Asked by
high-priestesss
Thank you! <3
Thin privilege is being provided the required uniform for your job at no cost to you, while your plus-size coworkers are being charged $2.00 for their uniforms because “larger sizes cost extra.” Excuse me, but when you’re willing to shell out forty bucks for each employee’s uniform, the extra two dollars don’t matter. It’s just petty. And bringing it up in the middle of a staff meeting is extremely inappropriate and basically gives the entire staff permission to openly ridicule fat workers. And “you should be glad they even gave you the job,” is never, ever okay to say.
I am one of those who have been fat all their lives. So I’ve tried the most ridiculous diets, of course. That’s the way of learning not to do them.
When I was about 14, I went to a private dietitian. A paid one. He would put me under a diet high in proteins. It was ridiculous, and I *had* to take vitamins everyday. And even after taking vitamins, I was wrecked. I was really weak, muscles ached big time (I could barely walk around), my hair fell in chunks and I had anemia.
If one week I didn’t lose weight, I was put under an even strictier diet.
I managed to lose 30 kg (over 60 lbs) in barely 9 months, but at what cost? Being sick.
Tired of that, I decided I wanted to go back to normal eating habits for a while to get back my health. I managed to put back more than what I had lost in a little under 3 months.
My point is, being sick while dieting is really a foolish thing to do. It makes no sense. A diet that makes you sick? When you are looking for a better health? No thanks.
There are always better ways.
I fucking hate when magazines have “best and worst beach bodies”, aka a chance to fucking body shame and fat shame people. Just once I want to see someone buck the system and parody that shit- put every confident, beautiful, person of /every size/ on the ‘best bodies’ page and then have a ‘worst beach bodies’ page and have it be BLANK.
Story time:
I went to a carnival with my little cousin (she’s 8 years old, as of my typing this). I could get on every ride there (I could have even get on the rides for little kids if I wanted, because I’m short, but those are just for itty bitty kids). I could get on every single ride there without giving it another thought.
One of the rides, the thing that spins so fast the riders get pinned to the sides because of the gravity seemingly going away, a guy got on with some people he knew. He was smaller-fat (most would just call him chubby instead of simply fat), but also had a belly. He got into a space, but the white belt thing wouldn’t fit all the way around his stomach to be secured on the other side. The people with him started laughing (he did too, but I wonder if he was also feeling embarrassed). The guy running the ride simply directed the man to a space on the other side of his group, where there was a blue belt that easily went across him and secured tightly on the other side.
Lots of the rides had signs posted, saying that larger people (the words used were ‘exceptionally large’) might not be able to ride due to something about the structure of the rides. Even the spacious ferris wheel had such a sign.
I remember wondering many times ‘Why don’t they just make the rides to accommodate more body sizes?’
Then it hit me. That’s thin privilege. Being able to go to a carnival and get on any of the rides without a thought. Not seeing signs posted saying someone of a larger size might not be able to ride at all. I have to wonder what would have happened if one of the people described in the signs had tried to ride, even on the ferris wheel. Would they have been let on, or would they have been turned away?
I don’t even remember seeing any really big people riding rides (the fat people that did ride were smaller-fat); maybe they were when I just wasn’t looking.
It’s amazing how much thin privilege is in things most people don’t even think about.
Thin Privilege is having one of your best friends like a guy and see him give off signals that he may too, only to find out from one of his guy friends he wants someone who is “athletic” that he could “do sports” with, someone who is “fit”, which is code for not fat apparently. As if fat women can’t do any of those things, as if the only way to know if you’re fit is by your waistline…disgusting.
I’m borderline hypertensive, have been for years. On my first visit Dr. P noted that, because of my family history, I really should get treated. I said no, because I wanted to try controlling it myself. In other words, I didn’t want to come off as a “deadbeat fatty” who can’t or won’t Just Lose The Goddamn Weight Already and turns to pills to fix everything that’s wrong with her.
Fast-forward a year. Hypertension has gotten worse, and I finally ask the doctor to prescribe me something for it. It’s been about three weeks, and I’m still getting used to not seeing my skin twitch in time with my heartbeat.
Thin privilege is not feeling like you have to lose weight before getting appropriate care for a medical issue you have *right now.*
I’ve noticed many a submission going into TITP, fat women decrying their lack of desirability due to the immense amount of societal fat hatred. I’ve also noticed many people going on the complete opposite direction, saying that fat individuals shouldn’t rest their entirety on being desired. I feel that line of thinking is flawed in the basis that humans are social creatures and wanting to be in with some form or another shouldn’t be completely discarded.
