Thoughts on Fatphobia

This is a Facebook post I wrote today because I keep seeing people say shit like “wanting to lose weight is not fatphobic” but it is.

People really don’t understand what fatphobia is and because it’s been interwoven with concepts such as health and self-worth, it makes the conversation even more difficult.

Intentional weight loss, the intent to erase the fat on your body simply for it being there, is, at its core, fatphobic. But because we have attached various convoluted moralities to it, people don’t hear how disliking body fat to the point you want to destroy it, is violent. Incidental weight loss is just that. Sometimes it happens when we become more active. Sometimes it happens when we get sick. It can happen for so many reasons, positive or negative because our bodies change for any number of reasons.

But that’s not how we see fat. Fat has been assigned ethical values. It’s been conflated with morality. It has been coded as a disease, child abuse, self-harm, self-hatred, depression, laziness, and any other of negative associations that condition people to see the existence of fat as a negative and the destruction of it as a positive when really, it just exists in varying quantities on various people.

The inability of people to grasp that fat isn’t just fat and that weight loss isn’t just weight loss is why these discussions become convoluted messes.

Ultimately, it’s your body. You’ll decide whether and if you want to engage in activities with the intent of reducing the fat on your body. But it is born from fatphobia.