Life doesn’t begin when you’re thin

Carolyn Copeland of Daily Kos discussed fatphobia and fat shaming. Copeland quotes Chevese Turner of the Binge Eating Disorder Association:

We are socialized to believe that fat is a negative and that fat people are lazy, dirty, and less than hard-working,” Turner said. “We believe thin is better and desirable, and have created an entire culture—diet and wellness culture—around these beliefs. We are taught from the moment we are born that fat is bad and we should, at any cost, not be fat. Some people are more fat-adverse than others and this may be because of the degree to which they have internalized fatphobia and just how much value thinness held in their families of origin or amongst their friend groups.

Fatphobia has long ties with white supremacy and religion. One aspect of Protestantism is the encouragement of self-discipline in order to find salvation. That included self-discipline over food. If a person was heavy that indicated low commitment to self-discipline, perhaps an “animalistic inability to control oneself.” American colonists associated being heavy with racial inferiority and immorality. In the same way white skin was put at the top of the social hierarchy and black skin at the bottom, thinness was put at the top and heaviness at the bottom.

Copeland wrote:

Teaching people to love the body they’re in isn’t promoting obesity or an unhealthy lifestyle. It means letting people know that life doesn’t begin when you’re thin, that people of all weights and sizes can live a happy, fulfilling life, and that people don’t have to hate themselves or the way they look simply because they’re heavier.

As part of a discussion of celebrity weight shaming and the reaction to Adele after she lost a lot of weight, Copeland wrote:

The overwhelming commentary on social media surrounding Adele’s transformation revealed a deep, underlying societal problem: Women who are heavier are often viewed as less-than, and value is only truly reached when they’re thin enough.

Copeland notes that when one person uses “health concerns” to comment on another person’s weight that doesn’t prompt the target person to exercise more and eat less. Instead, the opposite happens due to stress and shame. Also, there are a lot of reasons other than a lack of self-discipline that cause weight gain. These include physical disorders and financial limitations.

There is no excuse for fat shaming. We should not judge people by their shape. However, Sabrina Strings, author of Fearing the Black Body, the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, said:

It's hard to envision a time in which we were not focused on other people's appearances. Keep in mind that we don't just hate on folks based on their looks, we celebrate people when we find them attractive. There is no ‘attractive’ without an unattractive—it's a comparative designation.