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

by Aubrey Gordon

In order to acknowledge fatcalling and sexual violence targeting fat women, thin feminists would have to acknowledge that bodies like mine should not be publicly shamed. Thin feminists would need to return to the radical root that insists that no survivor of sexual violence deserved what befell them. None of us are asking for it—certainly not for daring to live in the only bodies we have. But somehow, for many feminists, that feels too close to home. Acknowledging the pain of fat women would mean acknowledging their own complicity, often unthinking and unintentional. It would mean implicating their own bodies and sacrificing the privileges they feel certain they’ve earned. If we used the full force of feminist movements to argue against the validity of the privileges that come with living in a thin body, those privileges might fall away. Making space for an emerging constituency in any movement is a straightforward, albeit difficult, task. Its ingredients are simple: listening, believing, adjusting, and collaborating. But sharing power has never been easy, and, like acknowledging other axes of oppression, making room for fat women within feminism will require some discomfort of the thinner women around who it has been historically centered. It will require their willingness to entertain the idea that their bodies are not accomplishments and that fat bodies are not failures. It will call upon the willingness to believe that they themselves might become fat someday and might...