Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia

Pride says, despite the way we are treated, we have no reason to feel ashamed.

And it’s not that we abhor fatness because we discovered it is unhealthy. By and large, we decided it is unhealthy because we came, over time, to abhor it—for

Being thin has thus become much harder over the course of the past century—and, at the same time, vastly more valued.

There should be no shame in not being healthy.

Fatness serves as a potent class and race signifier. And so, when we wring our hands or jeer at fatness, we are often tacitly and unwittingly expressing classism and racism.

The diet, fitness, and so-called wellness industries hence profit handsomely from the fatphobic hierarchies that make certain body types highly desirable, yet unachievable, for most people in our calorie-abundant social environment.

Healthism seems to be less a general moral mistake, then, than an ideological weapon wielded selectively against those who are already stigmatized and othered.

Fatphobia is an inherently structural phenomenon, which sees people in fatter bodies navigating a different world, containing numerous distinct material, social, and institutional barriers to our flourishing.

But, ultimately, it felt like a confession of a sin that was less mine than a completely predictable product of the social world I lived in.