joint pain, but her concerns were dismissed with "it will get better when you lose weight — let's talk again when you do that". She asked herself why the specialist didn't consider the possibility that she would have done that already, if it were that easy. Or the possibility that the joint pain was the very thing preventing her from moving more.

Having medical professionals attribute all health issues they face to being overweight is a very real issue for fat people, and Jen and Sylvia are not alone by any means. Not being taken seriously by doctors can be dangerous, and even life-threatening in some cases. Why is it that fat people face this type of discrimination at the doctor's office?

Sabita's mother told her she looked like a Michelin man when she was a kid. Jan's aunt told her "wow, you're even fatter than last time I saw you." Later on, when she was a grown up, the same aunt constantly asked Jan if she was pregnant, "because she sure looked it". Hana's friend's are "open-minded"; they tell her she totally rocks at being fat and always looks so self-confident. Ada's husband has never, ever said anything negative about her weight in the 13 years since they got married, but he laughs at "fat jokes" on TV and makes snide comments about fat people in the media — and Ada is so scared to find out what he really thinks about her weight that she never called him out on it.

"People assume that you are stupid and lazy," said Catherine. "I often get spoken to like a child."

Why 'Fat'?

The word "fat" is, let's face it, used as a slur all the time. So why am I using it here? Fat activists have been reclaiming the word and are seeking to transform it into a simple descriptive adjective, just like "short", "brown-haired", or "freckled" — proudly, without stigma. Reclaiming the word "fat" is a no different to the reclaiming of other slurs, such as "geek" or "queer". Fat activists see the word as less loaded than other words, words like "big", "fluffy", or "chubby". Medical terms like "overweight" and "obese" are rejected by people in the fat acceptance movement because they imply that fat people weigh too much or are diseased. Fat activists disagree with this notion.

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At the same time, it is important to note that some people strongly dislike the word "fat". Fat activists don't want to force others to use this word: its use is meant to be empowering, and if it doesn't empower you, there's no point in claiming it. They do challenge others to examine why they have negative feelings about the word fat. Is it perhaps because you feel that it implies stereotypes connected to the word apply to you? The fat acceptance movement is trying to fight exactly that — "fat" should no longer be associated with words like "lazy", "undisciplined", "eating all the time", "ugly", "sedentary", "unhealthy", and even "stupid".

Fat Acceptance: Health And Discrimination

'Aren't You Worried About Your Health?'

Part of the reason fat shaming is so common is that being fat is seen as unhealthy, but is it? Well, to start off with, research indicates that long-term weight loss is only truly possible for about five percent of people. People may successfully lose weight for a short while, only to see the process reverse over the long term. Those who do succeed may find themselves unhealthily obsessed with excessive amounts of exercise and watching what they eat much more carefully than your average thin person. The message is clear: being thin is not the natural state of being for a significant group of people. Human bodies didn't evolve to lose weight, they evolved to keep the pounds on.

Should people who are naturally fat turn to unhealthy lifestyles just so they can look the way society expects them to look? For fat activists, the answer is simple. (It's "no!") 

Furthermore, there is no shortage of research to suggest that it's not body fat itself that makes a person unhealthy, but an inactive lifestyle. Dr Kelly Brownell, Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, noted: "The advantages of being fit are striking and [...] people can be fit even if they are fat […] and thus have lowered risk of disease. A remarkable finding is that heavy people who are fit have lower risk than thin people who are unfit." A study published in the Annals of Epidemiology in 2002 found that "consistently, physical inactivity was a better predictor of all-cause mortality than being overweight or obese." And those are just two examples. For more research about the benefits of being fit and active, and exactly how little this has to do with a person's weight, see the links box below.

Why We Need The Fact Acceptance Movement

Have you ever seen "fitspiration" messages on the internet? Those messages are justified by this kind of reasoning: “As long it is inspiring people to get off their lazy butts and start working out I see nothing wrong with those Fitspiration photos and messages. Obesity is continuing to increase and I am not saying we shouldn’t all love our bodies, but we shouldn’t promote self acceptance when a change needs to be made to get healthy.” 

Many elements of modern society are pushing hard to move towards a world in which discriminating against people isn't acceptable. We have anti-racist movements, feminist movements, movements that push back against ableism (the discrimination against disabled people), and gay rights activists. Yet fat shaming remains almost universally accepted, and messages that shame and make fun of fat people are not only all around, but also rarely questioned. In fact, just as women still make less money than men for the same job, fat people make an average of $9000 a year less than thinner people. Is this acceptable? Hardly.

Have you ever Googled images of "fat people" or "obese people"? I do, regularly, as part of my job here at SteadyHealth. If you have done this too, you will have noticed that images of fat people are often shown without heads, with their faces blurred out, or even with that black "criminal bar" across their eyes. This is just one example of how society marginalizes fat people: it assumes fat people are supposed to be so ashamed of their bodies that they don't want the world to see them, and it reduces them to less-than-human. Fat activists have coined a term for this phenomenon: "headless fatties". SteadyHealth does not condone this phenomenon and wishes there were plenty of public-domain images of fat people portraited as, you know, the full humans they are, complete with heads. The reality is different, however, as you can see from the image used on this page. This, too, has to change.

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