This is Thin Privilege

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Hey, just a quick happy story for you. I emailed the HAES vs. weightloss paper to my 'Dieting works and is also good and healthy and people love the weightloss aspect of GI-issues'-GP and during my next appointment she mentioned that she'd change her practice to focus less on weight. It's small but it's still a victory. Also, I sent a bunch of links to my friend who had told me about her fat frustrations and she thanked me and said it helps her feel better about herself <3

Asked by
cuddleswithwomen

Holy shit, that’s awesome. Three giant cheers to your GP. Good doctors are the best!

-ATL

I don't understand thin privilege. Isn't having access to so much food that you can store large amounts of excess body fat and not having to work hard physical labor privilege compared to the majority of people in the world? It seems like such a Western idea to me. And this comes from someone who weights 90 kg, not a "skinny bitch".

Asked by
Anonymous

angelicasylum:

smitethepatriarchy:

I don’t think you can call it a purely Western idea anymore, but yes, when you think of it on a global scale, there is a certain amount of privilege you need to have in the first place to be in a situation where thin privilege is a thing. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that in many countries, especially “Western” or white-ruled countries, fat hatred is a serious thing, and so is thin privilege. In any place where thin is glorified and people are literally encouraged to harm themselves to become thin and openly hated for being fat, thin privilege exists.

Is…is no one going to point out the fact that this anon is implying that fat people are fat because they eat a lot and don’t move?? Newsflash - not all fat people HAVE access to food, not all fat people work easy, cushy jobs that don’t require hard labor. Fat doesn’t automatically mean eating too much and being lazy.

I don't understand thin privilege. Isn't having access to so much food that you can store large amounts of excess body fat and not having to work hard physical labor privilege compared to the majority of people in the world? It seems like such a Western idea to me. And this comes from someone who weights 90 kg, not a "skinny bitch".

Asked by
Anonymous

smitethepatriarchy:

I don’t think you can call it a purely Western idea anymore, but yes, when you think of it on a global scale, there is a certain amount of privilege you need to have in the first place to be in a situation where thin privilege is a thing. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that in many countries, especially “Western” or white-ruled countries, fat hatred is a serious thing, and so is thin privilege. In any place where thin is glorified and people are literally encouraged to harm themselves to become thin and openly hated for being fat, thin privilege exists.

phaedra-grey:

I’m really anxious right now but it isn’t even what I’d call unreasonable. I have a practical exam in the morning. I’m not nervous about performing well or carrying it out accurately, because I’m good at chemistry and have been paying attention in class. I’m not particularly nervous about the group-work aspect, because I’ve worked hard to stop being nervous around those people.

My problem comes with the lab coats - I’m simply not going to fit.

In my teens, I skipped out of more than a few practical experiments, and fell conveniently ill, because I knew that none of the coats would travel far enough around me to even touch, let alone begin buttoning. Back then I was a UK size 14, and my breasts, at a H-cup, had pretty much no chance of being contained by a child-sized labcoat or apron!

I’m much larger now, and whilst this is something I’m fine with in general, I am not fine with dealing with peoples’ reactions to it.

Sure, if you laugh at me for being fat, you’re a shitty person - In theory, everyone knows it. But in practice? You’re “just telling the truth”. “Concerned about [my] health”. “Think it’s fine to laugh at because [I] could change if [I] cared enough”.

In practice, most non-fat people are going to agree with you, and you’re going to have a good old sneer at somebody else’s expense.

You don’t have to worry about being able to find affordable clothing in your size. You don’t have to worry about being able to fit into picnic benches or theme park rides. You can go kayaking. You can buy a sports bra. You can eat without people assuming you’ve been eating all day. You can go to the gym without people asking you if you’re ‘finally’ making “that big change”. You can have people speak up for you when one stupid line in a rubbish pop song threatens your throne for 0.259 seconds.

This is thin privilege.

Note for folks not in the UK: apparently “morbid obesity” is defined as above BMI 35 there, while in most other places it’s defined as above BMI 40. For reference, here is a picture of someone very close to BMI 35, from Kate Harding’s “Illustrated BMI Categories.”

Smokers and the morbidly obese in Devon will be denied routine surgery unless they quit smoking or lose weight.

Patients with a BMI of 35 or above will have to shed 5% of their weight while smokers will have to quit eight weeks before surgery.

The NHS in Devon has a £14.5m deficit and says the cuts are needed to help it meet waiting list targets.

The measures were announced the same day government announced an extra £2bn of annual NHS funding.

Well, at least it’s being upfront about its bigotry: the cuts aren’t about reducing risks to patients, or the other stuff that’s usually thrown around when lawsuit-fearing doctors tell patients elsewhere they need to lose X lbs before they can get the surgery/treatment/etc they need. It’s about redistributing services from those deemed “less worthy” of care (smokers and fat people) to those deemed “more worthy” of care (non-smokers and thin people).

