When I was seven years old, I was sitting by the side of the road in the tiny village of Søndersø next to my friend. We were both chubby children and it must have already got to us that this was a wrong thing to be. Every day, a fat woman rode her bicycle past us. Every day, we shouted at her. I do not remember what we shouted. I am quite sure it was not a positive ‘Nice bike!’ or ‘Love your hair’ because we were children with intense internalised fatphobia, so it was probably something a lot less pleasant. I am as ashamed as I can allow myself to be about this. I was a tiny, self-loathing child lashing out. Hoping to elevate my own self-confidence by tearing down someone else’s. It must have seemed to work – because we kept doing it. Until one day. I remember the lady stopping her bicycle and I remember immediately cowering with fear. She stepped off her bike and turned around. She was crying, which hit me in the gut. When you are a child, adults are not allowed to cry. Especially if you were the reason for it. The woman approached us and calmly asked us to stop. I do not remember her exact words because the whole world froze. But I know we never did it again, and we probably developed quite a healthy dose of empathy by realising that fat people are actual human beings with feelings.
It has taken me many years to learn to be nice to fat people, because all fat people have felt like an extension of myself – and I hated myself. I hated my fat and what it made me: unworthy, unlovable, unattractive. I am oblivious to what came first: my love for fat people or my love for my own fat. Nevertheless, I am here now. In love with my own fat and in love with others’ fat. Learning to embrace fatness elevated me as a person, opened my horizons, filled me with compassion and emotional energy. I no longer felt the need to hold on to negativity, which all seemed to link to childhood trauma and deep, internalised shame. I can recommend becoming a friend of fat people.
And if even just a tiny part of you is thinking, ‘Well, surely, it should not be hard to be nice to fat people,’ strap in, because I have got news for you. Only days after one of my first Facebook statuses about fatness went viral, I went to a party. I felt slightly relieved – I had just started talking about the difficulties of existing in a fat body and I was surprised by how positive most of my friends’ reactions were.
So when a colleague of mine came up to me at the party, I was naively expecting nothing but another positive response. He seemed distressed, pearls of sweat bouncing off his forehead. He said, ‘Sofie, I just want to thank you so much for your article. It really resonated,’ and I smiled because it is still my favourite thing when another fat person tells me that something I have said has been in any way helpful to them. I was happy for him – that he had perhaps started on his own crusade towards self-love and maybe my article had been the first step. He then said, ‘Because I know exactly what you are talking about, you know, people hating fat people. Like, I would never fuck a fat woman. Ever. I just … could not,’ and he made the face. The face of someone about to throw up. The sick face. The ew-face. To my face. To my shocked, fat face.
The shock had barely subsided when another colleague of mine waddled up to me. She was the level of drunk where tears came easily to her eyes, and she wanted to share her grievances with anyone who would listen. She came close and I could smell some fierce alcohol on her breath and she said, ‘I read your article. It really hit me in the gut. I have been in love with this woman for years – Sofie, she is the one. We get along so well and she is just incredible. But she is fat, so I could just never be seen with her,’ and I blinked a couple of times, trying to let it sink in. The odd discrepancy between the seemingly loving tone of voice and her grim and brutal fatphobia towards someone she supposedly loves – and me.
I had to re-read the article I had written several times, dissecting it to find the possible sentences that could be misconstrued to mean that we should feel sorry for people who hate fat people. Of course, if I was to take my own head out of my ass for a bit, I can fully see that there are not many people who are not somehow victims of fatphobia. That, in a way, if you love and are seen publicly with a fat person, you become a target as well. And if not a target yourself, you do suddenly become the witness of seeing someone you love being a target. I get that. I am merely suggesting that you do not flaunt your fat-hating opinions in the face of fat people. Perhaps you can create your own little club where you fat-hate together – maybe you can call it, oh I don’t know, Reddit?fn1
Reaching out to non-fats or smaller-fats,fn2 asking for help and understanding, is not something I am comfortable doing. When the majority of your life consists of you feeling like you are too much, too big, not welcome and in the way, the last thing that feels appropriate is asking other people to give up more of their time and space for you.
