Fat Acceptance Is (Really) Real
How old were you when you first realized it’s wrong to be racist? If you were educated in public schools—as I was—it was around the age of eight, when your third-grade teacher offered a two- or three-week lesson during Black History Month about the civil rights movement. Often it’s a truncated recap that focuses on four key moments: Black people in the South (only in the South, though the North was full of racism, too) were forced to use segregated facilities, including public restrooms, buses and trains, and water fountains; Rosa Parks, an elderly seamstress who was tired after a long day of work, refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white patron, and her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott; Martin Luther King Jr. made a galvanizing speech in 1963 in Washington, D.C., that encouraged President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and then racism ended, and being racist turned previously powerful people into social pariahs. Not only does this revisionist history overlook all the work that organizers and demonstrators—including Parks—did to force the United States to reckon with its mistreatment of people of color, but it also erases all the violence inflicted on people of color and Black people before the Voting Rights Act and all the violence that people of color and Black people still experience.
Yet, these fluffy academic lessons serve their purpose: Children learn that discriminating against someone based on their ethnicity is unacceptable, and those who are overtly racist can face social and legal consequences, including losing their jobs, being shunned in their communities, and even being imprisoned if their hatred fuels a violent act. As we’ve seen in a recent string of viral videos that feature white people harassing people of color for doing mundane activities, such as selling lemonade, barbecuing in parks, and using a valid coupon in a convenience store, in-your-face racism often comes with a steep cost. In our society, however, similar penalties aren’t levied against those who discriminate against fat people. In fact, maligning fat people is still considered socially acceptable. Think about it: Have you ever attempted to insult someone by calling them fat? How often do you see plus-size people on television who aren’t on weight-loss shows like My 600-lb Life or The Biggest Loser? Are you or any of your friends currently dieting, talking about dieting, or watching commercials that encourage dieting?
More than likely, you’ll be saying yes to at least one, if not all, of these questions—because fat shaming is stitched into the fabric of American culture. In fact, it’s so embedded in our everyday lives that we don’t often recognize when we’re perpetuating fatphobia, or the act of discriminating against someone because of the size of their body. For instance, Michigan is the only state that has passed a law that forbids employers from penalizing fat people in the workplace, which means that in forty-nine states, people of size can be fired, denied promotions, and paid less than their straight-size counterparts.1 While children are often taught to use the Golden Rule to guide their interactions with all people, especially those who are different than they, unfortunately, treating others as we’d like to be treated isn’t considered when legislators are passing the laws that govern our lives. We can see how that lack of regulation leads to discrimination: Fat applicants are less likely to be hired than straight-size applicants because hiring managers tend to associate fatness with laziness, according to a 2017 survey conducted by Fairygodboss.2 We can also see it in the fact that fat employees earn $1.25 less per hour3 than straight-size employees, which can lead to a loss of $100,000 over the course of a career.
Fatphobia doesn’t just appear in the workplace, either. In 2003, researchers found that more than 50 percent of the primary-care physicians they surveyed viewed obese patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly, and noncompliant,” and the majority of these doctors “view obesity as largely a behavioral problem and share our broader society’s negative stereotypes about the personal attributes of obese persons.”4 While we know that fat people are stigmatized in every area of their lives, it holds a different weight when doctors—not fashion designers or magazine editors—have a negative view of people of size. Dr. Lilia Graue told Healthline that doctors often “fail to provide adequate and timely diagnosis and treatment due to all kinds of assumptions, [which] affects patients along the full weight spectrum.”5 These biases can have a deadly impact on fat people: Patients of size are less likely to seek medical care because they’re afraid of being fat shamed by their doctors. This in turn can lead to diseases, such as ovarian cancer, being caught later and in more advanced stages. It can also result in fat patients being misdiagnosed, as writer Rebecca Hiles explained in Cosmopolitan in April 2018. For five years, she experienced coughing fits that caused her to have spasms and rely on adult diapers. Doctors told her that losing weight would alleviate her symptoms, but after a coughing fit landed her in the emergency room, she learned that she had a tumor in a bronchial tube. Her entire left lung had to be removed.6
No matter where fat people go—schools, workplaces, and courtrooms—we face being ostracized and discriminated against, and that’s the reason why fat acceptance activists have been fighting since the 1960s to make America’s policies more inclusive of people of size. As Sarai Walker, author of Dietland, told Refinery29 in 2016, fat acceptance is believing that “bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and that all bodies have equal value. Fat activism is a political movement that advocates for the rights and dignity of fat people,” she concluded.7
Just as the civil rights movement has an extensive history that exceeds what we’re taught in school, the fat-acceptance movement has tangible roots that we should all be learning. It all began in 1967 when WBAI radio personality Steve Post decided to host a “fat-in” in Central Park because he, as a 210-pound man, faced size discrimination and he wanted to “protest discrimination against [fat people].” While there has been some debate about Post’s intention for organizing a fat-in, what’s clear is that it was the first event of its kind. “We want to show we feel happy, not guilty. That’s why we’re here,” Post told the New York Times at the time.8 This opened the door for more radical activism that focused intensely on making the world more equitable for fat people.
