What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

by Aubrey Gordon

Thinness takes so much from so many straight-size people. It takes their money for diet pills, meal delivery, workout tapes, and weight-loss supplements. It takes away their ability to see their own bodies as they are, replacing that image with some distorted funhouse mirror reflection—and in so doing, it takes so much of their self-esteem along with it. It takes away interesting conversation, relegating us to the rote and interminably boring script of weight loss: who’s on what diet, who was good, who was bad. Thinness takes away so many straight-size people’s ability to hear fat people, to acknowledge our experiences even when they differ from those of straight-size listeners. And when it takes away our ability to hear one another, it slowly erodes straight-size people’s relationships with fat family members, friends, colleagues, and others, quarantining core conversations as off-limits and forever maintaining an unspoken and uneasy distance.