If being deemed worthier of care and health resources because you aren’t fat is not thin privilege, then I don’t know what is.

-ArteToLife

g-l-i-t-t-e-r:

angelicasylum:

lizalifts:

size10plz:

Forcing kids to diet is child abuse

thisisthinprivilege:

No, no, dieting teaches kids important life lessons, such as how to steal, hide and binge on food, that the most important thing to their parents is how they look and most importantly that they’re just not okay.

And how else could I have developed such a dangerously paralysing fear of health professionals without being dragged to every one in the state to find out what was WRONG with me?

I remember very clearly in the first grade talking frankly about how fat I was. First grade. Let that sink in.

Yup. I learned how to steal food at a VERY young age because I was constantly hungry thanks to all the dieting I was forced to go through. It’s effected me into adulthood because now when I do have access to food my brain goes into “THIS IS THE LAST TIME YOU’LL EAT FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG!!!” mode which grapples with my constant “eating is shameful and disgusting and so are you” mode. Other than that, now I’m terrified of healthcare professionals for much the same reason, being dragged to the doctor every weekend for years to give them food journals and have each and every thing thing I put in my mouth for the past week criticized. Being nine years old, I relied on the food that was prepared for me, but I was still treated as if it was MY fault that I had a bowl of pasta on Sunday.

I used to cry and beg not to be weighed days before my yearly physical from ages 8 and up because it always turned into the doctor and my mom critiquing every like and dislike, every glass of skim milk that could have been water, every cracker that could have been a carrot as if I wasn’t even in the room. And then any time my mom was depriving me or being unfair about my food and I had the nerve to object because I was too damn hungry (the subject of most of our arguments since even before the weight discussions), she would remind me that the doctor said I was too fat so I had to listen to her.

I See a Book and Get Angry and Write a Thing

anneursu:

I am not good with the word “fat.” Having had eating disorders off and on since I hit adolescence, my relationship with that word is wholly warped—it is a proxy for something dark and roiling, loaded with everything but actual meaning. So I have really learned a lot reading the thoughts of teen librarians Angie Manfredi and Kelly Jensen on the word—they dauntlessly defang it and bring it back to what it’s actually supposed to mean. As Jensen says in an excellent essay: “Being fat isn’t a disability. Being fat is a physical state of being.”

Nobody tells you this when you’re growing up, but you can be fat and feel good about yourself. You can be fat and healthy. You can be fat and strong. And fat is just a word, that’s all—not an insult, not a feeling, not a moral failing. Having recently seen a ten-year-old get hospitalized for anorexia, heard a first grader scream “Oh, yeah? You’re fat!” to her younger sister,  heard a friend tell of the way her eight-year-old niece gets her food policed by her parents with the warning, “You don’t want to be fat, do you?” I think we need to learn this, urgently—I think we need our kids to learn it.

I am saying all of this  because I was with my son in the bookstore yesterday and came across this book:

image

Don’t Call Me Fat: A First Look at Being Overweight

So. No. According this this book for kids, you can’t be fat and feel good about yourself. Being called fat is an insult. This physical state of being is terrible thing to be. And, no, the book isn’t some misguided attempt to help overweight kids navigate the world and feel good about themselves, it is about telling them not to feel good about themselves so they lose weight.

Perhaps you guessed as much from the cover, where, as Megan Blakemore observed, the somewhat chubby girl isn’t playing with anyone else at the party; she’s too busy staring longingly at the cupcakes.

image

See, if you are overweight, you might get bullied. But not just teased; people will try to stop you from playing with them or from sitting next to them.  Because you’re not the same as they are. And because, apparently, you are repulsive. Didn’t you know that? Well, you do now.

image

You obviously are not taking care of yourself, and you need other people to tell you how to do that because you are too dumb to know how to do it yourself (and if you weren’t, why would you be overweight?)

image

Oh, and you can’t do the same things as other kids. If you’re overweight, you can’t do fun things like run, jump, and climb as well as other kids. You might think you’re having a really good time, but you’re not. And you’re going to feel bad—says this book, telling you exactly how to feel. Look at those thin girls and their pretty clothes and their big smiles! Don’t they look happy? Don’t you want to be like them? Don’t you feel bad now?

Do you feel bad now?

Some people in eating disorder treatment like to personify the ED’s voice. This is pretty much what that voice sounds like.

This book series has titles on autism, special needs, race, shyness—all kinds of things. And I’m trying to imagine the situation in another book in this series where the author explains to the reader that other kids won’t want to sit next to them.