During this time, activists were focused on an array of social issues, including the Vietnam War, sexism, and racism, so the fight to end sizeism didn’t gain the national attention it deserved, but that didn’t stop fat-acceptance activists from bringing awareness. While it seemed that fatphobia wouldn’t be as big of a priority as ending an international war or upending segregation, the social and political climate provided fertile ground for all marginalized people, including fat people, to fight for equality. Two years after the Central Park fat-in, writer Llewelyn Louderback and activist Bill Fabrey formed the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) with the goal of ending fatphobic messages in media and making the world safer for people of size. For the past fifty years, NAAFA has lobbied for legislation, staged plus-size fashion shows, called out media organizations that offer fatphobic advertising and messaging, and worked to fulfill its mission, especially as more and more Americans gain weight.9 (It’s more important than ever to have laws that protect people of size from discrimination because seven in ten Americans are now classified as “overweight.”10)
Fat-acceptance activists were also integral in getting Michigan to pass that size-discrimination law, forcing the fashion industry to be more inclusive of different bodies, and taking on the billion-dollar dieting industry that often tells people that they’re flawed and that their products can make them perfect. For instance, in 1993, Bonnie Cook sued the Ladd Center, a facility for people with disabilities in Rhode Island, for discriminating against her in the hiring process.11 She claimed their refusal to rehire her because of her weight violated the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a law that is usually used to prove discrimination against people with disabilities. She was awarded $100,000 in damages, and the Ladd Center was ordered to hire her. It was a major victory for fat activists, who were lobbying for legislation to protect fat people from weight-based discrimination. That paved the way for Michigan’s law and shifted how employers treated fat people.
Fat-acceptance activists and bloggers have also worked extensively to make the fashion industry more inclusive of different bodies, including transgender and disabled bodies. While fashion has long been an exclusive industry that caters to thin, white women, in the last several years designers, modeling agencies, and fashion magazines have begun offering more opportunities to underrepresented communities. During New York Fashion Week’s Spring 2019 showings, forty-nine plus-size models walked in twelve shows, which is a vast improvement from the twenty-seven models of size who walked in Fall 2018’s shows and the thirty-four who walked in NYFW’s Spring 2018 presentations.12 Plus-size models, including Ashley Graham and Tess Holliday, are also appearing on magazine covers and in fashion campaigns, and Graham even received her own Barbie in 2016. Yet, the goals of fat acceptance are still misunderstood.
