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

by Aubrey Gordon

But whatever the explanation, whatever the caveats that follow such intense and constant judgment, pressure, rejection, and discrimination, a simple fact remains: the way that thinner people treat fatter people is abuse. Choice whispers to thinner people that they wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t make them. It tells them they’re doing me a favor—more than that, that they’d be doing a disservice if they didn’t express deep contempt for bodies like mine. Like so much abuse, its cruelty disguises itself as something not only benign, but beneficial. But the truth is that concern and choice are cover for a convenient and tempting set of stories that establish a hierarchy of people by establishing a hierarchy of bodies. They are judge and jury so that every thin person may play executioner for any fat person. But by every measure, choice is false and unfounded, and concern isn’t helping. If thin people are just concerned with our health, they can tackle the bias that is hurting fat people much more than our bodies themselves.