How many people who published this book looked at that language and thought it was fine?

Kids (overweight or no) don’t need a book to tell them to be ashamed about their weight. They don’t need a book to hear that the word “fat” is bad. They don’t need a book to tell them that it’s just better to be thin. They live and breathe in American society, so they get the message just fine. And they don’t need a book to tell them that everyone believes that if they simply ate less and exercised, their troubles would magically be thin, and thus happy. No, the book says, we shouldn’t bully overweight people, they aren’t greedy and lazy—but if they just stopped eating so much and worked harder, they wouldn’t be fat anymore.

Some well-meaning person could have given me this book as a kid. I was a pudgy child whose grandmother made pointed comments about how nice all the other girls in ballet class looked in their leotards. And I wasn’t unhealthy (though yes, I couldn’t run, jump, or climb as well as other kids because I’m really uncoordinated and would much rather read a book, thank you very much). But it was made clear to me, at an early age, that something was wrong with me. That it would be better if I were thin. And I wasn’t allowed to eat in the same way other kids were.

I am forty-one years old, and standing at the bookstore looking at this book I felt like that kid again, the one who learned that being overweight is bad, the one whose pediatrician muttered that my weight was heading in the wrong direction, the one who went on her first diet in second grade. Then I flashed forward to seventh grade and the way I felt about myself. That was the first time I stopped eating.

*****

I posted this cover and a couple pages on Twitter and got some equally enraged responses from authors and librarians. We’re all a little sensitive about kids, see. And we have this crazy opinion that books are supposed to help kids be in the world, to help them feel okay about themselves—that that is Job #1. This series seems like it’s trying very hard to do just that—other titles include I Am Feeling Bashful—A First Look at Shyness, I See Things Differently—A First Look at Autism; I Can Do It—A First Look at Not Giving Up! (Though I have a lot to say about Don’t Call Me Special, but I digress.)

And there are not many books out there to help fat kids be okay with themselves. Because thinness is such an inherent value in our society that we don’t think we’re supposed to tell overweight kids be comfortable in their skin—we’re supposed to tell them to be uncomfortable. Like in the rest of media fat kids—especially fat girls—are invisible in kids books. And when they are visible the book is often about the problem of their fatness; overweight kids don’t get to just exist and be in the world and have stories of their own.

Manfredi and Jensen speak passionately about the way fat girls are treated on covers of YA books—often, fat characters don’t get on the cover at all. If they do, they’re portrayed with food (cupcakes seem to a popular item of choice), or only part of their body gets shown, or the models used aren’t even close to fat.

I scanned the shelves of the bookstore yesterday looking at the images on the books. Girls on middle grade covers, whether photographed or drawn, tend to be thin—rarely are they even average. On YA covers, the models look like, well, models—and some of them look dangerously thin.

I’m a grown women, and I find these covers triggering. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be a teenage girl and see them.


*****

In my high school, we all had to take a health and fitness class. I remember the teacher explaining that it was really unhealthy to sustain too high a heart rate when your exercised, and one of the cool senior girls scoffed, “But how will we burn off calories?”

As part of the class we had to report to get our BMIs taken. I dreaded this day all semester, and I can still feel what it was like to walk down to the basement toward my appointment. The gym teacher used a caliper to measure our fat on our arms and stomach and inner thighs, pinching and squeezing at the fat as if trying to figure out how much excess needed trimming off. Twenty-five years later, I can tell you exactly what he told me my body weight was supposed to be, and exactly what I weighed. I don’t know what my face must have looked like, but I can still hear some internal writhing in the gym teacher’s voice as he said, “So you, uh, might want to, uh….have this information….” and dismissed me.

I personally knew eight girls in my small school that had diagnosed eating disorders. I have no idea why anyone thought this was the information we needed. I now know so many girls and women who have given up years of their lives to hating their bodies, to obsessed and starving and purging and bingeing. Because they learned early on the worst thing anyone could call them was fat.

We learn to hate our bodies, and so when something traumatic happens—we take it out on our bodies. After a break-up in college, I couldn’t keep down any food. I lived like this for a couple of months until one day I woke up and realized my whole day was planned around eating and throwing up. I broke down and went into health services sobbing. They shrugged and said they couldn’t help me and sent me back home after scrawling one single word on my chart—bulimia. Then they threatened to kick me out of school for the semester if I didn’t get help—standard procedure—and brushed their hands of me.

