[Guestblog] Fatphobia: The Fat Elephant in the Room
Since, Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, has been in the buzz on the blog here, I was reminded of a piece I wrote in 2003. It’s modeled after the format of White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, but in borrowing Ms. McIntosh’s form I am NOT trying to compare racism and fatphobia or trying to suggest that one is “like” the other.
If I’ve learned nothing else about the intersectionality of oppression within activist movements, it’s this: making connections between different oppressions and talking about how different groups of oppressed people can share information, strategies and support is awesome. Trying to compare or find ways in which one oppression is “just like” another one is totally not useful and erases the complexity and history of each oppression creating nothing but hurt and frustration in its wake.
I have always found it interesting (and I’ll be honest, a touch disappointing) that it took a white woman to spell out white privilege to white people when people of color had been spelling it out just as eloquently for some time before White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, was unleashed upon academia. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for its existence, because it’s a valuable tool for sure but it sometimes raises my “white translator” hackles.
That being said, this is my piece I wrote in 2003. I still agree with most everything here and I’m interested in hearing feedback on what a larger audience has to say about it:
Fatphobia: The Fat Elephant in the Room
(author’s note: it could probably benefit from a cleverer title)
1. If I walk slow or choose to take the elevator/escalator people assume I might be tired/have had a bad day and not that it’s because I am unfit & unhealthy.
2. Doctors don’t chalk up every symptom I have to my size and present weight loss as a panacea.
3. I won’t pay more for health insurance because of my size.
4.If I am in a romantic relationship with a person of the same sex it’s not assumed that it’s because I “can’t get a man” or “can’t get a woman.”
5. I can eat in public without people judging my food choices. Likewise I can be pretty assured that no one behind me at the grocery store is looking at what I buy to “see what makes me so fat.”
6. If I have a fat child people don’t immediately blame me for foisting my “bad eating habits” off on him/her.
7. I am paid more than a fat employee doing the same job.
8. I can be assured of seeing people my size in popular media (tv, magazines, etc.) If I am an actor I can usually be up for meaningful lead roles rather than the “comical sidekick” or be otherwise unrestricted in terms of what parts I’m allowed to play.
9. My size is not a consideration in my hiring process. I don’t have to fear being fired due to my size. I do not have to worry about being told that my size constitutes having an “unprofessional appearance.”
10. I can shop in most stores and find clothes in my size.
11. I don’t pay extra for my clothes because of my size.
12. I can be fit or pretty or healthy or a vegetarian or smell nice or keep a clean home and not be looked at some wacky exception to some rule about what people my size are “supposed to be like.”
13. I am never asked to speak for people “my size.”
14. When a person flirts with me I don’t have to worry that they’re doing it to have “good politics” and can genuinely assume it’s because they find me attractive.
15. I do not have to deal with people who fetishize me because of my size.
16. I am not asked to pay for two airplane seats. Or two train seats. Or two bus seats. Though often cramped, I generally fit into most places.
17. If I sit down on a crowded subway train, I do not get sneers from fellow passengers.
18. My size communicates very little to most people and is value neutral. That is, most people don’t assume anything about my values, morals, etc. because of my size.
19. When I go to an amusement park I don’t have to worry about fitting into rides. When I book a hotel room I don’t immediately think about how big the bathroom is. When I go to a restaurant or movie theatre or concert hall I can be reasonably sure that I’ll fit & be comfortable in their seats.
20. I am not used as a medical scapegoat because of my size. Medical professionals generally treat me with respect and believe me when I say that I eat healthy and exercise. Furthermore, if I require immediate medical attention I can be reasonably sure that an ambulance, an operating table, a gurney, an MRI chamber and other critical pieces of medical equipment will accommodate someone of my size.
— Amy Mendosa, 2003
— Edited 2008, to correct grammatical errors and to include accessibility to medical equipment as a privilege.
I agree completely with most of these, except the following:
#5: it seems like these days, NOBODY can eat in public without people passing some kind of judgment! i’ve had it done to me numerous times (or remarks directed to what is in my shopping cart), and i’ve seen it done to people of varying sizes as well. i don’t doubt that it’s probably more likely to occur if someone is fat, though.
#8: i guess this depends on how closely you define “people [your own] size.” a large proportion of females in popular media are unhealthily thin; i think that most women, even those who might be called thin, don’t consider that to be representative of their own size.
#15: just want to point out on the flip side, there are men who fetishize extremely thin women (not so many as one might think, though). i’ve experienced this, and actually had a man (coworker, no less!) say to me that he favored extremely thin women because we often look very young/have almost prepubescent bodies. i’m very much concerned about starting a relationship with someone who values thinness to such a degree. though sometimes i can’t imagine it, i expect someday i’ll return to a healthful weight, and i don’t want to be with someone that would discourage this.
