More to Love
Diving deeper into fatphobia: what it is, its history and how we can counter it.
Story by Kyra Planetz
Teddie Santos walks into Walmart and sits down on a motorized cart, dodging stares from able-bodied patrons. The other shoppers see Santos’ tall, fat body and are quick to judge. As Santos moves through the store, most people say nothing, but their faces of disgust pierce through Santos’ dark skin like daggers.
“Being fat is not a disability,” one customer actually says to them.
What the shoppers don’t see, however, is the pain caused by Santos’ disability, an illness entirely unrelated to their body mass.
The customers fail to realize something their eyes alone cannot comprehend: Weight isn’t indicative of poor health. And even if it was, why do people feel entitled to comment on someone else’s body?
The answer lies within fatphobia — the fear or prejudice against fat people, or the idea of being fat. This bias is deeply entrenched in our society and is “the last ‘socially acceptable’ form of discrimination” according to Western Washington University sociology professor, Jen Lois.
Society normalizes an obsession with calorie counting and diets, placing thinness as the standard for beauty and health. Not only is it common for people, especially women, to talk to each other about and encourage weight loss, but also to judge others according to their body size. The word fat is usually replaced with softer-sounding euphemisms, except when it’s meant as an insult.
Like other self-described fat-positivists, Santos believes the word fat is merely descriptive; they started using it to describe their own body as a means of taking back the negative power it had over them.
“Yes, I am fat and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Santos said. “It helps me remind myself that I do have fat on my body, but I’m not less worthy of love.”
But Santos didn’t always love and accept themself.
While growing up, Santos was emotionally abused by their parents, and their grandmother believed Santos’ body was unacceptable. She would often watch what Santos ate, shake her head in disapproval at family meals and repeatedly make demeaning comments. In order to “encourage” Santos to change their body, she would make promises such as, “If you lose weight, I’ll take you to Disneyland.”
By the time they reached high school, Santos was showering in the dark, unable to even look at their own body. They remember thinking, “Everybody else hates it, shouldn’t I hate it too?”
At that time, Santos told themself that if they could just lose a few pounds, their family, friends and partners would love them more. They believed what they were taught to believe: fat people are unworthy of the things thin people enjoy.
The idea that fat people are inherently unworthy may be partly due to puritanical ideals that make up much of our belief system today. The Puritans, some of which colonized America in the 1600s, believed in delayed gratification and self discipline, according to Lois. Lois explained that such beliefs are rooted in our society and shape our implicit biases.
“Body size has so many factors that contribute to it,” Lois said. “But in our understanding, it’s all about peoples’ ‘inability to control their appetite,’ literally in this case, and overindulging, which means they are weak and less good.”
Like Santos, Bennett Rahn grew up hating her body. She tried everything she could to change it, learning about diets and calorie counting early on. When she was 9 years old, Rahn attended fourth-grade camp and had an interaction that has always stuck with her.
Rahn had a picnic with a high school girl, someone she looked up to, as part of a camp tradition. As a young girl, she naturally wanted to fit in with the highschooler. Thinking the best way to start a conversation with the older girl was to talk about food and calories, Rahn asked, “I wonder how many calories are in this sandwich?” The high school girl was horrified. She couldn’t believe Rahn was already concerned with dieting at such a young age.
As a fourth grader, Rahn was understandably ashamed and embarrassed by the older student’s reaction. But looking back on the memory, Rahn said she feels compassion for her younger self. Though she now accepts her body as is, Rahn’s journey to self-acceptance was paved with internalized fatphobia.
“We like to think, ‘well that fat person, that’s not me,’” Rahn said. “‘The true me is thin and beautiful, and I have to unlock her by dieting.’”
Of course, like any other marginalized group, fat people don’t just oppress themselves internally. They experience discrimination in all areas of their lives — especially in health care. Take, for example, the link made between so-called “obesity” and poor health. Though the history of fat medicalization happened fairly recently — and is deeply flawed — many health myths, such as the belief that we are currently undergoing an “obesity” epidemic, remain unquestioned by society and perpetuate fatphobia.
The Body Mass Index, which has been the standard measure of body size since the 1950s, began not as a health indicator, but as a pricing tool for life insurance agencies. By the 1980s, the idea that “obesity” was a disease began to be slowly introduced to the American public. In 1997, “overweight” was established at a BMI of 25. This caused millions of Americans to suddenly be labeled “overweight,” revealing the social construction of a “standard” weight. Then, in 2013, the American Medical Association officially recognized “obesity” as a disease, despite concerns expressed by its expert panel.
In health care, fat people experience a greater degree of harassment than their thin counterparts. Poor treatment in the doctor’s office leads some to visit irregularly, making early detection of disease more unlikely. Fat women have a higher risk of gynecological cancers because of this lack of early screening.
“We’re afraid of being terrorized by our health-care professionals for being fat,” Rahn said. “So, we don’t go to the doctor and they don’t catch things that aren’t related at all to fat.”
Fatphobia is also deeply tied to other forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, ableism and classism. Laurie Cooper Stoll’s study “Fat Is a Social Justice Issue, Too” notes, “systems of oppression work together to produce injustice.”
In an example of this intersectionality, Lois explained that those living in poorer neighborhoods (disproportionately people of color) often have less access to healthy or fresh food options in grocery stores and have fewer parks for outdoor recreation. This example demonstrates how fat people are held personally responsible, and shamed, for the shape of their bodies when systematic failures and various other factors contribute to fatphobia.
Fat women are subject to a larger degree of fatphobia than fat men. In the workplace, fat women are less likely to be hired and are paid less than thin women. They are also typically rejected from elite colleges and less likely to be married. Black fat women face the triple burden of fatphobia, sexism and racism. They are often held to higher beauty standards than white women with similar features.
“Kim Kardashian can have a really big butt, but when Lizzo has a really big butt it’s a totally different conversation,” Rahn said. “Lizzo defines obesity; Kim Kardashian is the ideal woman.”
So, how do we even begin to combat fatphobia?
For Rahn, tackling the issue started with self-acceptance. She began this journey over 10 years ago when she first Googled images of women who looked like her. Rahn realized, though they had the same body type, she internally reacted to her own body much harsher than the other women. She began to follow more fat positive Instagram accounts and find more fat friends. Rahn found these changes had a positive impact on how she felt about herself.
“Try as much as you can to love yourself, despite what everybody’s telling you,” Rahn said.
For anyone who isn’t oppressed by fatphobia, Santos and Rahn agree that empathy is key to acceptance. Rahn suggests allies should listen to the experience of fat people and try their best to understand. She believes that putting yourself in someone else’s shoes makes accepting that person easier.
Systems of oppression weren’t built overnight, and fatphobia is no exception. Santos believes, however, that love — both for yourself and others — can make all the difference.
“This is my body, and no one else can love it like I can,” Santos said. “If I’m not going to love it, then I’m wasting it.”