*****

I forget, sometimes, what it’s like to be around women who treat food as an enemy every day. In my group of friends, women don’t talk about their weight. They don’t ascribe morality to food as “good” or “bad.” They don’t perform the self-shaming routines we’re somehow supposed to do when we eat a lot. It’s surprising then to go out in the world and hear the way women talk about themselves—how “fat” they’ve gotten, since they’re no longer a size 2. How “bad” they were at dinner last night. How they “shouldn’t” eat what they’re eating. How they’re trying to get one size down. This self-flagellation ritual, the “I’m fat” kabuki, the ceremonial public confession of sin—passed on from woman to woman, mother to daughter, friend-to-friend, forever and ever—shaming themselves, yes, and teaching everyone around them they should be ashamed, too.

What they might not know is the person next to them is sick—that the words they use warp into nourishment for a dormant eating disorder. What they might not know is they’re teaching the girls who listen to hate their bodies.

Your daughters are listening.

And maybe we can’t help ourselves anymore. Maybe it’s ingrained too deeply. But maybe we can help our kids.

*****

A few years ago, I left my marriage and moved back to my home in Minneapolis with my three-year-old son. I was on a diet at the time—having gained weight a little past the capacity of my pants. After a while, I reached that ideal weight I’d learned about in high school—but it didn’t seem quite enough. Five more pounds, the voice said. That’s all.

My ex-husband and I had a really nebulous parenting agreement in place, and it created a great deal of conflict for us. Something would happen, I’d feel wrenched apart, and each instance summoned the ghosts of all the ways I’d ever felt ignored and patronized and powerless. They are heavy, those ghosts, and they take up a lot of oxygen.

Five more pounds.

A year later I was in partial-hospitalization, where I met many people who learned as young girls and boys that extra weight was bad, and that it was worth anything to lose it. And the core belief, that they were bad because of their weight, was with them, always, and the only way they knew how to cope with anything was to take it out on these bodies they were taught to hate.

One of the things I discovered in the last couple of years is that I didn’t know how to be angry. I can remember so many times in my adult life backing down from being angry, feeling like there was something wrong with feeling that way. It was not my right. No, no, I would say. I’m not angry. When what I should have said is, Hell, yes, I’m angry. And here’s why. I was so angry that year, and didn’t even know how to name it, and  every time something would happen to force a conflict I dealt with it by eating something and throwing it up. It was the only way I knew to deal with it. Emotion, anger, it can’t go outwards, so it goes inwards. And since we learned so early on that our bodies were our problems, everything was our bodies’ fault.

Thanks largely to some magnificent friends, I know how to be angry now (as anyone who has read this Tumblr probably knows.) I know how to live with the feeling, and how to express it. I know I have the right to be angry.

The thing with girls and women is, we’re just not supposed to take up any space. We’re just not supposed to be angry, stand up for anything, be loud. The author Heidi Schulz told me a story of being on a plane and the man next to her was spilling his personhood all over her space—arms draped over the armrest, legs sprawled out. And she said she spent the first half of the plane ride responding by shrinking herself, because that’s what we learn. Be small. But then halfway through she realized: I can take up space. And she spread out.

We are not taught to take up space. We have to learn it.

We can take up space.

It is good to take up space.


****

I can’t help but wonder how much of weight shaming for young kids is actually about health and how much is about the self-image of the parents. That the parents believe that if their kid is pudgy, it will make them look like they’ve failed—because all you have to do to be thin is make “good” food choices and exercise, right?

And, I know, it’s so hard to be a parent. You want the best for your kids and it’s really confusing about what that means. And it’s natural to worry about your kids and want them to be happy—thinness is so ingrained in us as a virtue that it seems like our kids would just be happier if they were thin. But it just doesn’t work like that. Your kids will be happy if they feel okay about themselves. A child’s weight does not turn a kid into a bully. And being thin does not equal being happy. By the end of high school I’d learned that all those popular girls, the skinny ones—they weren’t any happier about themselves. And given the ways some achieved this thinness, they certainly weren’t healthy.

If you buy everything the culture is selling, you are never happy with your body. You are never thin enough. If you believe “fat” is an insult, and being overweight will cause you to be repulsive to other people, thinness is never going to solve anything. If you internalize every message society sends you about weight and about girls and how they’re supposed to act—the two quickly become intertwined and you do whatever you can do to take up less and less space.

I think we need to reframe our notion of healthy when we talk about weight. Because I can’t believe there’s anything healthy about telling kids people won’t want to sit next to them if they are fat. I believe that is dangerous. I believe it plants seeds in young kids that can very easily grow into something poisonous.

I can assure you, whatever the health issues of the extra pounds I carried on me as a kid might have been, they’re nothing like ravages of eating disorders on my body.

Kids don’t need a book shaming them into dieting. They don’t need to learn that food and weight are a moral issue. They need positive images of kids of all weights in their books—from picture books on up—books that tell them that they exist and it’s okay and they can take up space. They don’t need a book like DON’T CALL ME FAT—maybe they just need people to tell them they’re okay the way they are.