#18: again, shoe on the other foot…people tend to assume i’m in good health simply because i’m thin. i’m sick of hearing how “lucky” i am to be skinny. i’m anorexic. if i could forego more than a decade of suffering, and be happy and not-thin, i would. i imagine those who suffer from other diseases that have resulted in unhealthy weight loss feel similarly about this.
I would also add these aspects of thin privilege:
- I don’t have to worry that if I fall ill, the ambulance, MRI, or other medical equipment won’t accomodate my size.
- People will not berate, tease, or otherwise harass my significant other over my size.
- Nobody imposes upon me a moral imperative to exercise or “eat right” based on my size.
- Clothes in my size are not hidden in the basement, third floor, or other out-of-the-way portion of department stores.
As someone who’s quite skinny, I have to disagree with some of these.
10) I actually have huge amounts of trouble finding clothes in my size. They apparently don’t make clothes for people with teeny waists at all, so I’m always forces to choose between having something being to tight at my bust, or hanging like a sack around my midriff. Also, for all the panic over size 0, unless you’re looking for clothes that are really only acceptable in school(Low rise jeans, etc.), it’s nearly impossible to find clothes below a size 4, or a 2 if you’re lucky, at a reasonable price. High end designers, sure, but not department stores, and certainly not places like GAP or Old Navy.
As for 12, no, people don’t think you’re an exception, but if you have any diet restrictions for any reason (Moral, religious, personal taste) people automatically assume it’s because you have an eating disorder, and have no problems trying to force you to eat whatever it is you don’t want.
14) Again, not exactly the same, but there are plenty of people who hit on you only because you’re thin, or pretty. There’s just no escaping shallow jerks no matter what you look like.
16) I fit in all seats, yes, but can’t sit comfortably in any seats that aren’t padded (like bleachers, or stadium seats, or folding plastic chairs, etc.) for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Not the same, but still in many ways a barrier.
You make some good points, but there is another side to a lot of them.
Emily - definitely agree on #10. I don’t necessarily have problems finding clothes in the juniors’ section, but at 27 years old and working in an environment where business attire is the rule, that really isn’t useful. I cannot buy careerwear from department stores as a general rule; they start their sizing at 2, 4, or 6, depending on where you go. The closest I can find to my size (and appropriate for work) is places like Banana Republic and Ann Taylor Loft that carry 00s online. Sometimes I get lucky and someone has returned one to the brick-and-mortar store. I don’t mind pants being too big at the waist, since I like them to ride very low, but I often have issues with the hips being too big.
ergh…forgot to finish. I also wanted to add that i kind of think that’s a mirror image situation, though. people who are solidly in about a 4-12 size range (judging by my mom and friends who wear in that ballpark) generally have more freedom of finding clothing than people on either end of the sizing scheme.
sso- I love Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft, but they can be so expensive. I’m kind of dreading trying to build a work wardrobe. And ordering from online you can never really tell if something will fit well.
And yes, it’s a mirror image of what’s going on in this list, but that was part of my point. Some of these things aren’t so much “thin privilege” as they are “average-size privilege”, if that makes sense. (I think we agree on this, but I just wanted to clarify.)
To the thin respondents so far:
This post isn’t about you.
Please re-read Lesley’s post on why conversations about various privilege are not a chance for people in a privileged category to pipe up and say how rough THEY have it. Yes, being thin can pose some set of difficulties but this does not equate with being fat in a fatphobic society. I didn’t write a post entitled, “please tell me how hard it is to be thin in America,” because, well, it’s not that hard.
Sorry, I assumed that a list of things that are considered “thin privilege” was about thin people. My bad. I didn’t realize that it was out of line to point out that some of the things the author clearly thought were easy for thin people are, in fact, hard for everyone.
Now, if the list had been written as a list of assumptions that make life hard for fat people, then yes, I would agree it would be inappropriate for me to show up and say “Yeah yeah, but I’ve got it tough too!” But that’s not what was said. The post listed things that were easier about being thin, and some of them were inaccurate. I assumed that giving more information about the reality of the situation would be welcome.
Where did I say that this was a list of “things that are easy for thin people?”
This is a list of privileges afforded to non-fat people. Therefore it is somewhat out of line to pipe up with the tale of Life’s Little Inconveniences In The Course Of Being A Thin Person.
Life is hard for everyone in all sorts of ways but the fact that life is hard for everyone *does not* erase the privilege that is afforded to privileged groups, in this case, non-fat people.