In every way, fat acceptance is a movement designed to promote dignity so that people of size have equal access to opportunities. Despite this clear definition, fat acceptance is woefully misunderstood. This is best exemplified in an April 2018 column published in the Guardian by writer Lizzie Cernik. “Fronted by plus-sized models and social media influencers, the fat acceptance movement aims to normalize obesity, letting everyone know that it’s fine to be fat,” Cernik writes. “With terms such as ‘straight size’ and ‘fat pride’ proliferating, some influential figures are now even likening the valid concerns of health officials to hate crimes.”13 “Glorifying obesity” is a common misconception associated with fat acceptance. Asking for equality is not the same as “glorifying obesity,” as writer Rachelle Hampton explains in a scathing rebuke published in Slate:
Of course, fat people aren’t trying to encourage more people to become fat; they’re trying to live a life with dignity. If you’ve never been fat, it’s hard to understand the various ways in which your body stops becoming your own once you reach a certain weight. It becomes an object for public consumption and comment or ridicule. Strangers feel obligated to tell you you’re going to die early or give diet tips or scrutinize your every meal under the guise of patronizing concern for your health.14
Fat-acceptance activists also want a world where people of size are on-screen in narratives that don’t center on their weight. A study conducted by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg for Refinery29 found that of the top one hundred films released in 2016, only two women larger than a size fourteen were cast as a lead or a colead. Of the top fifty TV shows in 2016, 43 percent of women characters were thin, and only three women leads were larger than a size fourteen.15 In a country where 67 percent of women are considered plus-size, but that majority only represents 2 percent of images,16 it’s crucial to have a movement that promotes fat inclusion and acceptance. When fat people are unable to see themselves on-screen and straight-size people never see fat people on-screen, it fuels the idea that only thin people are deserving of representation. That has a lingering impact on self-esteem and, of course, trickles down into how we interact with fat people in our lives.
Fat-acceptance activists envision a world where children aren’t bullied because of the size of their bodies. In 2010, researchers at the University of Michigan released startling findings about how size intersects with childhood bullying. The researchers followed eight hundred children in ten cities across the United States and surveyed them, their teachers, and their mothers about the children’s experience with bullying. They found that “kids who were obese were 65 percent more likely to be bullied than their peers of normal weight; overweight kids were 13 percent more likely to be bullied.”17 In order to create an equitable world for plus-size people, it has to begin in childhood, and that requires a confronting of how plus-size children are maligned because of their size.
Nowhere are these objectives rooted in “glorifying obesity.” Instead, fat-acceptance activists want a different world where fat people can work, have relationships, be on-screen, grow up safely, and simply exist without facing discrimination. I’ve been considered overweight since I was eight, and unfortunately, I was surrounded by people who encouraged me to lose weight in order to gain dignity and respect. The idea that I was worth less because of the size of my body seeped into every area of my life; I didn’t wear a swimsuit on a beach until I was twenty. It wasn’t until I was twenty-two, in graduate school, and scouring the Internet, that I stumbled on communities of fat-acceptance bloggers and activists who’d developed better relationships with their bodies and were fighting for a more equitable world. You, dear teen reader, shouldn’t have to wait that long. You can become involved in the fat-acceptance movement right now, and it really starts with you.
It’s imperative that you find your voice and wield it as loudly as possible. If you think you’re being discriminated against because of your size, call it out. If you see your friends speaking negatively about someone’s body because it’s larger than theirs, call them out. A simple, “That wasn’t kind. You shouldn’t talk about other people’s bodies in that way,” will suffice. If you go to the doctor for a sore throat, and the doctor immediately tries to weigh you, don’t be afraid to tell them you’re uninterested in being weighed or knowing your weight at this time. And most important, find friends who believe as you do—all bodies are good bodies, no matter their size, their shape, their ability, their ethnicity, or their gender. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be affirmed by people who understand how crucial it is to love your body as it is. In fact, there’s an entire history of people who’ve done exactly that and fought for the dignity of fat people. You can learn that history and then carry on that legacy. In fact, the movement has been waiting for you all along.
If you’re still unsure where to start, here’s what I’d suggest: Author and fat-acceptance blogger Jes Baker has a list of 135 Instagram accounts you can follow that will diversify your feed and give you access to different bodies.18 Her blog, The Militant Baker, also has a treasure trove of resources about fat acceptance, including books that people who are new to the movement can read. There are also organizations, like the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, the Council on Weight and Size Discrimination, and the Body Positive, that offer tool kits and in-person meet ups for those who want to learn more about fat acceptance. If you want to know about specific businesses and establishments that are accommodating to people of size, check out AllGo and Ample. And, of course, we’re in the age of the podcast, so if you want to learn more about fat acceptance from a variety of people at different stages of their own journey, you should definitely listen to She’s All Fat, The Fat Lip, the Food Psych Podcast, or Fat Club Podcast.
Just as we know that racism is wrong, we have to begin to understand and grasp that sizeism is wrong. It is harmful. It should come with a social consequence. And until that happens, we’ll be here, and fighting, and wanting better. That’s what fat acceptance is all about.