So I saw your post about fat acceptance in human medicine (vet student here)... and it confused me, not because of the fat acceptance part but because so far I've been taught that there are significantly higher risks associated with overweight patients and surgery in general. It seems to me that the first doctor had concerns with the risks to the patient involving the surgery itself in combination with her weight, and maybe some uncertainty with the surgery itself... not a lack of compassion.

Asked by
rabid-dragoness

agreekdoctor:

Nobody is denying the additional risks of operating on a significantly fat person, but in reality the additional risks are not so great that surgery cannot be safely done.

I have fat patients undergo surgery all the time, and most of the time the surgery goes just as well as it does in people who aren’t fat. I do have some patients for whom their fatness has led to some complications that they might not otherwise have had if they weren’t fat, but with proper treatment those people have done well too.

The fact is that surgeons who refuse to do surgery on fat people are being lazy because they don’t want to have to manage the complications that MIGHT arise. Believe me, the vast majority of fat patients do just fine with their surgeries with NO complications.

fatbodypolitics:

Click through to read the whole interview. I feel very honored to be considered one of their “ladies we love.” BONUS - There is a photo of Itty included.

fatfunnyfloralfeminist:

cannot-kill-the-sun:

breathing-lavendair:

slarmstrong:

Forcing kids to diet is child abuse

thisisthinprivilege:

For as long as I could remember fat and food were enemies to my home. My dad always made me feel shameful for eating and I would cry a lot because I was hungry but couldn’t eat. My mom had to hide lunches in the fridge so I could eat during the day as my dad refused to feed me so I wouldn’t get fat.

A few years later I was forced onto my first diet and since then my body was never the same. I have done almost every diet from when I was 7 until I was 20 and decided I was done with dieting.

I’m fat and trying to love myself as I am. I dress in clothes I like and love my body in and I am working hard to build a good relationship with food and exercise (the latter is my weak point, my relationship with food is light years better than it was.) I may never be completely well, and putting a child on a diet is really harmful because they may never be well.

Interview/questionare

TW: Cursing, and TLDR.

I read a post that somebody is trying to get collected opinions for their school essay, and I thought I’d answer the questions. You don’t have to publish this (Duh, like you need my permission?), but I figured my input could be useful to that person.

To anon essay writer:
First of all, I wanna say THANK YOU. For covering fat people in your essay, you’re bringing awareness to fat discrimination. A good number of your classmates may snicker, but I know at least one of two of them will actually get what you’re saying. Also, the other two are wonderful choices as well. These stand out to me because they can all be seen as choices the person made, which is WHY they people judge (Which isn’t ALWAYS the case for mental illness, but there are people out there with a mental disability who don’t seem like it at all and look like they’re just having a bad attitude. Like me, with high-functioning autism. I look and act completely normal, except my temper, which MOST people see as me “Throwing a bitch fit”, even though it’s actually something that, most of the time, I can’t help. Maybe try covering that, too, if you want? It might be a good side-subject for the mental illness part). 

Anyway, I’m going to answer the questionnaire you submitted.

1. How does it feel to have people consider you a ”burden” without even getting to know you, anything about you or your limitations?

It sucks. It honestly sucks. To see that stray dogs are being treated better than you because you’re a different jean size is probably one of the lowest blows to the ego you can get (Not that stray dogs SHOULD be treated badly. I’d like it if both stray animals AND fat people could get more respect). I’ve been put on lower ranks than sociopath assholes just because they’re thin.

- Thin privilege is still having people wanna know and talk to you after you’ve pointed a loaded gun at somebody’s head and threatened to kill them. Meanwhile, I was called crazy and psychotic for being angry at people talking shit to me about my looks, and for being rejected for it. Oh, and that’s from personal experience. Not sure HOW that girl managed to keep a social life after proving she was insane, but I think it may be because nobody BELIEVED that their cute, thin and super sexy blond friend of the neighborhood would EVER have any issues because she looks SO DAMN GOOD. *Epic eye roll*

ANYWAY, Disclaimer: No, just because you’re thin doesn’t mean you get to hold people at gun point. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t get nearly as much tolerance from your neighborhood social group as this girl did no matter how thin or attractive you are. I do NOT recommend trying it. Period.