Non-fat people will *always* have certain advantages over fat people so long as there is institutionalized fatphobia in the world. Period. And complaining about how hard your life is as a non-fat person does not make it go away. Double period.
This is, according to the article, a list of “thin privlige.” I was offering my personal experince (which is shared by most of the skinny people I know) to suggest that some of the points you make are incorrect. I do not, in fact, have an easy time finding clothes, nor does the fact that I’m thin keep people from commenting on what I eat, or my health, the way you suggest it does.
“5. I can eat in public without people judging my food choices.” This is not true. Neither is “10. I can shop in most stores and find clothes in my size.”
I’m not saying you don’t suffer discrimination that I don’t, since I’m not living your life and can’t possibly comment on that, but you are making a claim about privilege that I have which I can assure you from my personal experience isn’t there.
You know, at this point I have to wonder what you are doing registered to a site devoted to fat fashion. If being skinny causes you SO many problems in finding clothes, wouldn’t being registered to a site devoted to skinny fashion be more useful/helpful?
I’m registered because it’s the only way I could comment. As for how I found the site, I find social justice issues interesting, and as such look at things like the fatosphere feed, which this site is indexed on. I’m sorry to have intruded on your space; clearly you’re not interested in me correcting misconceptions. I don’t pretend to understand why you’d rather continue with what you imagine to be true rather than what is true, since it doesn’t seem like a particularly efficient way to go about solving the problems that are present, but it’s certainly your right to do so.
Emily, it’s understandable that you would want to point out that you PERSONALLY don’t experience every privilege listed. However, this isn’t about YOU personally. Just like it isn’t about ME personally. Even at 550 pounds, my place of employment has never treated me negatively due to my weight. But I’m not going to say that my personal experience (and luck) means that it isn’t the general reality. Or that other 550 pound people are doing something wrong because they’ve been fired/underpaid/etc.
As a white woman, I would never have the audacity to respond to a post re: white privilege by talking about how I’m at the poverty line, am fat, blah blah blah and therefore YOU MUST TAKE MY LIFE INTO CONSIDERATION. Just because it makes me feel uncomfortable that my intrinsic privilege is being pointed out to me doesn’t mean I need to try to belittle or lessen the importance of how much more other people struggle.
Heidi- I understand what you’re saying, but I think perhaps I didn’t explain my point well enough. It is actually important to point out when privilege attributed to one source isn’t actually associated with that source, but with another. If you identify something as “white privilege” when it is, in fact, “rich privilege” and you try and fix it from a race perspective it will take much longer to fix and far more people will fall through the cracks while you’re trying to address the issue. Same thing goes here: if you’re trying to fix these problems (and I agree, they are all problems. I’m not trying to belittle anyone’s suffering, or to make light of the discrimination anyone experiences.) and you misidentify where they’re coming from you’re going to work that much harder for that much less payoff.
And I’m not trying to insist that you recognize my personal experiences. It’s hardly just me this happens to, it’s every person I know who looks like me. I’m trying to point out the experiences of a whole group of people, who want to be working toward the same goals you all have, so that people can be most effective trying to fix the problems. Does that make sense?
Hmm. Let me try to rephrase, because I’m clearly not coming across the way I intended.
#5 I would probably clarify the first half to the following: I am less likely to have judgemental remarks made about my food choices when eating in public, and when it does occur, I am all but guaranteed a sympathetic audience who will validate my anger over the invasion of privacy. (this being because to the best of my recollection, every single woman I know - regardless of body size - has been intruded upon by strangers who think they have the right to comment on what they’re eating.)
#8 I guess I was thinking in terms of “movie stars,” the vast majority of whom are unnaturally thin…far thinner than the general population of non-fat women, and therefore not representative of them. But if I expand that to news personalities, the body of television characters, extras, actors/actresses in commercials, then I see how this is true. And I probably should have known better, as I don’t see people who “look like me” in terms of race (Asian/Hispanic) in the media…anywhere. Not just “stars.”
I withdraw my objections to #15 and #18 because though what I said does apply to people of my general size…there aren’t too many of us. What the original poster wrote is true of the vast majority of non-fat people, and while you can always find an exception to any privilege, that’s not the point.
Boy, it’s definitely different being on the flip side of the privilege thing (I’m more used to examining it from a racial or gender standpoint). And as far as for why I am registered here, or anywhere else in the fatosphere - the answer is simple. Body size shouldn’t make a difference in how people are treated, or in the opportunities they are offered. Also, everyone should be able to love and respect their bodies, just as they are. I’m not there yet, far from it, but I come here hoping that I might learn something about self-acceptance from people who are further along that path than I.
and while you can always find an exception to any privilege, that’s not the point.