Asking people to empathise is one thing – I am sure if most people tried to, they can imagine what it must feel like to not be able to fit in a plane seat or find clothes in straight-sized stores. As someone who, at the age of ten, attempted to ride in a little mechanical car meant for toddlers at the local mall,fn3 I understand that it does not matter how small you are, the experience of not fitting physically into something is a universal feeling that everyone can relate to. Empathy should not be the hardest thing for people. But identifying which situations call for your empathy is different and a lot harder. On a daily basis, we are reminded of ways in which we could be a better ally to people. Little things we can do to make everything easier for other people. So many people have different lives to you and why would you not look into that and figure out how you can make everyone feel better?
Which is all very nice, gentle and suggestive. Other people, more angry people, whose editors have not asked them to have a ‘nicer and more inclusive tone’, might suggest that these are things you fucking should be doing because no one is free until we are all free.
I know that fatphobia affects everyone. I know we are all made to feel too big. Capitalism thrives when we hate ourselves and look to buy whatever we can get to make us feel good again, so of course, it’s not just fat people who feel bad about themselves. So it might feel provocative when I say that you have thin privilege if you are not fat. The word ‘privilege’ always feels icky at first because your initial reaction is always, ‘I don’t feel particularly privileged!’ which makes sense. You don’t feel the ways in which you are not discriminated against. For example, if you can fit into any seat – be it airplane seats, cafe chairs, cinema seats, the chair at the hairdresser’s – and if it’s never on your mind if a chair can support you and won’t crumble underneath you – then you are a lot more privileged than those for whom it is a massive part of their day-to-day life. If you can buy clothes in any physical clothes store, you’re a lot more privileged than those who are bigger than you, who have to either buy clothes online or have it tailored.
The fatter you are, the harder it gets. Your life could still be hard right now, even though you are thin, but all ‘thin privilege’ means is that it would get a lot harder, if you were fat. Privilege is a fun thing to become aware of – because you will start to realise how much space to take up. You have probably, without realising, talked over a fat person at some point. You have probably made a comment or a decision that negatively affected a fat person because your privilege made you blind to the fat person’s reality and how different it was to yours.
If this resonates with you, your instinct might be to message your fat friends (I hope you have fat friends) and apologise to them or ask them questions about their day-to-day life. And while there might be some value to that – maybe your friend is relieved to finally be acknowledged – be aware that you wanting some kind of forgiveness, emotional labour or education from your fat friend is another way of draining their energy.
When I was in the process of understanding my white privilege, I made these mistakes in the most problematic and cringeworthy of ways. I would message my black friends and ask them, ‘Is this racist?’ and ‘Why is this racist?’ and ‘What can I do to help?’, and it took too long for me to realise that it’s not the job of the oppressed to explain to the oppressor how to stop oppressing.
There are plenty of resources out there for people to find and read. The questions, ‘Is this wrong?’ and ‘How do I help?’ have been answered a million times before and the experiences of marginalised people have been documented just as much.
But the first thing you need to do is acknowledge and understand your privilege. Particularly if you are a bit fat – which can be hard to quantify, of course – and you can still fit in a plane seat but you can’t buy clothes in any physical shops. You still have more privilege than those who can’t do either. I am currently in between fat and super-fat, and I constantly make sure that I also include people fatter than me in my activism and that I amplify their voices and experiences more than those who are the same size as me or smaller. This is all difficult and it can feel like a lot of work, but to be honest, it’s simply the right thing to do.
I listen to the American body-positive podcast She’s All Fat a lot. In episode two of season three their focus was on people who are super-fat, and they interviewed a woman called Alex, who is super-fat and incredibly articulate and her words really resonated with me. Upon discussing what it’s like being super-fat, she said,
‘It’s very challenging, I think, to try and exist in a world that isn’t meant to accommodate you ever. You go to a restaurant, sometimes there’s a wider chair, if you’re a mid-fat, you’re comfortable. Sometimes you get lucky and you go to one of those movie theatres that has those reclining armchairs, and they’re wide, and they’re nice. That experience never happens to me. Nothing is built for me. There is panic every time I go somewhere new. That level of panic is extremely psychologically draining.’