2. Do you feel that even in this modern society you are still stigmatized for being yourself?

Yes, actually. Is this even a question? I mean, yeah, it’s awesome and wonderful news that more modeling agencies are recruiting plus sized models, and that more plus sized characters in media are being positively presented more than they were before (Which still isn’t much, but it’s progress at least). Every time I hear about people taking a stand and more and more “professionals” openly admitting that a size 14 and up can be beautiful, I nearly cry with joy.
But just because there’s a few good looking magazine campaigns doesn’t mean that my troubles are over. In fact, they’re far from it. Society’s prior (And still ongoing, for the most part) brainwashing is still fresh in these people’s minds. And, naturally, I’m a target for it (Despite only being a 1x, which is actually, technically, right on average size). Being told to kill myself? Having milkshakes thrown at me from cars? Being told I’ll never be loved unless I lose weight? Having my fiance’ be accused of being a “chubby chaser”? For EVERYONE to assume he’s dating my friend because she’s skinnier than I am? Having my picture secretly taken and posted to a blog to crack jokes at me? (OK, that never happened to ME, but it’s happened to a LOT of people. Seriously, just look up “Faces of Walmart”. MOST of the people on that list are fat).
It doesn’t matter how many “Every body is beautiful” ads we’re gonna get from Dove (Which, Dove… Keep it up. Seriously. Everyone else: Catch on! ), there’s still gonna be the bullies and and oppressors who are stuck in their ways, and will do anything and everything to make me either go away because of it or make me feel like shit for it.

Oh, and GOD FORBID I love myself. The moment I get even the littlest bit of confidence, I get a line of people telling me “You must be hallucinating when you look in the mirror because you’re NOT pretty” (Despite the fact that pretty =/= thin and ugly =/= fat. Even some of the most superficial of assholes are aware that thin people can be “ugly” and fat people can be “Pretty”, too). Like, hey, society… I don’t have to think I’m hideous just because you do. I don’t have to hate myself because you hate me. Fuck, in fact, if nobody else is gonna love me, I might as well fucking do it so LET ME have my moment of confidence without trying to “correct” me for it, alright? Alright. THANK you.

3. Would you rather change yourself of society?

Both, really. Myself, well, aside from actually trying (And failing, mind you) to lose weight, I’d like to change my attitude and NOT be afraid of people, to learn to take it with a grain of salt, and in the end, to not GIVE a fuck about it and to LOVE MYSELF ABOVE ALL THINGS.
Those, however, are personal goals. I can improve my own life from doing that, but it won’t get rid of the issue. Because of that, more than anything else, I’d rather change society. If I hadn’t been hated, bullied, discriminated against, rejected, made fun of and generally just treated like shit for it my whole life, I wouldn’t feel a need to lose weight and I certainly wouldn’t hate myself for my looks. I mean, I know I’m pretty. I’ve got a lovely face and a nice “Tits to ass ratio” (As the fiance’ calls it, I guess). I’m healthy, and I’m a good person… But I *HATE* my looks because I’m a size 14 and not a 6, and I hate going out into public because those positive traits I listed off? I know they’ll be COMPLETELY ignored, if not downplayed just because of my jean size. When I’m not hating myself for it, I’m afraid of the rest of the world because I know that THEY will hate me for it. You know how much that sucks? I don’t want to hate myself, but like society has programmed people to hate plus sized people, it’s also taught me to hate myself, too. So many men and women would be able to see their true creative potential and find the life they want if society and the media wasn’t so hell-bent on shaming us every time we step outside, go online, or even watch TV or listen to the radio. We can’t escape it, so we end up WASTING valuable years of our time hurting and crying and obsessing over something that actually does not matter in the slightest. That girl that was called “fat ugly bitch”? There’s a chance she loves science, and a chance that she could find the cure for AIDs… But she won’t because she’ll spend her time trying to lose weight and crying and hating herself because of the way society has been set up to shame and hurt us.
Other than what I mentioned about time wasted, what about those who commit suicide from all of the bullying? And for those who don’t care about the “fat girl” being dead, what about her suffering family and friends (Yes, society, fat people have friends, too! ) who are CRYING because of that? People have lost their daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, lovers to suicide over this crap (And yeah, I know there’s more than one cause for suicide, but bullying is a major one and fat people are a major target of bullying. I can’t bring up any numbers here to get technical, but I’d assume a good number of suicides are from plus sized people being bullied over their weight).The size of the body has nothing to do with the size of the brain or the heart it holds. When people finally wake up and realize that, maybe we can have more people doing good for the world.

4. Has being the way you are, even gotten in the way of any ambitions you’ve had?

Not entirely, but then again, I haven’t tried to get out and chase some of those ambitions because I’d pre-reject myself for my weight. Like, once upon a time, I  wanted to be a model but I’d shame myself for even thinking of doing that because of my size… So I guess in a way, yeah, it has. There’s a lot of things a lot of people want to do, and they either chicken out in fear of being judged for their bodies, or they go for it anyway just to be rejected for it when they get there. Not to mention the fact that it’s been PROVEN that skinnier people are more likely to be hired for jobs. Like I said before, perfectly capable people are not being able to help the world and/or fulfill their dreams because of society’s rejections. How many people could make a positive change to this messed up world we live in if it weren’t for the shaming? We won’t find out unless we fix the mentality.

