bigfatscience:

bigfatscience:

ok2befat:

TW for a discussion of weight loss–

This is a kind of a difficult question to answer, b/c what I suspect you are sort of going for is– am I a bad person b/c I want to lose weight? And no. You aren’t. Like, the world makes it super clear that our lives would be easier if we were smaller. And it is exhausting to fight a stigma all the time.

But you didn’t exactly ask that question. You asked, is it internalized fatphobia to want to lose weight. And I think the answer to that question is yes. 

Because when we say we want to lose weight, when the entire world pressures everyone to lose lose lose and be as small and hungry and obsessed as possible– what we are all doing together as a culture is saying that thin is good and fat is bad. That it’s better to do literally anything and suffer any misery than to be fat. And that cultural attitude is fatphobia.

When we know we would have an easier life if we were thinner, we aren’t wrong or confused about that. We would have easier lives if we were thinner. That’s just true. But most people are wrong about why our lives would be easier.

It’s not that being smaller is inherently easier or better. It is that society brings unbearable pressure to bear on fat people and the smaller you get, the more the pressure is eased off. 

But that is a choice we have made together as a culture, not a natural law about body size. 150 years ago, it was not this way. 

It’s not surprising that you would feel relief and happiness at weight loss. Some of the pressure in your life would ease up. People would praise and admire you. It is natural to want those things. You are a human being. It doesn’t make you a bad person.

But the reason you would be praised, why you would be happier and have less pressure on you– is because some other people are being subjected to more pressure, criticism and pain than people should have to bear. For no reason. 

And that is something to keep in mind. 

The reality is that all of us have internalized fat phobia. That is simply how hierarchical societies like ours operate: We expose people to the stereotypes and prejudices that define social hierarchies young and often, and those stereotypes and prejudices become internalized to form scripts that we use to make sense of the world. They also become internalized to form parts of our self-concept. 

This is very basic psychology, it is how the self is born, And it also happens to be one of the most potent tools of oppression that exists. Because if a population can be taught from a young age that oppressive social hierarchies are right and normal and good, and even essential to our very sense of self, then we will conform and uphold those social hierarchies. Even when it hurts other people. Even when it hurts us. 

Recognizing the oppressive beliefs that were spoon fed to us as children, and then working to carefully untangle them from our core sense of self, is the most important anti-oppressive work you will ever do. 

For the Anon in my inbox complaining that body positive spaces do not celebrate people who pursue weight loss “for personal reasons”.