You hear it from your co-worker who won’t stop talking about how they simply cannot eat another cookie at the holiday party. This quote: “We deserve a paradigm of personhood that does not make size or health a prerequisite for dignity and respect,” has stuck with me.

What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat: by Aubrey

Gordon, also known as “Your Fat Friend,” (previously anonymously), has claimed her own space online where fat stories are welcome. There’s something about peeking behind the curtain of all of this that feels immensely empowering,” Gordon says. Ask them what you can do to help them in the moment if you witness street harassment or someone treating them differently as a result of their size. A concern troll might ask a fat person what diets they’ve tried before asking them if they even want to lose weight, or even ask for their consent to engage in what might be a sensitive topic.In a world where thinness reigns supreme and diet talk is as normal as talking about the weather, fat folks rarely have the opportunity to share their stories without fear of being bullied or berated. And I’d venture to guess you even hear it in your head, when your pants are suddenly fitting a little differently. Leaving the religion of diet culture 🙌🏼 It’s a wild ride ✌🏼 Sources pictured: Anti-diet by Christy Harrison and What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat by Aubrey Gordon.

Fat Friend Wants You to Start Having Conversations With Your Fat Friend Wants You to Start Having Conversations With

She is what she describes as ‘very fat’, and she has experienced a life of doctors, friends, and strangers making all sorts of assumptions about her, and judgments about her life and frankly about her worth.From the creator of Your Fat Friend, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people that will move us toward creating an agenda for fat justice. You see it on TV, like when Miranda from Sex and the City joins Weight Watchers right after having a baby. Because of fatphobia’s history as a structural means of body policing, Gordon says, “all of the ways that we level our bad behaviors at fat people are absolutely entrenched in oppressive systems, in violent forms of communication. The ways that we treat fat people are kind of terrible, and they don’t actually make fat people thinner, or healthier, or happier.

What We Dont Talk about When We Talk about Fat | TikTok What We Dont Talk about When We Talk about Fat | TikTok

By sharing her experiences as well as those of others—from smaller fat to very fat people—she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. She recommends some easy policy changes, like including body size as a protected class in schools where states have banned bullying. I don’t know that there is much that is more demoralizing to me than hearing people I love talk about how much better the world would be without people like me in it. What we have long considered the health conditions associated with being fat in actuality may be the effects of long-term dieting, which very fat people are pressured heavily to do.And if you are a fat person who has thought about this a lot, my hope is to have created something that allows fat folks to see themselves reflected in a way that doesn’t usually happen. As organizers, our job is to build a collective vision, make sure that folks are enrolled in that collective vision, and push together in concert to make some changes. Reading about this, my heart broke for fat kids everywhere who bear the burden of our obsession with thinness. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fatis a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.