5. Do you find tv and movies accurately represent you?


Sometimes, yeah. But the way they present fat people is horrible. Either they’re selfish assholes who eat all of the food (Like Eric Cartman from South Park), or they’re actually nice people who are CONSTANTLY being made fun of. OR, if it’s a female, she’s the Overly Attached Girlfriend sort of character madly in love and obsessed with a boy, and it’s up to the attractive and skinny female friend of his to SAVE HIM from the DOOM of being liked by a fat girl. And that last example was taken right off of the plot of an episode of some show on the Disney Channel they were advertising about a week ago. In the end, fat girls are usually portrayed as rude, crude, or downright disgusting and/or crazy. Is the fat person ever the hero (Aside from in The Heat, or any role by Cedric The Entertainer, it seems)? Are they EVER portrayed in a movie without their weight being pointed out ONCE? (Aside from that film TITP talked about in a blog entry). They’re usually stereotyped so hard that it actually STOPS being funny (Even to my thin friends, actually). 

Speaking of such, a movie I recently watched REALLY made me think about this. Because, at first, the character Melissa McCarthy played as in the 2013 movie The Heat (It’s actually pretty funny) amazed me. “OMG, a fat girl is a leading role! And she’s totally badass!”. But then I kind of realized that even then, there’s the obvious stereotype that we can’t seem to be able to avoid.
Yeah, she’s very lovable as a character in the way that she’s totally badass and doesn’t give a flying fuck, but… Wait a second, she’s the FAT chic. The ONE DAMN TIME Hollywood makes a fat girl a main character, she’s “ugly” (The actress herself is actually very pretty), crazy, and threatening to kill people and then beat someone else with the dead body. Sandra Bullock, on the other hand, plays the skinny girl who’s a nag and quite simply, Melissa’s polar opposite. Despite how I loved the chemistry between the two characters, I realized that both of them were shoved into a stereotype. What if they had switched roles? It’s amazing to think (And kinda scary) that even I’m sitting here thinking that wouldn’t look/feel right because even I’ve been shown those stereotypes for so long that it feels like the role of the angry, crazy chic who doesn’t give a fuck, as much as I love her and her badassed-ness, BELONGS to the fat girl (But then again, I do love a good comedy where Sandra Bullock whines and nags. Haha! ). 

An accurate representation happens rarely in media. When it does, it’s great! I think it needs to happen more… Or, at least, if the media’s gonna show the stereotype, let this “Binge eater” still be successful as a character. Don’t have her there just for the sake of people making fun of her. Show her with friends who love her despite and don’t CARE about her weight or her eating habits. Focus more on the heart of the character than the weight of the character. Have her actually contribute to the overall storyline without being the butt of every fat joke the script writers could think of. Show that she’s not a joke, not an animal, but a PERSON, even if she DOES get seconds while nobody else does (And you know, if we could avoid the “over eating” stereotype altogether, too, that’d be great… But if you HAVE to show it, Hollywood, don’t make that the main focus!).



So, yeah. Sorry about the wall of text, but I really do hope that helps (I tried to cut it down but I’m SO BAD at that!)! I know others will be answering, too, so it’ll be good to get some collective opinions. Also, feel free to inbox me if you want me to text your ear off some more about this crap. Good luck with your paper! I’m really hoping you pull an A+ out of this one.

- Nicole

If your reaction to hearing that a fat person has been refused treatment for years on end because of their size and then, when their illness became so acute that they had to have immediate surgery that it went just fine, your reaction is “Fat is bad! They were right to deny you treatment! You deserve it!”

THEN YOU ARE SCUM. You are filth. You are advocating for people to die.

Fuck you.

-MG

It is a fact that medical students are deprived of the study of big people from the day they walk in the door. As part of my job, I talk to a lot of donor agencies and there IS a weight limit on bodies donated, even if you're only donating for science and research. That means cadavers used for study and for practice are never fat people, so they never learn how to work with fat bodies, and it snowballs from there. Discrimination against fat people in the medical community starts at school.

Asked by
oryxofelia

madgastronomer:

agreekdoctor:

thisisthinprivilege:

Agreekdoctor is a regular, and we see his commentary even if we don’t necessarily reblog it all the time. I think he’s saying that the choice of cadavers is not the most significant thing, that operating on fat bodies isn’t actually all that difficult, it’s doctors making up excuses not to do it. But that the training definitely needs to change, because doctors are currently having anti-fat bias engrained in med school.