But on the other hand, we must be very careful about what we deem as ‘desire.’ The recent TITP post struck a chord with me:
Thin privilege is not being told by your boyfriend that you’re callous and bitter because you think pretty girls have it easier.
Thin privilege is not being told how difficult life is when you’re so thin and pretty that you’re literally “harassed” every time you go out in public by men who want to get to know you.
Thin privilege is never hearing your own boyfriend tell you “You don’t discriminate against essentially anyone, but now you won’t sympathize with thin/pretty woman? Don’t be a hypocrite”.
Thin privilege is never being told you don’t have the right to be unfriendly to strangers, because they aren’t talking to you because of your looks anyways so shut the fuck up and be nice.
It struck a chord because the poster is both right and wrong about thin/’pretty’ women. (I put ‘pretty’ and ‘attractive’ in quotes because attractiveness is heavily sociologically influenced and is highly subjective)
She is right that sociologically speaking, individuals who are deemed ‘attractive’ and are thin DO get unfairly treated better than their fat (and thus deemed less attractive) counterparts.
She is right to be angry about a system that tells fat women to just shut up and be grateful that anyone looked her way because fatness is a fatal flaw that eliminates desirability.
She is right to be angry at her boyfriend for his refusal to empathize with her feelings of unattractiveness and her desire to be seen as attractive within the societal structure.
But she is absolutely and positively 100% wrong for completely dismissing the complaints of thinner/’attractive’ women with regards to harassment.
She is wrong to dismiss the feelings of thinner women with regards to how unsafe they feel when men harass them under the guise of ‘compliments’
Street harassment is not complimentary in any way or form. It is male entitlement forced upon women under the guise of ‘adoration.’ Many times, women cannot reject these advances without fear of compromising their safety.
Tourmalineunndine gives a very poignant point when she states:
Fat women in general are socialized to be ashamed of themselves and their fat bodies. So when the rhetorical fat woman hears a thin woman complaining about male harassment, that is a thing that she is often totally shut out of. It’s really hard to see how male attention is bad when it’s what you want most in the world. Not saying they’re right (because it IS totally male entitlement being forced upon women, and I agree with you 100% on that). I’m saying that hating male entitlement is a hard sell for women who would love to have someone pay them attention.
And I agree. It is indeed a hard sell for fat women when we have been essentially programmed, via the mass media and societal conditioning, that our bodies are disgusting and undesirable.
But just as we expect empathy and understanding for our issues with fat hatred, that empathy needs to be extended to our thinner counterparts.
Sexism is something that no woman should be subjected to, whether it be fat hatred based or otherwise.
Thin privilege is being able to have your friend tell you how he plans to set you up with one of his friends because he thinks you would make a good couple without having to ask ‘yeah, but is he into fat girls?’
Because that’s a thing. I am constantly overlooked as a partner due to my size. No one ever asks ‘yeah but is he into skinny girls?’
Thin privilege is not being afraid to meet your friends you haven’t seen for two years because you have gained weight and you know they’ll immediately give you dieting tips, make comments about how you should lose weight and feel sorry for you because they don’t perceive you as attractive anymore.
Asked by
ghagiel
Xkit also blocks posts based on content, and has a bunch of other nifty functions (many of them things the much-missed Missing e had), too. But I suspect the person who wrote in is not on Tumblr but is reading the blog from the front page, and so can’t use either extension.
-MG
Hi,
Please could you reconsider running submissions in which mothers boast about how many children they have and how quickly they conceive and post photos of themselves pregnant or with a new baby. It is highly triggering and distressing to people who are struggling to have children and are facing the very real possibility that it might never happen for them.
I know we don’t like to talk about it, but many people are fat because of PCOS, and PCOS does cause fertility problems in many people. Having a fat woman show off her baby bump and boast about how fertile she is is no different to a skinny woman telling us, “I did it with diet and exercise and you can too.” Horrible. Please don’t.
Jude
Mod response:
Here’s the thing: Fat people being told we can’t possibly get pregnant just because we’re fat is, as you know, a very real problem. Fat people who have successfully had children need to be able to celebrate that and to refute the idea that we can’t. This is part of our mission, to bring to light the ways fat people are treated badly in this society, and that includes in the realm of reproduction. Some fat people conceive and give birth easily, some do so only with great difficulty, and some cannot do so at all. All of these are a part of the fat experience, and all should be discussed. So no, we won’t not run them.
