#Sizeism

[hyperlexichypatia]

I read this extremely disturbing article about weight loss “treatment” (drugs and even surgeries) for children. I do not recommend reading it if you struggle at all with internalized sizeism or body image unhappiness. It is extremely upsetting. Really, don’t read it. 

The focus of the article is a teenage girl called Maggie who has been pathologized for her weight her entire life, literally since infancy, and then, as a 13 year old, was given weight loss drugs and bariatric surgery. The writer of the article, Lisa Miller, is clearly framing child weight loss as a reasonable medical practice and “radical fat-acceptance advocates” as somehow going too far. Miller is also clearly framing child weight loss interventions as necessary for “health” reasons. 

My partner alerted me to a journalistic trend we started noticing around 2015 – when a writer is trying to express that the people they’re writing about have one motivation, but all the actual quotes from the subject express a different motivation. This often happens when a writer is trying to argue that support for a racist/sexist/bigoted policy position or politician isn’t motivated by racism/sexism/bigotry; it’s motivated by Some Other Thing – and then every actual quote from a supporter is some strain of racist/sexist/bigoted (see: almost every mainstream article from the mid-2010s about the alt-right, men’s rights, gamergate, or the Trump movement). 

In “Ozempic Era,” Miller is trying to convey that child weight loss interventions are necessary “treatments” for “medical problems,” not the result of forced aesthetic conformity due to systemic sizeism – but the actual parents and kids she quotes all cite aesthetic and social reasons for wanting their children or themselves to lose weight. They talk about fitting in. Fitting clothes. Being accepted. Gaining confidence. Wanting to look like thin, popular kids. One of the parents explicitly rebutted the fat-acceptance movement by saying “The world is not built for overweight people” as though acknowledging and changing that fact isn’t the entire point of the movement. 

But really, fat acceptance barely got acknowledged at all. The bulk of the contrast, as usual, was between the “judgmental” view that “blames” fat people for being fat, and the supposedly more progressive medical view that blames genetics, environment, and other factors outside an individual’s control for fat people being fat. It’s so much easier to start the conversation at “Whose fault is it that fat people are fat?” and “What’s the best way to make fat people stop being fat?” than to step back and question “Why is being fat a bad thing?” 

I don’t even think the parents being interviewed are being disingenuous, necessarily. So often in discussions of fat liberation, disability liberation, mad liberation, neurodivergent liberation, whatever, people clinging to the medical model will insist, as though they’re the first ones to think of  it, “What about the problems with being (fat/disabled/etc) that aren’t caused by social factors? What about the suffering intrinsic to the condition itself? Social change wouldn’t fix that!” and then, when asked for examples, will immediately cite examples of problems caused by social factors and systems. Clothes not fitting is a social problem (clothing is made by humans!), not a problem intrinsic to fatness. Bullying is a social problem (humans are the bullies!), not a problem intrinsic to fatness. Fat children lacking self-confidence is a social problem (self-confidence largely comes from relationships!), not a problem intrinsic to fatness. People are really out there trying to come up with non-socially-caused problems intrinsic to fatness and citing “airplane seats” as though airplanes are naturally occurring. 

A perfect example of this in Miller’s article is that now that Maggie has lost weight, she can be a cheerleader – she’s still not small enough to be at the top of the pyramid, but she’s strong enough to be at the bottom of the pyramid! 

How, exactly, is weight loss necessary for that? There’s no size limit to the bottom of the pyramid! That’s where your heavy people are supposed to go! There are, at least, actual physics-based reasons why a heavy person might not be suited for the top of the pyramid. If the claim were “Before she lost weight, she was on the bottom of the pyramid, but afterward, she’s small enough to be on the top,” that would at least be a change directly connected to her physical weight. But for any physical activity that doesn’t directly involve being lifted, weight should have very little connection to ability. Fat people can and do run, lift, swim, and do every physical activity that thin people do. Of course, various medical conditions and disabilities can affect those abilities (in fat people, thin people, medium-sized people, and everyone else), and not everyone is particularly interested in athleticism, but it’s just dishonest to pretend or imply that thinness is a prerequisite for any kind of athletic activity. 

“But, Hypatia,” you, the straw reader who lives in my head, might be saying, “You’re always talking about youth rights and autonomy! If the 13 year old consented to have her body surgically and chemically altered, shouldn’t we respect her choice?” 

Great question, straw reader who lives in my head. Consent has to be informed. And uncoerced. I do not believe that a 13 year old who has been pathologized for her weight since she was an infant, who has been told by her parents and doctors and every authority figure in her life that her body is a problem, who has been relentlessly bullied and ostracized for her weight, is making an uncoerced choice. Nor, if she has never been exposed to the fat acceptance/liberation or health at every size models, is she making an informed one. There is no indication that accepting her naturally fat body was ever an option for her. 