He’s certainly not denying that med students use cadavers and parts of cadavers in school, or that there’s a size limit on the cadavers med school accept. He’s just saying that’s not a big cause of discrimination in surgical practices. I think.

-MG

Yes, I’m not saying that fat cadavers aren’t necessary. But there are some practical limits to consider with fat cadavers. At the school where I went, the weight limit for the willed-body program was 250 lbs. Which is still fat, albeit a smaller fat.

There are several factors to consider in how a medical school gets its cadavers. Most cadavers are obtained via donations made by patients. They find out about the program and decide before they die that they are going to donate their body to medical education. For many fat people, they would never even consider that donating their body would be an option, so there might be some level of self-selection at work.

Also, the preservation process adds a significant amount of weight to the body. The process of embalming a person’s body for dissection in medical school is quite different than embalming one for a funeral and then burial or cremation. Bodies being studied in medical school have to be preserved for months. A typical gross anatomy course lasts 9 to 12 months, depending on the school. The embalming has to last at least that long, and precautions need to be taken to keep a body from drying out. The tissues of the body absorb a lot of embalming fluid, which can significantly increase the weight of the cadaver. A 200 lb person could easily end up weighing 300-350 lbs once that is done. So a 300 lb person could be a 400-450 lb cadaver after preserving, which is a significant amount of weight. This would also make it very hard to move the body around (like turning it over, for instance) during dissection.

Now, here’s why I don’t think the lack of super fat cadavers is a reason that fat patients are discriminated against: as Mad Gastronomer points out, choice of cadavers is not super significant. Gross anatomy is not a huge part of medical school. It is a way for a new doctors to learn what “normal” anatomy is, and you can do that on thin bodies just as well as on fat bodies.

Here’s the thing though. There is PLENTY of opportunity to expose medical students, interns, and residents to fat bodies in medical school and in the post medical school training that happens after medical school. Not dead fat bodies (which to some extent can be different from live ones), but living, breathing people. They can see fat people on their rotations, and learn about them in class.

A surgeon goes through lots of training after medical school, which includes hundreds (or even thousands) of hours of actual, hands on experience doing surgery on people under the supervision of their teachers. A general surgeon gets at least 3 or 4 years of residency training, and surgical specialists get several years after that before they are considered competent enough to operate on people without supervision.

That means there is PLENTY of opportunity for a surgeon to study fat bodies in residency. The problem is, of course, that the residents won’t get to have experience operating on fat bodies if their superiors won’t consider operating on them in the first place.

Now, I’m not going to say that operating on a fat body is easy (or that it’s as easy as it is to operate on a thin body). Indeed, it gets harder to operate on fat people the fatter they are. Just the sheer bulk of the fat tissue makes it so. It also means that the rates of complications, such as the wound not healing correctly, etc. are also higher. That’s not discrimination; that’s just medical fact. The discrimination occurs when a surgeon uses those higher rates of complication as an excuse to not do something at all… in other words, laziness, and anti-fat bias. Coupled with the fact that they may not have a lot of experience operating on fat people and it further compounds the problem.

In order to end anti-fat bias in the medical field it MUST start in medical school… but not necessarily with fat cadavers.

I hope this clears things up.

Thank you for clarifying.

And, since some asshats keep telling us that there are more complications for surgery on fat patients. Yes. We know that.

We, like agreekdoctor, think that that is NO FUCKING EXCUSE TO DENY PEOPLE MEDICAL TREATMENT. Find techniques to mitigate them. People deserve proper treatment without being required to do something that might well be impossible and will almost certainly cause their health to get much worse for waiting.

Afraid somebody’s trachea will collapse? Fucking intubate. It sucks, but it is a technique that will prevent the problem. There aren’t good guidelines for anesthetic dosage for fat people? Fucking develop some. How is this not obvious? How is it not an excuse for lazy doctors? How is it not discrimination?

It is a fact that medical students are deprived of the study of big people from the day they walk in the door. As part of my job, I talk to a lot of donor agencies and there IS a weight limit on bodies donated, even if you're only donating for science and research. That means cadavers used for study and for practice are never fat people, so they never learn how to work with fat bodies, and it snowballs from there. Discrimination against fat people in the medical community starts at school.

Asked by
oryxofelia

Agreekdoctor is a regular, and we see his commentary even if we don’t necessarily reblog it all the time. I think he’s saying that the choice of cadavers is not the most significant thing, that operating on fat bodies isn’t actually all that difficult, it’s doctors making up excuses not to do it. But that the training definitely needs to change, because doctors are currently having anti-fat bias engrained in med school.

He’s certainly not denying that med students use cadavers and parts of cadavers in school, or that there’s a size limit on the cadavers med school accept. He’s just saying that’s not a big cause of discrimination in surgical practices. I think.

-MG