Not believing that anyone loving you would be a joke and impossible.
Since I was a little, me being “loved” was the butt of every joke. “So and so likes you.” Of course they don’t, why would they. Look how gross and fat I am, I get it already… Whenever anyone of the opposite sex looks at me, I just feel like they’re so disgusted, so why bother…
Thin privilege is being told that you can love and be loved in return.
thin privilege is never having to wake up to fatphobic trolls telling you bullshit about your body that isn’t true because you want equal rights to other people, and then having people try to police your tone when you give them a piece of your mind.
This post is in response to a comment by a-box-of-cats on my post Thin Privilege vs. “Thin Shaming” that reads:
i appreciate this post and i’m glad someone is speaking up about this.
that said, i do take issue with the way that some prejudices are downplayed. i have experienced both fat- and thin-shaming, often getting both in the same week, when i have neither lost nor gained weight. both of these hurt. saying that one form of discrimination is less legitimate than another is disrespectful and passes judgements without understanding all angles of an issue.
we cannot combat fat-shaming without fighting thin-shaming at the same time. both are attempts by society to tell people what we can and cannot do with our bodies, and, in corollary, take away our ownership of our bodies and ourselves. if we’re going to end discrimination, we must not practice it ourselves.
In my essay, I did not suggest that thin shaming is acceptable. I even explained how thinness is not always overly valued (though lack of value does not signify oppression in this case) and how this manifests on an intersectional level for Black women. I sent a hyperbolic tweet (included in the post) about what thin people do when they use their privilege to police the bodies of those who are not thin, while disregarding their own issues—issues that they will not be judged for because of thin privilege. This is NOT facilitating oppression because thin people are not oppressed solely for their size. The essays reveals some of the unearned benefits of thin privilege.
Oppression is NOT solely about hurt feelings of the oppressed and hatred from the oppressors. (There is no “oppression olympics” being played between thinness and fatness as the former is not an oppressed group solely for weight.) Thus, to create a parallel (implying equal detriment) between thin shaming and fat shaming obscures the reality of oppression for people who are considered fat or “obese.” This is the same hideous “it goes both ways” trope that is used to obscure the reality of racism, sexism, and homophobia, for example, by invoking false systems of oppression of “reverse racism,” “misandry,” and “heterophobia.” In my essay Why Whites Call People Of Colour Racist, I explained how those without White privilege can be rude to someone with it, but still not facilitate the “oppression” of Whites. Whites who feel angry about an insult doesn’t indicate “reverse racism,” for example.
Even if someone hurts your feelings for being thin, you do not face oppression for that same thinness, especially when it is within a range deemed highly acceptable or even beautiful in this society. If coupled with other privileges, such as beauty privilege, White privilege, passing privilege or light skin privilege, it most certainly doesn’t become a source of oppression. There is no “discrimination” against thinness in that it facilitates oppression based on thinness. Again, in the essay, I explained some of the unearned benefits of thin privilege, and included a link to a blog with multiple examples.
Admittedly, though unlike most forms of privilege which have no possible transience, thin privilege and others like theist privilege/class privilege do. Within the confines of thin privilege, however, or in other words, as long as you are thin, hurt feelings or not, you do not face discrimination or oppression for that thinness. Hurt feelings individually? Possibly. But use words like “discrimination,” which alludes to oppression carefully.
As far as body policing and external control, thin or not, yes, that does occur for women because of sexism and misogyny and because of misogynoir at the intersectional level for Black women. That’s a multifaceted issue for which I’ve elaborated on in a plethora of essays. But even within the space where women face this oppression from appearance to beauty to sexuality to reproduction, thin privilege, beauty privilege, White privilege etc. still exist.
Do you mind giving some commentary on this story?
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Mod response:
I don’t mind. For those who don’t want to click through, the basic story:
“The flight was completely full and after boarding an adult passenger who was not originally booked for this flight, we learned a young customer traveling alone once onboard needed more than one seat to get safely to her final destination,” [Southwest spokesperson] McInnis said. “We requested the adult customer take the next flight to accommodate the young, 14-year old traveler who was being met at her destination.”
Now.
The article is written by an obvious fat-hating hack who needs to go back to Journalism 101 and retake the “tone” segment of the course.
It’s also a bloody mess. The article author quotes a SW spokesperson above who says the ticketed passenger was the fat 14 year-old girl and the standby passenger was the thin adult, and then says,
George Hobica, president of airfarewatchdog.com, said a ticketed passenger normally has precedence over one flying standby. However, whoever was picking up the 14-year-old girl might have panicked if she wasn’t on the flight.
Which seems to contradict that.