Regardless, my point isn’t even “13 year olds shouldn’t be prescribed bariatric surgery or weight-loss drugs” (although I absolutely think they shouldn’t, and I wonder where the people who [falsely] think gender-affirming care is “permanent surgery on children” are on this). It’s “We should abolish the pervasive, unquestioned, widespread systemic sizeism that leads people to think fatness is a bad thing.” 

#ableism #sizeism #fatphobia #fat acceptance #liberation #youth rights #body posititivity #body image

[raging-guanche]

calling fat, conventially unattractive, poc or neurodivergent/metally ill men who aren't harming anyone "creepy", "weird", "suspicious" or "potentially dangerous" isn't the feminist take you think it is.

#men of color #moc #fat men #plus size men #actually neurodiverse #actually mentally ill #fat #plus size #racism #fatphobia #sanism #ableism #autismia #sizeism #white feminism

[queercraftingchonk]

Yo mama so fat, she is far more likely to be misdiagnosed by a doctor due to weight stigma in the medical industry.

#fatphobia #sizeism #weight stigma #fat acceptance #fat liberation #HAES #health at every size

[intersectionalpraxis]

I would also like to add that there are folks who have thyroid and hormone-related illnesses, and there are even medications that can cause fluctuations in our body weight, and many of times make it difficult to lose weight. Aging and lifestyle changes and genetics also play a factor. No matter the case, another person's body is not your business.

I've done tons of research on the history of fatphobia and it's racist and classist roots in the US, so anytime I see a "former fattie" berate fat people online (especially former white fat women with socioeconomic privileges too), there's always something to unpack.

And I like how this Creator hits the nail on the head, so to speak. You can individually go on a weight loss venture -that's not the issue here. Reinforcing healthist and weight loss discourses BECAUSE of how pervasive body sizeism is -is what's incredibly damaging and problematic here.

It's just always so alarming to me (especially one Youtuber I'm thinking on whose entire channel calls fat liberation dangerous), that these specific people want to 'fit into' the boxes that many societies have normalized as okay -thin equals pretty and thin always equals healthy (which is not always the case and IS an ableist way of viewing health and well being).

#feminist #social justice #feminism #fatphobic #fatphobia #sizeism #ableism #healthism #health is not a size #thin privilege #tiktoks #tiktok #video #tw weight #tw weight loss #fat liberation #fat community

[bloodyscott]

fuck my life my mom just bodyshamed me for gaining weight and she doesn’t gaf that i literally can’t exercise because of my cfs and not to mention im also on risperdal yet shes trying to force me to. literally shaming me for my stomach protruding and talking about how im making my health worse by gaining weight and will get diabetes and all this other bullshit. i hate it up here

#fatphobia #ableism #cfs/me #healthism #sizeism #dysautonomia #diabetes mention #delusional disorder #risperdal #disabled

[haleypukanski]

#writing #fat liberation #climate justice #climate action #food sovereignty #landback #decolonisation #anti fat bias #sizeism #disability justice #2023

[of-another-broken-heart]

Woman with a 20" waist: How DARE you try to talk over my lived experiences as a FAT WOMAN!! My doctor still tells me to lose weight so that makes me FAT and OPPRESSED!!

Woman with a 20" waist, literally 5 minutes later on her tiktok: omg guys I think Bougie Brand shrunk its sizes?? I had to get a LARGE can you believe it??

#I'm so fucking sick of this shit lololol #I can't even get a belt from a MEN'S DEPARTMENT to fit me #but sure GO AWF with your itty bitty thin pretty perfect self I guess #thin privilege #sizeism #fatphobia #I WISH I could just slide to an available size to still fit comfy! #but NO even if I find something that accommodates my form #it's cut like shit! it doesn't fit! it's tight in all the wrong places and loose in weird other places!!!

[cartoonscientist]

people wonder why thin/average women have body dysmorphia and think they’re fat (a lot of fat activists even call them out on this for being insensitive) when the internet is full of people calling average fucking bodies fat

i won’t post the photo here because I’m not a dick, but recently there was a debate on BMI where a woman posted a photo of her (totally healthy and normal looking, for the medical definitions of those words) body to illustrate how BMI can be inaccurate for tall people. lots of people said she was normal or even had a “nice body”, but even more people were calling her fat or even obese and insisting that Americans don’t know what average weight bodies look like because everyone is so fat.

as a counterpoint to that, I’d like to remind everyone that we’re conditioned to think an underweight woman is actually a healthy weight and average weight women are overweight. I’d link a citation but there are seriously so many fucking studies on this that you just have to google “bmi underestimated for women” or “men prefer underweight women” to find lots of stuff.

#sizeism #sexism #fatphobia

[bigbadlesbiab]

how to explain to someone that "oh but you don't LOOK fat" is not as helpful as they want it to be

#fatphobia #sizeism

[birdsintheory]

it’s frustrating that clothing producers think women can only be 5’4” and below bc they literally don’t make the same styles in larger sizes, and when there is stuff made for larger sizes it’s ugly/boring looking like ???

