What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat
by Aubrey Gordon
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat
What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat discusses how our culture often feels completely justified in discriminating against fat bodies. While implicit bias is declining in other categories—such as race, sexuality, and more—bias against fat bodies continues to increase.
Let’s Talk About Fat
Some may be uncomfortable with the word “fat.” You may have learned that it’s offensive to call people fat. Yet, being fat should not be seen as offensive. It’s about as offensive as having brown hair. The descriptor “brown hair” is not loaded with stigma, nor should the descriptor “fat” be. Moving forward, I will be using the word “fat” to describe people in fat bodies.
The Author’s Approach
The author effectively shows how discrimination and often outright abuse toward fat people is cloaked with “just being concerned” for a person’s health. Why do we think it’s any of our business what another person chooses to do with their health? And this assumes that people with fat bodies are not healthy. Many times, people with fat bodies have similar health habits and behaviors as people with thin bodies.
Before I share some of my discontent with how the author was treated, let me emphasize that the author’s approach is in no way self-pitying. She strikes a beautiful balance of hope for the future, sharing clear ideas for how to transform our culture so fat abuse stops. Gordon provides examples of where she’s been offered compassion and support and examples of when she has been discriminated against and abused. The author has no intention of writing a book about how she yearns to be in a smaller body or sits around daydreaming about how her life would be better if she had a smaller body. Gordon accepts her body. It’s just that much of the world doesn’t. What if we lived in a world where a fat person accepting and respecting their body is not considered a radical act?
“I believe that I deserve to be loved in my body, not in spite of it. My body is not an inconvenience, a shameful fact, or an unfortunate truth. Desiring my body is not a pathological act. And I’m not alone. Despite the never-ending headwinds, fat people around the world find and forge the relationships they want. There is no road map, so we become cartographers, charting some new land for ourselves. We live extraordinary lives, beloved by our families, partners, communities. Fat people fall wildly in love. Fat people get married. Fat people have phenomenal sex. Fat people are impossibly happy. Those fat people live in defiance of the expectations set forth for them. Their fat lives are glorious and beautiful things, vibrant and beyond the reach of what the rest of us have been trained to imagine. Let’s imagine more.”
-Aubrey Gordon
I’m Hoping For Better…
One of the most maddening examples is how, in the medical field, the people who are supposed to be most concerned about health are blinded by their bias, so they aren’t even looking at actual health. The author was raised in a family that ate food considered to be “healthy”—fish, chicken, rice, steamed vegetables, cottage cheese, and cantaloupe. When she was just a little girl, the doctor told her she was overweight, and her face flushed with shame. The doctor said, “It’s probably from eating all that pizza and ice cream. It tastes good, doesn’t it? But it makes your body big and fat.” But she didn’t eat pizza and ice cream.
This is one of the mildest examples in the book of the outright cruelty the author has experienced. I need to pause here and figure out how to share my thoughts without resorting to expletives directed at that terrible, TERRIBLE doctor.
…okay…I’m back. It’s hard to stay engaged with this stuff. Sometimes, it’s easier to look away. We are privileged if we have the choice to look away (those of us in thin bodies).
Dear Thin Friends:
Dear thin friends: When someone in a fat body tells you of the daily abuse they experience, don’t say, “What did you do to provoke it?” “What were you wearing?” or “They were probably just trying to help.” Instead, stop implicitly cosigning the idea that their bodies need to be helped or that they are to be blamed for the abuse. That’s exactly the same thing as when a rape victim is blamed because of what they wore. Also, thin friends, please, for the love of God, don’t say things to your fat friends like, “I so admire you for owning your body. How do you do it? Will you help me?” Just don’t. Okay? Please.
Final Words
This book is supported by a large body of research that demonstrates that health is possible in all bodies. A fat body does not mean a person is unhealthy, lazy, gluttonous, or a slob. A fat body is a fat body. That’s it. I join the author in imagining and forging toward a world where that is so.
Allowing ourselves to see and be moved by suffering and not turn away from it is an entry point into compassion, which has the power to improve the world.