NOTES
1. Rebecca Puhl, Janet D. Latner, Kerry S. O’Brien, Joerg Luedicke, Sigrun Danielsdottir, and Ximena Ramos Salas, “Potential Policies and Laws to Prohibit Weight Discrimination: Public Views from 4 Countries,” The Milbank Quarterly, 93(4), 691–731.
2. Fairygodboss, “The Grim Reality of Being a Female Job Seeker: If You’re Overweight, Not ‘Nice’-Looking, Older, or a Minority, You Won’t Be Hired,” 2017, bit.ly/2WMgf6r.
3. Charles L. Baum II and William F. Ford, “The Wage Effects of Obesity: A Longitudinal Study,” Health Economics, 13, no. 9 (September 2004), 885–899.
4. Gary D. Foster, Thomas A. Wadden, Angela P. Makris, Duncan Davidson, Rebecca Swain Sanderson, David B. Allison, and Amy Kessler, “Primary Care Physicians’ Attitudes about Obesity and Its Treatment,” Obesity, 11, no. 10 (October 2003), 1168–1177.
5. Marie Southard Ospina, “My Doctor Fat-Shamed Me—And I’m Not the Only One,” Healthline, March 9, 2018, healthline.com/health-news/my-doctor-fat-shamed-me#1.
6. Maya Dusenbery, “Doctors Told Her She Was Just Fat. She Actually Had Cancer,” Cosmopolitan, April 17, 2018, cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a19608429/medical-fatshaming/.
7. Kelsey Miller, “What the Fat-Acceptance Movement Is Really About,” Refinery29, July 25, 2016, refinery29.com/en-us/2016/07/117556/fat-acceptance-movement-sizeism-explained.
8. “Curves Have Their Day in Park; 500 at a ‘Fat-in’ Call for Obesity,” New York Times, June 5, 1967, nytimes.com/1967/06/05/archives/curves-have-their-day-in-park-500-at-a-fatin-call-for-obesity.html.
9. Dan Fletcher, “The Fat-Acceptance Movement,” Time, July 31, 2009, content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913858,00.html.
10. Christopher Ingraham, “Nearly Half of America’s Overweight People Don’t Realize They’re Overweight,” Washington Post, December 1, 2016, washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/01/nearly-half-of-americas-overweight-people-dont-realize-theyre-overweight/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a9d809127ff3.
11. David P. Twomey, Labor & Employment Law: Text and Cases (Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2010).
12. Cordelia Tai, “Report: Racial, Size, Gender and Age Diversity Reach All-Time High at New York Fashion Week Spring 2019,” Fashion Spot, September, 25, 2018, thefashionspot.com/runway-news/805025-diversity-report-new-york-fashion-week-spring-2019/.
13. Lizzie Cernik, “It’s Not Fine to Be Fat. Celebrating Obesity Is Irresponsible,” Guardian, April 10, 2018, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/10/fat-pride-obesity-public-health-warnings-dangerous-weight-levels.
14. Rachelle Hampton, “The Fat Pride Movement Promotes Dignity, Not a ‘Lifestyle,’” Slate, April 11, 2018, slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/fat-pride-movement-is-for-dignity-not-recruitment.html.
15. Anne Cohen, “How Much Progress Has Hollywood Actually Made in Showing Body Diversity?,” Refinery29, October 25, 2017, refinery29.com/en-us/2017/10/173864/plus-size-actresses-tv-movies-body-types-women.
16. Kelsey Miller, “We Let You Down and We’re Going To Fix It,” Refinery29, September 26, 2016, refinery29.com/en-us/2016/09/123687/plus-size-american-women-67-percent-essay.
17. Anne Harding, “Obese Kids More Vulnerable to Bullies,” CNN, May 3, 2010, cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/03/obesity.bullying/index.html.
18. Jes Baker, “135 Ways to Diversify Your Instagram Feed,” The Militant Baker, May 4, 2107, themilitantbaker.com/2017/04/diversify-your-instagram-feed.html.
REVELIST/BRITTANY FOWLER
EVETTE DIONNE
is the editor in chief of Bitch Media, the author of the forthcoming books Fat Girls Deserve Fairytales Too and Lifting As We Climb, and a proud member of the Beyhive. You can find her work and her rantings about feminism online at @freeblackgirl.