Please I just want cute cat socks but they aren’t made larger than a women’s size 8 😭

#and women’s pants are always short on my legs #and if it has knee slits they’re on my thigh not my knee #I’m tired of my socks being half on my foot all day #sexism in clothes #sexist clothes #sizeism #idk if that’s a word #I realize statistically a lot more women fall into the smaller sizes #but the standard deviation is large enough that there is a significant number of women in the larger and smallerer sizes #women’s clothes #just girly things

[hyperlexichypatia]

Size and Gender, equally arbitrary!

 Markus Alexej Persson, a/k/a Notch, has been making the news for his claim that transgender people shouldn't be accepted because transgenderness is a "mental illness" analogous to a thin person believing themself to be fat.

I don't think it's meaningful or useful to discuss whether transgenderness, or any other mental state, is or isn't a "mental illness," because I don't consider "mental illness" a useful or valid category in any way. But what I want to hone in on is the analogy to someone who has trouble accurately perceiving the dimensions of their body -- a thin person who believes themself to be fat -- and the premise that Persson (and much of mainstream society) takes for granted, that such a person is incompetent to make their own decisions.

As someone who frequently has trouble accurately perceiving the dimensions of my body, I can attest that it's annoying. Clothes shopping can be a challenge. Squeezing through tight gaps is best avoided altogether. And... that's it. Other than some occasional frustration in the changing room, there are no real problems in life that come from having trouble accurately perceiving the dimensions of one's own body.

So what's so terrible about a thin person who, for whatever reason, thinks of themself as fat?

Because they might hate their body? Be depressed? Or hurt themself to try to change their size?

Why would you assume those are intrinsic to being (perceived as) fat? Is it any better for these things to happen to Actually Fat people?

"Thin person wrongfully believes self to be fat" is only a crisis if you believe that fat people rightfully deserve to suffer, to hate their bodies, to be depressed, to starve, and the only "problem" occurs when an "innocent" thin person falls into this trap.

If you recognize that there's nothing wrong with being fat, then, logically, there's nothing wrong with being presumed-fat, either. If a thin person believes themself to be fat, and hates their body over it, the most important message they need is not "You're not fat," it's "There is nothing wrong with being fat."

Of course, there's no concern for the reverse, a fat person who believes themself to be thin. That's fine. Amy Schumer can make a blockbuster movie about that premise. Fat people are allowed and encouraged to aspirationally identify with thin people. When fat people struggle with their body image, the most encouragement we can get is "It's okay, you're thin on the inside."

So is any of this actually analogous to gender identity?

Well, "fat" and "thin" are arbitrary cultural lenses through which people impose cultural meaning onto biological traits, just as "male" and "female" are... but the analogy kind of falls apart there.

The commonality is Persson's prejudices about both. Being fat is bad, he assumes, so if a thin person identifies as fat, they must need to be rescued from their self-image. Being transgender is bad, he assumes, so if someone identifies as transgender, they must need to be rescued from their self-image. But there's nothing wrong with being fat, and there's nothing wrong with being transgender. And if someone is "wrong" about their gender identity, as someone might be "wrong" about their body size? Well, so what? Nothing is stopping people from reassessing their identities later. Either way, your body, your mind, your gender, your identity, is yours, and nobody gets to take it away from you.

#sizeism #feminism #gender #ableism #mad pride

[hiccupologist]

people on reddit are so fatphobic that they'll just be oblivious to obvious fetish bait bc they're so quick to proselytize against fat ppl

the OP will be like "omg you guys my boyfriend is perfect and so so sweet but like he weighs as much as a small excavating machine and he insists on wearing my xxs booty shorts from victoria's secret and stretching them out on his thicc ass and hips, and i told him i would take him to buy his own shorts and he told me he's too embarrassed to go into a lingerie store because the sense of humiliation is so strong it's almost palpable since like, the human reaction from the employees would obviously be to imagine this obese nerdy tech support worker squishing his pale, doughy body into ladies pajama bottoms, and i guess i get that, but also i have a sensory processing disorder and he thinks it's helpful to sit on me with all his mass and crush me flat into the sofa like a human weighted blanket, just like basically enveloping me in his warm flesh so I can't tell where my body ends and his begins, is that a red flag"

and the commenters will just take that at face value and be like "SQUISHING IS ALWAYS A PRELUDE TO PARTNER HOMICIDE, his weight is a sign of his narcissistic entitlement"

#cw sizeism

[cockroachmotherfucker10]

I'm thinking about this really amazing-looking hot cocoa recipe I've been seeing on Tumblr for a while, and how I finally worked up the courage to make it a year or two ago.