And then, when April and Sophie, the two brilliant hosts, asked Alex about how other people can be a good ally to super-fats, Alex explained perfectly:
‘The best gift I think anyone can give if you have a fat friend is just listen to what their needs are, and don’t make them feel like a freak for having needs that are different than yours. At the same time I would say, the worst thing? It’s really hard listening to people who fit into the normal standard of what it means to be socially acceptable body-wise, it’s very challenging to listen to them complain about their bodies. They totally have the right to do it. I know they are hit with as much messaging as I am about why their body is flawed because it has a quarter inch of fat on the back of their arm. You know what I mean? I fully respect their need to talk about that, their need to process that, and their need to be frustrated with that. I am not the person to talk about it with. Because you may think that I have more understanding, or more compassion, or I get it. I do get it, and you actually don’t get it. And that’s where I think the disconnect can be really challenging is that I want you to receive that support, but you’re not going to get it from me because it’s too painful. I think people in the fat-positivity community want to sort of undercut, I think, a lot of the time how much pain there is, because we’re trying to legitimise ourselves as a movement, right? So you want to be saying all the time, “Things are great, we’re doing great, everything is okay. We have a right to be here. We’re happy the way we are.” And we are. That’s not up for debate. But that doesn’t mean that there doesn’t exist lingering pain, and resentment, and frustration at a lifetime of rejection. One doesn’t negate the other. You can have both. Both feelings are allowed to coexist, as my therapist tells me all the time. So while I care that you’ve put on fifteen pounds and it’s hard for you, I care, I don’t want you to be unhappy, don’t talk to me about it. It’s too hard. It’s just too hard.’
Recently, I was on a plane. I had managed to convince the woman at the check-in counter to hold a free seat next to me, so I would not be uncomfortable. I said to her, ‘It is not just about my comfort, it is also because people sitting next to me will be quite annoyed’,fn4 which made her, I swear to God, burst into tears. ‘Oh honey,’ she said and blocked the seat next to me. It is difficult to explain the relief and joy you feel when you have a spare seat – and you do not have to be in intense physical pain for ten hours. In the row behind me on this particular flight, there was an equally fat man. He was placed in the aisle seat with a much smaller woman sitting by the window. He was making jokes from the second he sat down. ‘Let us hope no one claims this seat, because then I have to sit in the middle,’ he nervously chuckled. I remembered a line from activist and illustrator Stacy Bias’ ‘Flying While Fat’ guide in which a woman revealed that she always made polite small talk to the people sitting next to her in order to force them to see her as a human being and not a nuisance. It was impossible to know if the man did this for this reason or if it was just an instinct. Again, he repeated, ‘I hope no one sits there, because then I’ll have to sit next to you and I’m uh, large.’
I felt his pain deeply as I knew the terror and frustration of being in that situation. He was apologising for himself with desperation. But then the woman said, cheerfully, ‘That is okay! It will just be like a soft pillow!’ and he laughed with such relief. I just took a deep breath on his behalf, very aware of the fact that I was not just listening in on a conversation that had nothing to do with me, but I was also projecting years and years of my own fear and oppression onto this guy with whom I suddenly felt immense kinship. I also felt incredibly grateful for the woman’s reaction. She could have sighed, scoffed and rolled her eyes, and that would not have given her more space on the airplane, and it would have made the man feel awful about himself.