For anyone who wants to break down bias in articles, here’s a hint: look for the adjectives and verbs. In this article the thin woman was “kicked off” a plan to provide room for an “oversized” girl. The girl is painted as the interloper from the outset, and fat people like her as thoughtless monsters who are “so obese that they can’t squeeze into their chair and never thought to purchase a second ticket.” (“obese,” “squeeze,” “never thought to”)
Now, this story is set up to be that the fat girl (or her guardians, rather) bought one ticket instead of two, and when a standby passenger was told there was room for her, the only seat was next to a fat fatty who was ‘oversized’ (taking up too much space, rather than the exact amount of space she needs — the size of her body).
The thin woman says this, which is placed high up in the story:
“It didn’t seem right that I should have to leave to accommodate someone who had only paid for one seat,” the anonymous woman told the Sacramento Bee.
The thin stand-by passenger is made out to be a victim, when in fact, she was able to get on another flight to her destination within the hour (how often do you think this happens for fat folks — ticketed passengers, not standbys — who are much more routinely asked to deboard when the flight is ‘too full’?). And what an asshole, by the way, getting pissy about accommodating a 14 year-old girl. Fuck you, lady.
What rubs me so wrong is this:
McInnis acknowledged that the airline should have first sought volunteers and said Southwest apologized to the woman and refunded her one-way airfare.
Yet you NEVER see this said about fat people who are booted off flights. It’s ‘their fault’ that they were so ‘thoughtless’ that they believed they could ‘squeeze’ into the seat. No mention of asking volunteers to get off to accommodate a fat person, and refunding a fat person’s ticket for the inconvenience. Nope. Thin people get apologies and refunds, fat people get aspersions and a doubled fare. Thin privilege, folks.
But, but! This story about the fat passenger having only bought one seat is apparently something the thin stand-by passenger could very well have made up. No one actually knows if the fat girl’s guardians bought two seats. Buried in the story, we find out that:
It is normally Southwest’s policy that passengers who are too big to fit in a seat buy two tickets in advance and then are refunded for the extra seat if the plane isn’t full.
Southwest’s coach seats are 17-inches wide, according to SeatGuru.com.
Southwest wouldn’t say if the girl had purchased two seats.
A story I have heard fat people tell is that they comply with the ‘person of size’ policy (which this article calls the “Obese Passenger Policy” — bias, folks, watch those adjectives!), purchase two seats, and then get pressured into giving up their second empty seat to stand-by passengers.
What could have happened here — just as likely as the “OMG but she only paid for one seat!” story is that this fat 14 year-old’s guardians paid for two seats, and one of the flight staff saw an empty seat in the cabin (or on the seating chart more likely) and offered it to a standby passenger. Then when they realized it was a passenger-of-size seat they had to ask the stand-by person to take another flight, instead.
The article author really jumps the shark (I know, who thought it could get worse) when he starts pearl-clutching about how he couldn’t get any info about the statistics on how many fat people need two seats on a plane. And of course, like any reasonable person, I’m wondering why the fuck this is relevant to the story, except to capitalize on the “obesity epidemic” hysteria with stats about How! Many! Fat People! Take Up! Two Seats! OMG!
Oh. But there’s a second page. And this is when the conversation about this poor thin person on stand-by, who had to get on another flight WITHIN THE HOUR so a 14 YEAR OLD GIRL FLYING ALONE who’d paid for her ticket(s) in advance could get to her fucking destination, starts to satirize itself.
But not everybody is so forgiving of Southwest.
“This is crazy. The gate agent obviously made a bad judgment call,” said John DiScala, a travel blogger known as Johnny Jet. “Did they ever think how embarrassing it is for someone to be taken off the plane? Other passengers might have thought she was a terrorist. The agent should’ve made the 14-year-old wait for the next plane. After all, she was late.”
Did people ever think of how embarrassing it is for fat people to be routinely kicked off flights for 17” wide seats not being big enough to accommodate them, and not having the money to purchase two seats and gamble on not being on a full flight (or having the ability to leave at non-peak times) so they’re refunded that fare? Southwest isn’t Luxury Airlines. Many folks who travel Southwest travel it because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford to fly at all, and they need to get from point A to point B. If these people could afford to pay for two seats will-nilly, they could afford to travel another airline. (not all people who travel Southwest do so b/c they can’t afford to travel otherwise, but I’m not talking about those people here)
And this doesn’t even take into account the fat people who DO comply with “person of size” policies, buy two tickets, then face airline staff trying to sell a standby passenger their bought-and-paid-for second seat.
So yeah. Apparently we’re supposed to take people’s feelings into account — how embarrassing it would be to be kicked off a flight, with some hyperbolic story about how people might think the poor thin person is a TERRORIST! — if they’re thin, but fuck ‘em if they’re fat, even if they’re 14 year-old girls. This is thin privilege.
