Fatphobia - Blog Posts
"For 60 years, doctors and researchers have known two things that could have improved, or even saved, millions of lives. The first is that diets do not work. Not just paleo or Atkins or Weight Watchers or Goop, but all diets. Since 1959, research has shown that 95 to 98 percent of attempts to lose weight fail and that two-thirds of dieters gain back more than they lost. The reasons are biological and irreversible. As early as 1969, research showed that losing just 3 percent of your body weight resulted in a 17 percent slowdown in your metabolism—a body-wide starvation response that blasts you with hunger hormones and drops your internal temperature until you rise back to your highest weight. Keeping weight off means fighting your body’s energy-regulation system and battling hunger all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
The second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people."
A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.
Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.
And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.
encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.
Say it louder for the people in the back.
stop drawing nezarec skinny you fucks.
Hey did you know that you can’t escape fatphobia even after death? The article talks about how these donated bodies are used for first year anatomy students to study the body, and how the 'perfect' body for that should be 170-180 pounds.
Yeah, bc OF COURSE that's how it works 🤡
OF COURSE showing fat characters
=
Glorifying obesity 🤡🤡🤡
OF COURSE making plus-sized characters to help people accept themselves (it's totally not that it's literally what MH is about in the first place, about ACCEPTING OUR DIFFERENCES) is the same as brainwashing someone to gain weight and become fat🤡🤡🤡
(she's not even that big in the first place, wtf was that user on when they were writing this)
Ableism and fatphobia spin around in circles. Can't say this enough.
Many people gain weight after becoming disabled/chronically ill due to being forced into a less active lifestyle, and losing weight becomes harder and harder when physical activities become more and more challenging. We get put on medications that have weight gain side effects. Some of us women go into premature menopause, which also leads to weight gain and slower metabolism.
The next fatphobic ableist who tells any of us to diet and exercise owes my dog a femur to gnaw on.
SORRY FOR THE VERY PERSONAL COMIC!!
This is my half of “Unhealthy”, an essay comic double header with the lovely and talented Sarah Winifred Searle. She and I both wrote about our personal experiences as overweight ladies with eating disorders, and her story is breathtaking! You can buy a physical copy of the book here: https://topatoco.com/collections/abby-howard/products/ah-unhealthy
Or buy a digital PDF here: https://abbyhoward.itch.io/unhealthy
Please think before you comment on people's physical traits/appearance! There is NO NEED WHATSOEVER to shame, belittle or otherwise mess with someone's feelings because of something as superficial and unimportant than looks!! It's dumb, it's insensitive, it's unnecessary, uncalled for and oftentimes simply cruel.
Care for some examples?
I was walking my dogs once and stopped at a local dogpark where an elder woman started chatting to me. She was nice enough, but all of a sudden she asked why I didn't get my teeth fix. Yeah, I am 100% aware that I have crooked front teeth. I don't really care, I accept them the way they are, back then I also was not generally in a good mental state and such a comment felt downright mean and utterly out of place. Luckily, I was able to tell her as much by coolly stating that this was none of her business and that it's extremely impolite and rude to say something like that...
I've also had several occassions in my life where people told me negative things about my hair which is not only rude, but also plain racist. European, white people telling me, a PoC, that I should get another hairstyle 'cuz it would look "much better"?! I mean, do they even know what they are suggesting?! Yeah, get over it; not everybody needs to have fair, straight hair. I like my hair the way it is naturally: curly, sometimes a little messy, and whenever I dye it, I do it because I enjoy being colorful (I had it pink for quite some time), but that's my decision and no one else's business and maybe these people should take a long hard look at themselves and understand how utterly brainwashed they have been to believe that there is exactly ONE way of being beautiful/handsome/pretty.
Also, do not comment on people's weight!! Seriously?! Why is this even still a thing?! You know NOTHING about a person's history, about their eating habits, their routines, you don't know whether they are struggling with an eating disorder and you certainly don't get to decide what their body has to look like for them to like and celebrate themselves!! It's just not okay to tell someone "Oh, you used to be so thin, what happened?" or "You have lost way too much weight, it doesn't suit you at all!" or "You've grown fat since I last saw you" - CUT THAT SH*T!!
Also, you don't have to comment on other people's fashion preferences; if you don't want to wear skinny jeans or leoprints or bright neon colors or cheap shoes or wheaver, well, you are not obliged to do so, but let other people wear whatever they want and just LEAVE THEM ALONE.
Okay so maybe yall can explain it to me because I’m still new here
So before I watched Star Trek, there seemed to be this ongoing joke about Captain Kirk being a “fatass” like Family Guy, Epic Rap Battles of History and I think even Robot Chicken (don’t quote me on this) made this joke and I don’t get it. Like is Kirk “fat” by 60s standards or does William Shatner just gain weight as the show goes on because you know, he’s fucking human ?
Like I even saw a Reddit post from 2 years ago trying to claim Kirk is “chubby” and “wearing a girdle” and using these photos as reference and he looks like a regular fucking dude so I’m confused. Like he’s not fat and even if he was that’s not a bad thing at all so I don’t get why certain fans have been assholes about this for so fucking long. Like he’s fine. He looks like he’s average weight. And then there’s claims his shirts just make him “look fat” like the green shirt, when he literally looks the same.
I don’t know maybe I’m crazy but Kirk looks absolutely fine and even if he was “fat” that shouldn’t be something to riff on, especially now in 2025 but people still do it.
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
i’ll forgive a fat girl for so many annoying things simply because i know how fucking miserable it is to be a fat girl. like. you dont get to exist freely and with any joy until you go through a decades long soul search full of extreme emotional pain OR you nearly kill yourself to become something society might accept. or you toughen up after years of bullying forced you to be more confident. literally there is no painless route to being a fat girl in your 20 somethings. so like. fat girls can be annoying as a treat. you have all been annoying our whole lives
Whenever someone tries to say something about how the body positivity movement is all about telling people being fat is a healthy lifestyle, I tell them about how I, at the ripe old age of 9 years old, wanted an eating disorder because I knew it could cause irreparable damage to your body so that you would have problems gaining weight even if you managed to recover. That’s right, I would rather having a potentially fatal mental and physical illness than live my life with the baby fat that I naturally had.
My first memory of hating my body was when I was either 4 or 5 and my mom got me one of those cute little kid bikinis for the Fourth of July with little Stars and Stripes all over it so that I could have fun in the blow-up pool in our backyard. However, looking at myself in the Disney princess vanity mirror, I wanted to cry. And even though I was so young and obviously I wasn’t going to look like a skinny model, I still immediately panicked and changed into a one-piece before hiding that kid bikini in the bottom of my drawer.
Today I am a mid-size young woman that still sometimes goes into a depression about my body, but I know that in the big picture, I have recovered greatly from those years of looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself that no one would ever love me (though sometimes that particular thought worms it’s way into my brain).
That is what the body positivity movement is. A way to tell little kids that hey, looking different than the starving models on the runways and in movies isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, even just having bigger girls on the screen and not as jokes or awful caricatures would have made me feel so much better about myself.
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6FWZ-TpkFI
the tags is just so those people see this, I feel like they need to see this
the concept of fatphobia isn't "skinny people have never ever been shamed or insecure about their bodies ever" but rather "society literally doesn't want fat people to exist at any cost to the point healthcare systems are willing to let fat people die rather than address any other possible medical issue, in addition to facing insults and disgust at every turn socially". online the fact u can't make a body positive or even neutral post without somebody going "but what about us naturally skinny and petite people" is so fucked man