Being accommodating towards fat people does not take a lot of extra work. It can be a matter of practicality – checking the restaurant you are about to go to to make sure they have chairs without armrests. It can be making sure that your birthday party is being held in a venue that has a lift, as stairs can be a struggle for some fat people. Even nondisabled fat people do carry a lot of weight, so walking up stairs can be a hard task and it can demand that we take a lot of breaks.fn5
I recently went to see a comedy show in Melbourne in a venue I had never been to before. I went with two non-fat friends. We were a bit late so the front-of-house manager had to lead us to the room. We went to the back of the enormous building and started going down a flight of stairs. Then another flight of stairs. Then another. Each time we reached a new floor, there was another flight of stairs going down. I had cruel flashbacks to my trip to the catacombs in Paris, and the very narrow, steep and long staircase that nearly killed me. At one point my knees were so acidy from carrying my weight upstairs, they were turning numb and I had to stop. The staircase was so narrow that I was blocking the way for the twenty impatient tourists behind me. The embarrassment of not being able to make the trip up made me force myself through the pain and upwards, upwards, upwards, till I saw the sun. I couldn’t walk for a couple of hours.fn6 I saw all of this before my eyes as myself and my two friends descended down into the actual centre of the Earth on a seemingly never-ending flight of stairs. After seven minutes of walking down stairs, we arrived at the show. Throughout the show, I was nervous about the trip up. I started coming up with possible reasons for hanging out in the room till everyone had gone, so I could walk up last and not be in the way or be seen struggling by too many people. But I somehow could not find the words to say to my friends. I was too ashamed to say what I wanted to out loud, regardless of how much I knew the shame was unwarranted.
The show ended and I catacombed my way up the stairs. I ended up behind two old people who also had to take their time. I hid behind them for the whole ascent and I was so grateful for them. At the top of the stairs, I became very aware of how good I am at not sounding like I am out of breath – a technique I have developed through many years of trying to hide it, because being out of breath was somehow associated with my fatness in my head.
(It’s a strange one – I know loads of thin people who are in as bad a shape as I am. When I hear them try to catch their breath after walking up stairs, I never connect it to body size. I don’t think it’s shameful at all. But even when I regularly did hardcore cardio and was naturally out of breath after a work-out, I would still somehow connect the shame to my body size. As if I would be less out of breath if I was thin. When actually, you can be fit and fat and you can be unfit and thin. As we saw in Chapter 7.)
I once challenged my very thin friend to carry a heavy backpack on his stomach for a whole day, after he had pointed out that he walked a minimum of 16,000 steps a day. I received a number of voice messages that day in which he was out of breath and considering taking a cab everywhere. And my friend said to me, after she had given birth, that she had never understood why I was not up for ‘going for a brisk walk’ until she became pregnant. She said, ‘Everything is just heavier,’ and I nearly cried.
A few years before she said that, I had a one-night stand with a musician.fn7 On the way back to his place, he casually mentioned that he lived on the fourth floor. The anxiety slowly started building within me.
I had been in a similar situation once – ahead of a Sexy Time, I had been texted a man’s address. Even though this guy lived on the fifth floor, I was calm – because I was alone, so I could take my time reaching his floor. But when I arrived, he had to let me in through the door phone. So he would know how long it took me. So I leapt up the stairs, ignoring the pain in my knees. When he opened the door, I eagerly said, ‘Oh I have to pee so much!’ and ran past him and into the bathroom where I took deep breaths until my heart stopped pounding and I wiped the sweat off from everywhere.
With the musician on the fourth floor, I was planning to do the same. Except, I would not need to. Halfway up, he stopped. He took my hand and kissed me for a bit. It struck me. He knew. He understood. We stood still for a bit and kept kissing. And then took the remaining length up.
Because, sometimes, what you need is someone to be understanding. If instead of being fat, we were people carrying a big, heavy suitcase, people would kindly ask us if we were okay getting it up the many flights of stairs. People would understand if we stopped halfway up. Our friends would not have any qualms about asking a restaurant if there was a place we could store this luggage while we ate. It would not be a loaded, emotional thing. It would be purely practical.
There was no way for my friends to know how to deal with the situation with the venue that existed in the core of planet Earth. I was not even really sure what I wanted them to do. In retrospect, I think that them being understanding would have made it better. Perhaps, as we descended, someone could have asked the venue manager how far down this show was. And then suggested that we did not go – asked me my opinion. I would have demanded that we still saw the show, but I would have felt relieved and not alone with my fat angst. Sometimes it is so simple. Sometimes it is just someone saying ‘Oh, that’s okay, it is like a soft pillow’ or ‘Is this situation okay for you?’ or ‘What do you need?’ or ‘Hi, I am a bass player in a successful band, would you like to have sex with me?’