In the context of a blog that is about the experience of fat people, a discussion of the experience of fat people being pregnant is very, very different from a thin person telling a fat person they did anything with diet and exercise. One of them has a place here and the other does not.
We run a lot of things that are triggering for different people. Some of the stuff we run is triggering to me, and there aren’t necessarily trigger warnings on the inbox. We don’t generally decline to publish things solely on the basis of it being triggering to some people.
We can try to warn for it, and will, but with multiple people modding, things sometimes slip through. All of our readers should be aware of this by now, I would hope. This is not a safe space in the sense that it will not have triggering things, only in the sense that we make it as safe as we can for someone to speak out.
I encourage any fat people having fertility problems to submit your stories and experiences, too.
-MadGastronomer
I was stopped by an employee at a gym while leaving the gym. It ended up being a 45 minute long conversation. It started out with him asking me about my workout routine. When I told him about the training that I do, he said that I was “wasting my time” and that I’d never “get better” doing what I do. It turned into even more of a rant about the “obesity epidemic” and the issues that it causes. When I told him that I loved my body the way it was he flat out told me I was LYING! Then, he asked me if I ever stood in front of a full length mirror naked and noticed what I didn’t like about myself.
There’s more to it. So much more. A compilation of contradictions and a reflection of his brainwashing. I ended on the topic of respect because I was not going to get him to believe that fat doesn’t mean unhealthy. So, I told him that I hoped he spoke to thin people the way he spoke to me and that he needed to be more respectful to his overweight customers. I also emphasized that society should change its views and not be rude to others instead of making fat people feel guilty about the way that he looked. He said that this point-of-view glorified obesity and that he shouldn’t respect fat people because we “don’t respect people who urinate in public” (yes, he was really making this comparison).
I tried. Thin privilege is having people believe you when you make reasonable, logical arguments. Thin privilege is not being harassed by the employees at the gym. Thin privilege is being able to report this type of abuse and be taken seriously.
In his original post, which can be seen if you scroll all the way down, he states support for Bloomberg’s body-policing soda ban and rationalizes this because he was once *gasp* TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE POUNDS. What he doesn’t mention is that when I took his class he was drinking a twelve-pack of coke per day. He now has eleven and twelve year old children writing concerning statements about how “sugar kills.” I think I’m going to be sick.
Thin privilege is not having to feel like you have to constantly tell people how good your diet is, and how good your health is, when you talk about having your next child. Thin privilege is not worrying about what people are saying in the backs of their minds. I get my sugar, cholesterol, and heart checked every year even though I’m under 30, partially because I want to be able to tell naysayers that they don’t know everything about fat health. I wear my really low cholesterol, excellent sugar and excellent heart rate like a ‘I TOLD YOU SO’ badge to the world. That shouldn’t even be necessary.
I’ve seen a lot of stuff on fertility and pregnancy in this blog and it absolutely breaks my heart. So I just want to lay down some reassurances to all of the readers struggling with the idea of getting pregnant or being pregnant and facing discrimination. I’m speaking only from the point of view of an overweight, straight, CIS woman, but I hope everyone can find some empathy here.
I am 350 lbs. I’ve been 350 lbs for ten years. In 2008 I got pregnant and lost a baby, only to get pregnant a month after that miscarriage. Needless to say I conceive very quickly. I carried the next baby to full term. My doctor had faith in me, never once mentioned my weight as a possible cause of my miscarriage, and never once said I was putting my child at risk. I feel this is partially due to the fact that he understood my health on an individual basis instead of the broad overreaching assumptions the prenatal industry makes on overweight women. The results: I had an emotionally and physically healthy pregnancy with little complications, none of which had to do with my weight.
Here I am at six months pregnant (in case anyone would like to know what a large woman can look like while pregnant) on a hiking trip with some friends.
Here I am after a long and normal labor that ended in an emergency c-section due to the time frame:
And here’s what happens to a woman who happens to be overweight when she has a child. (note no apocalypse or dire problems as a result of my fat ass. Hidden face because she’s just a child and this is a public blog) It can be JOYFUL
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t create the life you so want to create because you are fat. If that’s the only reason, or there’s an assumption of health BASED on your size…naysayers can kindly GTFO.
And about fertility…well…that is a load of overblown assumption as well. I stopped birth control on February 26th. I am now 11 weeks pregnant.
FAT DOES NOT EQUAL UNABLE OR UNDESERVING OF THIS KIND OF JOY
