How Does Society Treat Fat People?

Written By: Toni PNW

Not Well.

What does society value?

Beauty standards have varied across societies and cultures. The perception of fat bodies hasn’t always been negative. We explored the historical shift in anti-fatness and its roots in white supremacy, violence, and control in Day 1 of this 30 Days of Size Inclusion in Tattooing project.

Fatphobia causes the unnecessary suffering and even deaths of fat individuals. The harm is so apparent, so why is the attitude toward fat rights, inclusion, and liberation treated as unimportant?

Pretty = Privileged

Beauty is subjective, yet many human societies have tied goodness and correctness to physical appearance. Because our society does not categorize fatness as beautiful, it is treated as a direct opposite of good and correct. Fat bodies are seen as moral failures, and weight loss is seen as a success - a pivot to the good and virtuous. 

This mindset has normalized anti-fat biases to be socially acceptable, and even encouraged.

Capitalism’s Campaign Against Self Love

The sentence “You are good enough” loses the diet, fashion, and beauty industries billions of dollars a year.

These industries use predatory, manipulative, and exploitative tactics that keep everyone insecure, self-hating, and dissatisfied. They make the most money when no one is good enough as they are. 

Billboards, magazines, movies, and other advertising media are profit driven, promoting unnecessary and never-ending products that will “fix” you. The narrower and harder to achieve the beauty standard is, the more these industries profit. Capitalism didn’t create fatphobia, but it uses anti-fatness as an integral part of its foundation alongside exploitation, inequality, and consumerism. The further you are from the beauty standard, the more profit can be made from you.

Fat people, and especially those with other intersecting oppressions, are targeted relentlessly, because of course, bodies are complex and certainly not optional. Few achieve conformity, so they’re used as success stories and marketing tools that perpetuate harm and trauma while extorting money from those it marginalizes and oppresses.

You Are Enough

Affirmations are radical. Realizing or remembering your own worth challenges the business model of self-loathing. “You are Enough” defies and rejects needing products, diets, programs, or the excessive consumerist idea that you need to be fixed at all. Shifting our perspective to center body neutrality empowers and humanizes bodies who are often devalued. It becomes easier to identify power imbalances in society and who may be benefiting from controlling and shaming others.

How Do We Heal?

Education

Many people don’t know that anti-fatness is based in racism and colonization. Understanding how fatphobia is directly related to other systems of oppression provides context and clarity for biases and attitudes that feel normal and accepted in our anti-fat society. Barriers fat advocates bring up feel less like a trivial opinion and more like the systemic discriminations they are.

Challenge Biases

Social conditioning holds a great deal of influence - companies pay a lot of money to uphold imbalances and injustices. We can challenge this programming with reflection and empathy. 

Ask yourself these questions to identify size-biased attitudes you may hold internally or unconsciously.

Do I laugh at language, jokes, or media that mock and devalue fat people?

Do I speak to or treat people I know differently when they gain or lose weight? 

Do I hold fat people to a different standard for physical activity, appearance, or personal success than thin people?

Do I avoid advocating for fat liberation because I fear how others will view me?

Reflect on the potential discomfort in your answers. Seek out fat liberation resources and listen to the stories and lived experiences of fat people. Take action by committing to inclusive changes in your thoughts, language and behavior.

Prioritize Body Neutrality and Take Steps Toward Size Inclusion

Continue to question assumptions you hold about all bodies, including your own. Identify companies and industries that profit from your shame, and the shame and oppression of others. 

Prioritizing body neutrality can look many ways, like supporting fat-friendly creators and businesses, speaking out against systemic discrimination, examining your language and attitudes that reinforce body hierarchies (such as complimenting weight loss, or condolences for weight gain), and intentionally shifting your perspective to universal empathy and humanity.

Self love, Empathy and Advocacy

Self love for all is supportive of fat liberation and body neutrality by shifting the focus away from the industries profiting from our oppression. When fat individuals and allies embrace self love separate from appearance hierarchies, it normalizes and celebrates diversity. Pressure to conform to narrow standards is lessened and they will hold less and less power over our society. Self love and empathy lead to advocacy and action.