I was sixteen and fat. I was five or six sizes larger than all of my friends. I had ventured outside and agreed to come to a pyjama party at the popular girl’s house. In a cruel twist of fate, they decided that the pyjama party would turn into a house party which would then continue to a nightclub. I was there, in my Westlife pyjamas.fn8 All the girls stripped out of their pyjamas and started going through the popular girl’s wardrobe. I sat back knowing that there was no way I could fit into any of her clothes. When they saw me sit there, they started suggesting outfits that I could borrow. Denim shorts that would barely get around my ankles. A top I could use as a small hat. I kept saying ‘no’ and tried to casually suggest that I could just ‘you know, go home or whatever’. But they protested too hard. ‘Come on, just try it on, you can definitely fit into this – it’s really big on me.’ Well, guess what, Karen, even if it’s humongous on you, it still can barely make it over my face. I would eventually stretch out a T-shirt and feel every stomach roll fight to get out of it till I made up an excuse to go home anyways. I knew they would secretly be relieved. It’s tiring having to convince a fat person that they are not fat.
There is a scene in the US version of The Office in which a large man has started working at Dunder-Mifflin. The awkward boss Michael wants him to get up on a table and sit on a chair as part of an initiation process. The man gently says no and mumbles that he’d rather not, to which Michael exclaims, ‘It’s all right, don’t be shy,’ and he and his assistant (to the regional manager) Dwight try to forcefully push him up on the table. Watching that as a fat person is intensely relatable.
I will sometimes look at a chair and say out loud, ‘I don’t think that this can support me,’ and nine out of ten times, people around me will say, ‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ and often they will add, ‘I can sit on it!’ even though they are smaller than half my size. When actually, some of those chairs have not been able to support me. People just desperately wish not to realise that. You’ll be fine turns into We’ll all be fine. It will all be fine. No one will fall on their face because that would be uncomfortable to watch.
People refusing to acknowledge your own perception of the world and attempting to force you into spaces you don’t want to be in or that you are unable to be in. The man in The Office quit his job immediately. The chair broke and I landed on my face. And I went home from the pyjama party and slept with the perfect man – a cardboard cut-out of Mark from Westlife.
Fat people experience this kind of gaslighting on a daily basis our entire lives.fn9 When you are told, often enough, that your perception of reality is false, you will start to doubt your instincts and to some extent, who you are. If you tell a fat person often enough that they can fit into a shirt or a seat or that that person didn’t shout at you or look at you with disgust or that you’re not fat, you’re beautiful, you can end up with a warped sense of self. We are already taught to distance ourselves from our bodies as much as possible, we cannot afford to distance ourselves further from our perception of our lives.
This whole ‘Oh you are not fat’ is unhelpful and destructive. Erasing someone’s experience is not a way of making us feel better; it’s a way to make you feel better. You can tip-toe around fatness all you want, like it’s a dirty, smelly poop in the middle of the dance floor that you don’t want to pick up. But the fact is, if it hurts so much to talk about and look at, the best thing to do is to try to remove the source. The person at this party pooping on the floor. Or, to narrow down this metaphor, figure out how you can be a better ally and help erase fatphobia instead of the fat experience.
It seems as if there are two main ways to interact with fat people. People either acknowledge your fatness negatively – or it doesn’t get mentioned at all. You are either unhealthy, unattractive, ‘something to be settled for’, unintelligent – or your body does not exist.
There is a certain way in which people say, ‘You have such a pretty face,’ or, ‘She has a great personality,’ which creates a sphere of ‘Do not talk about the body.’ Even though everyone knows that ‘pretty face’ and ‘great personality’ are probably code for ‘fat body’. It is like they are trying to erase the fat body. As if my fatness is a T-Rex that can only sense movement.fn10 As long as we stay quiet and still, it won’t attack us with its floppy belly.fn11
It’s the same reason many people use words like ‘curvy’, ‘voluptuous’, ‘bigger’, ‘thunder thighs’, ‘voluminous’, ‘larger’, ‘full-figured’, ‘thick’, ‘plus-size’, ‘big-boned’, ‘chunky’ to describe FAT. It’s the same reason why there is sometimes a slight hesitation between, ‘She’s a, uh …’ and ‘… a big girl’. Because something uncomfortable is about to be said, something we would all rather wasn’t true. So we wrap it in cutesy and glamorous words.