Exactly! Thank you for your post; I really appreciated it.
Here is the difference between (personal) luck and (social) privilege:
It is lucky to find an item of clothing that fits you really well, since everyone is shaped differently and few are shaped like fit models.
It is a privilege to be able to walk into a store and find something you can even try on.
Amy, I think this is fantastic — and, from the responses, clearly necessary. You’re getting the same discomfort that Invisible Knapsack evokes, and that’s awesome.
And the same douchehoundery, unfortunately.
I think the title does need to be changed to reflect size privilege, rather than fatphobia, as I think the two are different.
Oh, boy. There is SO much good stuff here. Mind if I throw in my twenty cents?
15a: People do not assume that my partner fetishizes me, or other fat people.
Also: If I say I’m happy with myself the way I am, I am not usually challenged to justify or defend that because of my size/weight.
I am not likely to have to listen to conversations/commercials where people talk about how not to look like me. Also, people who look like me are not used as bad examples in ads promoting weight loss/fear of the obesity crisis/etc. Nor is my size used as symbolic shorthand in movies/literature/cartoons/etc. for negative traits.
Oh, and I’m not considered to be part of any “crisis” related to my weight.
People are not as likely to react negatively or complain if I engage in public displays of affection, or publicly appear in whatever clothing I please, such as shorts, tank tops, bathing suits, etc.
I will not be told I am in “denial” of my “weight problem” because I refuse to change or hate myself.
I can be pretty sure nobody is pointing me out to their kids as a bad example. (”No, you may not have another cookie. You don’t want to look like THAT lady, do you?”) I am also not going to be singled out as a threat based on my size, therefore enforcing fear/loathing of fat people. (”You’d better behave or that fat man will eat you up!”)
I am not told repeatedly in the news, by doctors, by random bystanders, that my health is in danger and that I will live a shorter life.
If I encourage people to love their bodies, I am not accused of saying this because I “want everyone to be fat” like me. My political stance is not seen as an agenda to make others like me.
I am not automatically assumed to be single because of my size. If I am single, it is not likely to be blamed on my weight.
If I try on an item of clothing that does not fit properly, I am not AS encouraged to blame my body as a fat person; I am more likely to be encouraged to blame the clothes.
I am not generally expected to exercise and/or diet to “prove” my “virtue” and earn the right to look how I just naturally look.
And, as always, the big one: I have the privilege of ignoring my privilege, or even denying that it exists. I can live most of my life as though prejudice based on size and weight does not exist, because it does not affect me much.
. . .
There is more . . . so much more. There is another list here that I just found:
http://www.fatshadow.com/October2003.htm#e412
Some of my points above are duplicated there, in other wording.
Hi Amy! It’s Eve from S’ville. :)
Here’s an addition to your list:
If someone turns me down for a date, I can assume it’s not because of my size.
I’m not sure about the “good politics” one…just because I’ve never heard of that before. Have you known fat folks who thought they were being flirted with for the sake of good politics? Or known people who flirted with fatties to show their good politics?
Ooh, ooh, I have some!
When I lose weight, people realise it may be because I’ve been ill or stressed and don’t automatically congratulate me on it
People don’t assume I am ashamed of my body size (or patronisingly try and ‘make me feel better’ about my size). When I tell them I am happy with my body, people don’t raise their eyebrows disbelievingly or act as though I’m being very brave.
People don’t set up blind dates for me based entirely on the fact that the proposed date ‘likes big curvy asses’… OK, that one didn’t fit the list. Am just still reeling from someone doing that to me the other day…
I don’t find that I am privileged for being thin.
On the contrary, I find that people use it as an excuse to direct their own negative feelings at me. I get accused of being sick, even anorexic, though I am healthy.
I have people behave very invasively to me, going so far as to demand to know what I eat, whether I diet, what exercise I do, etc. I will never forget walking into a second hand shop aged 13 and having the owner comment on my thin frame, remark to my mother (not to me) ‘I’m guessing she doesn’t eat very much’ then ask me a veritable onslaught of questions about what I ate, down to whether I ate many carbohydrates.
I am assumed to be very physically weak, even though I’m not. I was actually forbidden to lift PLASTIC CHAIRS in high school ‘in case I hurt myself’. I don’t even get to lift my own shopping without busybodies advising me not to ‘because someone so light framed as yourself shouldn’t be lifting all that, you’ll hurt yourself.’
Sorry. I don’t see myself as the privileged one here.