I'm thinking about how I made the mistake of going to the notes to see if anyone had any tips for making it, because it's an imprecise recipe, and how I saw a comment from someone bashing the hot chocolate for being unhealthy. Saying no one should be making drinks like that, or else [insert fatphobic catastrophizing here]

Dude, it's fucking hot chocolate. No one is mistaking it for Brussels sprouts. But I had and have a restrictive eating disorder and regularly suffer from brain fog and lightheadedness; the fast-acting simple carbohydrates in the hot chocolate would have probably made me feel much better that night. I think my body would have thanked me.

More importantly, I needed the comfort and contentment that a nice warm cup of cocoa would have given me. But that one comment I saw tainted the entire recipe for me. I didn't make it then and I haven't made it since.

If I were actively working to recover, I'd have a much better chance of setting the food-shaming aside and reassuring myself that there is nothing wrong with enjoying a comforting treat. But I was, and still am, in a delicate and vulnerable headspace. And I know—trust me, I know—it's a very small thing. I don't like that a single Internet stranger had such an impact on me, and that it bothers me to this day.

But they did, and it does.

Your words can affect people more than you know. What may seem like an offhand comment to you can harm others. You never know what someone is struggling with, and even if they don't have an eating disorder, shaming their diet, lifestyle, health, or body is not okay and may hurt them more deeply than you realize.

It's not your business how other people eat, what they look like, or what their health status may or may not be. Stay out of their lives and exhibit the basic human decency of allowing them to make their own choices. They didn't ask for your opinion.

-Mod Lia

#edrecovery #actually ed #diet culture #body positivity #anti sizeism #anti fatphobia #fatphobia #anti diet culture #anti pro ana #anti pro mia #pro recovery #recovery #mental health #ed recovery #body positive #body acceptance #mod lia #og post #og post cmf

[kota-corner]

Reminder that "Atypical Anorexia Nervosa" is literally the same disorder as Anorexia Nervosa, with the only difference being that the former diagnosis is given to those with "normal or high BMIs" which alienates mid-sized, plus-sized, and fat individuals in recovery, and only pushes them further into their disordered behaviors because the separation of the same illness solely based on weight is a systemic perpetuation of fatphobia, weight stigma, diet culture, etc.

Also I find it ironic that we tell fat and plus-sized people that they're at an unhealthy weight based on their BMI calculation without consideration of any other medical tests or exams. But then we tell those same people struggling with Anorexia that they aren't unhealthy enough to struggle. Maybe we should...idk...stop using an outdated measurement system to determine health status, and stop measuring worth based on health status and body size. Just a thought from a plus-sized person in recovery...

#tw: eating disorders #tw: fatphobia #tw: bmi #tw: sizeism #recovery #body neutrality #anorexia recovery #down with the bmi #text post #important #💫donnie text post💫 #💫donnie gets real.tag💫

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

Some resources regarding the Model Minority Myth, intersectionality, and links to comedians as examples of empowerment through embracing stereotypes, and more:

so i recently had an incident in which the experience of being a third culture kid/abc wasn't recognized and was extremely triggering, so i'm gathering some resources here that could be helpful for anyone that's interested in some nuances of living as part of the AANHPI community. this will be a post that is updated as i come across more things! feel free to send me stuff as well, i'd love to make this as comprehensive as i can :3

➼ "Anti-Racist Critique Through Racial Stereotype Humor"

Article that includes both the pros and cons of embracing stereotypes as a form of empowerment, please read with a critical thinking and culturally responsive lens

➼ Comedians that provide a good example of racial comedy by the community:

- Steven He - Uncle Roger - Please feel free to send me more and I can generate a list!

➼ "Intersectionality 101: What Is It and Why Is It Important?"

Article explaining the concept of intersectionality and how overlapping identities create different experiences of oppression

➼ "Not Your Model Minority"

Ted Talk about what the Model Minority Myth is and how it might affect individuals that do not fit the mold

➼ "Tips to Deal with Fat-Shaming in an Asian Family"

Article describing the prevalence of fatphobic comments from Asian families

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Last updated: December 30, 2023

© humanitys-strongest-bamf & rydenkat | Do not repost or plagiarize my work. Do not translate or edit without my permission. Do not feed my work into AI. My work is currently posted exclusively on Wattpad, AO3 and Tumblr. Feel free to recommend my works on other social media platforms!

#navigation #cw: sizeism

[replicayouth]

having an entire essay for a bio explicitly outlining all of your beliefs / identities / disorders (???) is imo one of the most insane things tumblr has normalized

#especially because it’s like. by and for liberals #like if you don’t have a laundry list of things you condemn in your bio you’re a bad leftie #it’s sosososo weird you guys are so weird #and btw I can tell everything I need to know about you by whether or not you have fatphobia on that list #and whether or not you actually say fatphobia or if you say SiZeIsM lmfao