When we talk about fat people, we very rarely say the word ‘fat’. And when we do, it is loaded with all of the fears and hate.
The popular phrase, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ which is usually said to a partner by a woman who is trying on an outfit, is a classic example. It is so often used in popular culture as a great set-up to a joke. The obvious answer is ‘no’. If you even hesitate before you say no, you might insinuate that yes, she does look fat in it and then all hell breaks loose.
Columbia professor Derald Sue coined the term ‘microaggression’ (originally used to describe the kind of casually racist insults that people of colour have to endure on a daily basis), which covers this sort of interaction quite well. Like saying, ‘No, but where are you really from?’ to someone after they have explicitly told you the answer. Or, as one of my friends told me she gets all the time, ‘You don’t act like a black person’, which is another way of saying, ‘I usually associate black people with something negative, but you are actually quite nice, so you must be more like a white person.’ Saying, ‘You have such a pretty face,’ is often a microaggression if said to a fat person. So is, ‘Oh my god, you look amazing, have you lost weight?’ and, ‘Is that your boyfriend? Oh.’
Part of being a better ally is recognising how the stigmatisation of being fat hurts everyone – and that it gets worse, the bigger you are. When you talk about wanting to lose weight next to a person fatter than you, you are, whether or not this is your intention, making a dismissive statement about their body. Understand that your negative feeling towards fatness – your own or others’ – has a directly negative effect on people around you. It is worth weighing up your words and maintaining a general awareness of what you say, when you say it, and around whom it is being said.
I have sat next to self-proclaimed allies who suddenly made a fatphobic comment about another person. Now, we can all do that by accident. Fatphobia is horrendously ingrained within us. A very prominent fat activist told me that when her girlfriend recently said that she had gained weight, her instant response was, ‘No, you look hot!’ and she told me this in a fit of laughter because the irony of her seven-year stint within fat activism combined with those words coming out of her mouth was simply too much. And we have all been there and we will all continue to go there. The reaction, however, is very important. I have sat next to people who made a fatphobic comment and then did nothing. No apology, no ‘oops!’, no correction. Just gross, unedited, genuine fatphobia that hung in the air and stank.
When you speak about food, remove all the fat-oppressive language and stop mentioning dieting. If you tell me you are on a diet, you are telling me that you are trying to look less like me. Stop it. Try – really try – to eradicate language that has its core in fatphobia. And specifically definitely do not comment on a fat person’s body or food intake. No ‘Are you going to eat that?’ and no advice like, ‘If you just cut down on calories and do some exercise …’
Get out of people’s bodies. Let people live in peace.
We have a tendency to mainly post content on our social media that relates to us, personally. You can use your platform to amplify the voices of the oppressed. Orange Is the New Black actor Matt McGorry posted a photo on Instagram of him holding the book Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon with the caption, ‘I wish that all people, and especially health-care providers, fitness industry professionals, and nutritionists would read this book.’
Matt McGorry is not only thin – he is a Hollywood actor with no obvious horse in the race. I can only talk for myself and not on behalf of the entire Fat Liberation Movement, but when a non-fat person shows public support for us, it feels like when someone helps you carry your suitcase up a load of stairs.
It is truly confusing when people who identify as feminists make derogatory comments about fat people. Say, with former President Trump,fn12 somehow him being fat was the go-to put-down when criticising him. The man is an actual fascist. Yet, his fatness is what makes him evil. Will Donald Trump go to bed crying over the fat-shaming comments? Probably not. The man does not have a soul. But will all of your chubby and fat friends hear you call him fat and then feel bad about their bodies? Damn right they will.
