Blaming Barriers on Bodies - How Fatphobia and Ableism Intersect
Written By: Toni PNW
The Dependency On Oppression
Body neutrality gives every person inherent value and equality, while society's structure, rooted in capitalism, measures our worth and deservingness on appearance and the money we can contribute.
Blame is placed on individuals to avoid unity and critique to our society's fundamental design. Capitalism is not failing when people are harmed and exploited; it's working as intended. Shaming and blaming the communities our society oppresses keep us struggling, too overwhelmed and busy trying to stay afloat to have the time or energy to push back. Capitalism's basic message tells us that failing to thrive in society is our fault through our choices and just not working hard enough.
It intentionally ignores the inaccessibility ingrained in society's roots and dismisses the harm of linking human value to productivity because capitalism functions on our oppression. Society's elites benefit from marginalizing communities: exploiting labor by paying us less, giving us fewer opportunities, advancements and options, normalizing consumerism, upholding beauty standards that profit on our shame and mistreatment, and ensuring they remain on top in power and wealth by keeping society comfortable with our dehumanization.
It relies on hierarchies and discrimination, foundational racism, sizeism, and ableism to prevent disruption to their control.
Society Is Designed To Create Obstacles
In a society that devalues and neglects the needs of some while rewarding others with default access and privilege, there will be an obvious contrast in the experience of marginalized and prioritized individuals.
Many in society don’t realize how much extra effort it takes to navigate a world built without your consideration. What is a one-step process for a non-disabled, thin individual may be an elaborate, draining, multi-step, and labor intensive one for someone with intersecting oppressions.
For example, this is a common experience booking a tattoo appointment for someone in a thin non-disabled body:
- Find an artist whose work I like
- Make an appointment
- Arrive
- Get Tattooed
Barriers make a simple process immensely more complicated and time and energy consuming. The same process for a fat disabled person might look like this:
- Find an artist whose work I like
- Check their portfolio for representation to see if the artist has experience with fat bodies
- Find the studio’s address and check the street map view to inspect the conditions to the front door for stairs, identify uneven or unmaintained paths/sidewalks, and look for accessible and spacious parking
- Find images of the studio’s interior and examine the width of doorways and walkways to see if there is enough room for me and my mobility aide
- Try to decide if the tattoo bed looks sturdy enough to hold my body
- Call the studio or message the artist to get the access information unable to be found online, ask about if the bathroom is accessible, and confirm if the tattoo bed really is size inclusive
- Ask if the artist has tattooed fat bodies before and similar probing questions that lessen the anxiety that I won’t be harmed, upcharged, or turned away
- Ask about the artist’s policies for breaks and if they provide or allow pain management tools like numbing creams, pillows, and sensory fidgets or distractions
- Ask about privacy conditions of the tattoo area and if they have privacy coverings suitable for fat bodies
- Make an appointment
- Monitor weather conditions to ensure I’ll be able to make it to my appointment safely
- Find accessible transportation to the studio and plan extra time for breaks and barriers
- Safely navigate uneven roads, sidewalks, and obstructions for me and my mobility aide
- Arrive
- Assess the environment for hostility, judgment, and bias
- Manage the trauma and anxiety of vulnerability
- Get Tattooed
The Difficult Body
"Fat bodies are harder to tattoo," "Fat skin causes blowouts," "You can't tattoo stretch marks." Misinformation like this highlights a lack of understanding about fat skin, but the deeper problem is the annoyance and dismissal of the needs of fat and disabled clients.
Individuals who experience chronic pain may need to take more breaks and have more support and comfort in their positioning. Being irritated and treating clients who need accommodations as burdensome is deeply felt as a microaggression, and that you're intentionally trying to make clients feel bad or ashamed for requiring extra time and accommodations. The impact of viewing the person needing an accommodation as something you're forced to tolerate, rather than investigating and removing a barrier someone is facing, upholds harmful biases, victim blames, and creates an uncomfortable and unsafe environment.
Shifting Responsibility To Society
Treating individuals who face barriers in our society as problems to be cured or fixed is called the medical model or view of disability. This model frames fat and disabled people as broken and limited, in need of fixing to better access society and its existing systems.
The medical model blames, stigmatizes, and dismisses opportunities for independence that keep the status quo and avoid accountability and change.
A more humanized view is through the social model of disability, which shifts problems from the person to the obstacles in the way of access and equity. Fatness, through this lens, is seen as a regular part of human body diversity and a factor to be considered when designing social systems, physical spaces, and adjustments in society
Use Available Resources
The oppression faced by both fat and disabled individuals is deeply connected, and activism efforts often overlap, working toward a shared goal of inclusion and access.
There are grants and financial assistance programs available to small businesses to help them become ADA accessible. These programs help access barriers by funding the installation of ramps, widening bathrooms, doorways and walkways, creating accessible signage, purchasing adjustable and inclusive chairs and tables, hiring universal design evaluators, and more.
To create spaces where all can feel access and belonging, we need to challenge the normalization of oppression and barriers by utilizing resources and education tools that address our individual biases and behaviors along with the overall systemic inequality.
About Toni PNW:
Toni is a tattoo artist and fat liberation activist in Portland, Oregon. Her artwork centers and celebrates fat bodies, and through art and education she is dedicated to promoting size inclusion in the tattoo industry and beyond.
You can connect with Toni PNW on social media at @tonipnw . She also shares all her education content on the instagram page @heavryspace and at Heavryspace.com