There’s some mention of “extra-large” seats that would cost extra, but not the price of a double fare. Which is an interesting concept which basically turns flying into a straight-size/plus-size adventure, where straight-size people up to a certain point get some low foundational rate, and plus-size people have to pay an exorbitant fee for an extra couple inches.
And of course, there’s the inevitable othering of fat people as either physically or mentally diseased:
“Whether or not we treat obesity as a medical or mental condition, facts are facts … there are a lot of wide people,” Hobica said.
Cuz hey, it can’t be an article about fat people without questioning whether fat people deserve nice things, amirite?
So, crap article, written by a total hack, biased to all fuck-out, and obviously don’t read the comments.
-ArteToLife
Asked by
misskittidanielle
Thin privilege is not having to worry when you buy airline tickets.
This summer I am going on a trip with a class from University. We had to buy plane tickets for international flight. I freaked out internally about not being able to fit in the seat. I was very worried about being publicly humiliated if I had to ask for a seat-belt extender or even worse, if they kicked me off of the plane or something if I didn’t “fit.”
The result? I had to pay the extra cash for first-class tickets because the seats are bigger. I just played it off like I had the extra cash to burn when I really don’t. I had to pay $1200 while all my thin friends and classmates got to pay $600-$700.
Dear OP,
You are not oppressed. You are, in fact, privileged because you can afford to go to university. You are privileged because you can afford to go on a trip with said university. You are privileged because you can afford first-class seats on the flight to your trip with your university.
Check your own privilege before complaining about others.
The idea that someone does not face discrimination because they have other forms of privilege is asinine. Understanding privilege means understanding the space you take up, so while yes the submitter DOES have a great deal of class privilege, that doesn’t mean their experiences as a fat person are are somehow invalid.
Denying someone’s experience because they have other forms of privilege is incredibly unproductive and is a form of erasure. Basically, your argument is flawed because at no point did the submission deny the privilege they do have and having privilege doesn’t negate a person’s marginalization.
BTW straw man arguments are boring.
-FBP
Thin privilege is not having to worry when you buy airline tickets.
This summer I am going on a trip with a class from University. We had to buy plane tickets for international flight. I freaked out internally about not being able to fit in the seat. I was very worried about being publicly humiliated if I had to ask for a seat-belt extender or even worse, if they kicked me off of the plane or something if I didn’t “fit.”
The result? I had to pay the extra cash for first-class tickets because the seats are bigger. I just played it off like I had the extra cash to burn when I really don’t. I had to pay $1200 while all my thin friends and classmates got to pay $600-$700.
I have thin privilege, and while I try my best to become a good ally I stumble and fail all the time- today was such a failure.
I met up for a break from work with my best friend, who is fat, at my favorite cafe. It’s small and rather crowded, so I went to get us a table while she went and ordered our coffees and the slice of cake I was craving. I put down my jacket at an outside table, then went back inside to help pick up our order. The woman behind the counter went to put a slice of cake on a plate just as I was arriving, then looked my friend up and down, reconsidered, turned the whole cake platter around until she could reach the smallest slice there was, and then put it on the plate with a wink to me. “It’s for her own good,” she said to me, “less cake means losing more weight!”
I should’ve said eating cake wasn’t an issue, or that there was no need for weight loss because my friend is just perfect as she is, or that I’d appreciate it if she kept her food policing to herself. I should’ve spoken up that my friend was standing right there, that she was perfectly capable of understanding her, that she was just kind enough to buy ME a treat I wanted. Instead, I just followed my furiously blushing friend who had hunched over our coffees and retreated to our table. I couldn’t even taste my cake, but I demonstratively brought the plate back to the counter and told the woman it had been good, but I would’ve loved a bigger piece.
We’re not going back there, even though they make the best coffee.
Thin privilege is being able to find a doctor who takes your chronic back pain seriously.
My husband has been suffering with chronic back pain for seven years- literally our entire marriage. He has been brushed off by countless doctors who refused to investigate why it might be happening in…
12 years (coming on 13) I’ve had serious chronic back pain after an accident. It has only been this year that they’ve finally got an MRI done and a referral to a pain management specialist after finding my T6 and T7 vertebrae are degenerating.
Previous to that, I’ve been shouted (literally) out of pharmacies who refuse to fill my prescription for pain meds because they think I’m an addict, had physiotherapists tell me that they can’t help unless I lost weight first, doctors who believed that the pain would go away if I e.g. got down to a size 12 (medically impossible for me anyway. I’ve tried)…
The list goes on. I am SO glad the husband mentioned in the original post has finally got proper diagnosis and treatment. Many doctors are not trained on how to handle chronic pain patients and it IS a specialty area. Believe me if there was a magic cure for our pain we’d fucking take it, but there isn’t.
So I wish they’d stop telling us that diet and exercise will fix everything.