Feminism includes fat people. Feminism includes people of colour, people with disabilities, trans people, queer people, non-heterosexual people, people without beauty privilege and non-binary people. You can’t cherry pick which causes you are going to support. I get it. You’re doing your very best and then someone calls you out for having used an ableist term. You want to punch a wall and exclaim, ‘Oh fuck this, it’s too difficult,’ but maybe the best way forward is to say, ‘You’re right, I’ll do better,’ and just try doing exactly that. Try to do better.
We have a tendency to always approach the world from our very own and very limited point of view. Being truly intersectional means to constantly take into account the groups of people who are marginalised in different ways to ourselves. And use our privilege to help them.
So when you amplify the voices of fat people, check if you are only retweeting fat white people’s voices. Make sure you include everyone, especially people whose voices are particularly silenced.
It is hard to call out your friends when they are being problematic. Changing the social structure was never meant to be easy. It is, however, necessary. It is especially important to do so when you are part of the group that is not being oppressed.
So your friend Steve makes a comment at a house party. He shouts, ‘I fucked this girl but she was so fat, I couldn’t even throw her out of the window the next morning – I tried, though!’fn13 and what do you do?
People are sort of chuckling to themselves. A few people stay quiet because they know it is a bit too far. Some people are laughing hard because there are no fat people present, so it seems to be a victimless crime.
You raise your voice and say, ‘I am not okay with that kind of talk. It is toxic and hateful and I am not here for it.’
You can also start a lecture on fatphobia in our modern society or bring out the charts proving that capitalism is the one true enemy. Feel free to use the sad statistics from this book.
What you do not do is text your fat friend about what the guy just said with a sad emoji afterwards, because we do not need your witness statement, we need you to educate that guy. We know that these things happen, we do not need thin people giving us first-hand accounts of horrible people being horrible. It does not help that there is a middle-man between a hurtful sentence and you. You still hear the hurtful sentence.
If you really want to make a difference, there are some pretty radical things you can do. You can, for example, boycott places that are not accommodating towards fat people. Venues without wheelchair access or lifts. You can stop buying clothes from shops that do not cater to plus-size people. You can stop going to restaurants which only have chairs with armrests. Stop going to comedy clubs that book comedians who consistently make fatphobic jokes.
Or take it one step further: Call and email the places and ask them to change their ways. Make them aware that they are excluding a group of people and that you will not accept it. Put pressure on them.
I met a colleague a few days after I had been under a massive attack from trolls online. He gave me a big hug and said, ‘Just so you know, I spent a whole night reporting the trolls that sent you abuse,’ and it was so simple and so nice. He said he simply had to do something. Later that same week, I met a guy who told me to send him all the abusive tweets that Twitter refused to take down, because he would figure out who to speak to at Twitter and make sure they corrected their mistake. I doubt that it ever worked, but the desire to help felt incredible.
Acknowledge your thin privilege and understand that you should support fat people but stay in the background. You have no actual place in the Fat Liberation movement; it is not for you. By all means, amplify fat activists’ work and donate to the Kickstarter campaigns, but do not start a podcast called ‘My Fat Podcast’ where you, a non-fat person, talk about fatness. Do not speak over fat people and do not attempt to lead the movement.fn14
It is no secret that it is difficult to be a friend of fat people. You have to make changes in the way you use your language, you have to do a little bit of daily research, perhaps you even feel inclined to doing some activism. It would, without a doubt, be easier to just continue living your life, letting fat people fat on their own.
But you are currently living in a world that allows for certain groups of people to be oppressed, bullied and discriminated against. As long as that is a possibility, you are not safe from this. Especially when it comes to fatness, you are possibly just a pregnancy, half a decade or suddenly acquiring a taste for ice cream from becoming fat yourself. The hatred of fat people is not limited to fat people – it is directed at fat in itself. So even if you have one per cent body fat, that one per cent is something you are meant to hate, even if it does not mean you need two seats on a plane. If everyone decided to take one stab each at the monster that is fatphobia, it would not have to be just up to the fat people to battle it.
‘Until we are all free, we are none of us free.’
Sofie Hagen (quoting Emma Lazarus)