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

by Aubrey Gordon

That anti-fatness isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. Anti-fat bias is not the work of a few bad apples or a marginal group that decides to harm fat people. Anti-fat bias is a cultural force that simultaneously shapes and is expressed through our most commanding institutions: government, healthcare, education, and media. Anti-fatness isn’t just something each of us bears—it’s something we become. It takes over us, a virus that infects the way we see ourselves and those around us. It slips into our bloodstreams with ease, latches onto us, seeps into the way we see our friends, our family, strangers on the street. It warps our vision and our relationships. Anti-fatness is not the result of an active choice to wield it, like some biological weapon. No, anti-fatness is a passive default. We are all its carriers. We breathe it in every day.