When I lived in Wainwright I was outright told by a doctor that if I was to continue seeing him (I got my appointment just after I was told I my contract wasn’t being renewed) before he treated me for ANYTHING be first treatment was going to be bariatric surgery. After I lost 150 lbs (his words), THEN he would look at other possible issues.
Then people ask me why I dislike doctors. Luckily coming home I seem to have found one who listens. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Thin privilege is not having to search for a doctor who’ll prescribe the medication that will help you beat a serious mental illness and get your life back if that medication’s side effects include weight gain.
Thin privilege is going to your gynecologist for birth control and being prescribed birth control.
I have been suffering from awful menstrual cycles that are not only irregularly-timed, but have a ridiculous length. By the time I went to see my gyno last August, I had been bleeding for literally three months (and had all the symptoms of PMS to boot). Since I’d had issues with irregular periods ever since I first started menstruating, I decided to start taking birth control in order to regulate my cycle.
After the exam, I was really hopeful because the doctor hadn’t been rude or judgmental at all thus far. She told me she couldn’t find anything wrong, so I told her that I wanted to start taking birth control because I couldn’t handle periods like this any longer. She then looked at me and told me that she didn’t want to prescribe me contraceptives because they’d give me breast cancer. She told me that someone of my size would develop breast cancer if they took oral contraceptives.
I was so afraid at that point that I denied the pills. I asked her what she suggested I do, since obviously bleeding for three months at a time surely wasn’t good for me. Her suggestion? Take iron supplements and lose weight.
When I was 19, I presented to a doctor with prolongued menstrual bleeding (18 months, non-stop, full bleeding) that left me in breathtaking cramping pain most of the time and had my iron levels depleted to a dangerous low. It had taken me over a year to gather up the courage to do so because every time I went to a doctor with even a cold I was fat shamed.
What was this doctor’s suggested treatment? His exact words: “Go away and lose weight, find yourself a boyfriend and come back to me when you want a baby.”
FUCK YOU THIN PRIVILEGE DENIERS.
[tw: bullying]
In 7th grade this girl who liked the boy I was dating, decided she was going to hit me every time she saw me, in order to get the boy. At one point we were at a weekly event called teen night, we were standing directly in front of an adult and she was punching me, the adult was pretending not to notice. With tears streaming down my face and my arm sore I reached out to grab my bully’s hand, and the adult looked directly at me and said “Cut it out.”
After I came home in tears, my mom called both teen night, and my school, and sitting outside the counselors office alone, before they knew I was there, I overheard an adult say “I don’t understand how she can claim she’s being bullied, *name of bully* is too skinny to be mean! And *my name* can just sit on her! Are you sure it’s not the other way around?”
Thin privilege isn’t having people say your bully is “too skinny to be mean” and that you can’t possibly be bullied by that person because “you could just sit on her.” Thin privilege isn’t then having people infer that, based on the fact that you’re fat and this other person is thin, you must be bullying her.
Thin privilege is being able to find a doctor who takes your chronic back pain seriously.
My husband has been suffering with chronic back pain for seven years- literally our entire marriage. He has been brushed off by countless doctors who refused to investigate why it might be happening in favour of saying “Whatever it is, it can be cured by losing weight and getting “fit” (read: thin).”
While it’s easy to make assumptions based on appearance, these doctors weren’t interested in finding the source of the problem at all.
It took seven years before we found a doctor who didn’t brush off his concern about his constant pain, and finally got an order for a CAT scan.
Turns out that he has osteoid osteoma, a growth in his L3 vertebrae that causes all of his symptoms and is very treatable. In the mean time, for the first time in seven years, he has adequate pain relief and isn’t being treated like a drug seeking, obese time waster who doesn’t feel like exercise.
Thin privilege is not having memes show up all over your Facebook newsfeed that mock your body type. Thin privilege is not having it implied that your body type is so grossly offensive that it’s an illegal, arrestable offense.
I’m not sure if you welcome submissions from people who have thin privilege, but this happened to me recently and i found it ridiculous.
I was recently introduced to my cousin’s girlfriend for the first time, and my mum pulled me and my sisters aside before we met and said we should know a couple of things about her. The first was reasonable - she has a severe phobia we needed to know about in order to not bring it up in conversation, which was obviously absolutely fine. Disappointingly, my mum then actually took time to point out to us that she was “quite large”, as if it was something that would shock or offend us in some way, or something that require a prior warning. She treated her weight as if it was something for her to be ashamed of, as if it was something we would react against negatively. I felt disappointed, as my mum isn’t a small woman herself, and as I constantly try and help her feel positive about herself and, in turn, others, I was expecting her to be a little more rational!
The situation was just entirely ridiculous; if she’d been thin there would’ve been no need for any comment along the lines of “just to warn you, she is quite slim!”.
