Fatphobia is Victim-Blaming

Hear me out:

I wince every time I look in the comments section of a story about Lizzo and her unwavering body positivity. I try not to look most times, because I know how much hate will be shared there. It never fails; there is a mass of people who are “concerned for her health” and make it a point to shame her for existing. They’ll try to claim it doesn’t matter how well you eat or how much you move, being fat isn’t healthy and they don’t want big bodies normalized…because health?

It isn’t concern for health. It is fatphobia. And it isn’t just aimed at celebrities. This is everyday life.

Fatphobia is that time my mom got chastised at her old workplace for wearing the same type of outfit as her thinner co-workers and they did not. It’s when my former co-worker always had something negative to say when her assistant (a woman with PCOS, like me) ate literally anything. It’s every time I went to see my doctor and she told me “calories in, calories out” when I’d complain about my weight gain, knowing of my PCOS diagnosis and that I always reported an activity to intake ration that would create a calorie deficit.

Ask anyone with a BMI over 25 their experience with doctors (especially if they’re a woman) and you’ll quickly find out that every problem they have has been blamed on weight. They could walk in with broken leg and be told to lose weight so it doesn’t hurt. The medical field’s negligent blinders to anything but weight as the culprit of all problems results in, not only misdiagnosis and lack of trust in doctors, but also perpetuates fatphobia.

Yes, I knew fatphobia most of my life. I’d watch it disseminated in media and in every day life. It was clear in the weight loss reality competitions and overwhelming number of thin bodies being put on a pedestal that if fat did exist, it was not wanted.

I didn’t know the extent of it, though, until our most recent internet culture arose and the body-positivity movement began in its current form. People of all walks of life, levels of education, and cultural backgrounds have come out in droves to support body-positivity, and just as many have come out to condemn it with vehemence and pure hate.

Their hate is blind. They do not care why you are fat, just that you are and that it makes you worthless. They do not care that you’re okay with it because they are not.

Medical professionals say that one must not have excess fat to be healthy, even with emerging scientific research and a bevy of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Personal trainers, life coaches, small and large bodied people of all sorts come out en masse to decry the amount of fat another person holds on their body. The body of another person in this instance somehow impacts others with no discernable reason why.

I have a theory on what this is; victim-blaming.

I’m not saying being overweight makes you a victim. That makes being overweight sound like a bad thing and it just isn’t. Let’s make that abundantly clear. But victim-blaming the closest human phenomenon to what I believe is happening with fatphobia.

Victim-blaming occurs when people find reasons why the victim brought the bad thing upon themselves. Why? Because, then, it allows the onlooker to believe it couldn’t happen to them. “I don’t do X so Y won’t happen to me. They did, and that’s why it happened to them.”

We see it most commonly when women are raped; “she was dressed like that, so she brought it on herself.” This is problematic, obviously, but people still do it. Courts still uphold this as if it’s a legitimate argument for someone else’s behavior to be dictated by what another person wears, says, drinks, etc.

In the same vein, the medical community and media have created a culture where being overweight is bad and, thus, people do not want it to happen to them. Enter the desire the believe it cannot happen to you. “If I eat right and exercise, I can control my body weight and not become fat.” Conversely, “I don’t eat right or exercise, therefore I am fat. But if I want to change it I can.”

For many people this is probably true. If your body is meant to be 130 pounds and you give it the nutrition and exercise it needs, it will be 130 pounds as long as it is working properly. Less nutrition and more activity will lead to a lower weight and less activity and excess nutrition will lead to a higher weight.

If I am to believe Lizzo, which I do, that she’s perfectly healthy and doesn’t have underlying health conditions, she may be right in saying she’s just supposed to be bigger. Perhaps there are bodies that are meant to be 180, 200, 250 pounds and no amount of exercise or reduced calories or special diets will keep you far from it. No amount of muscle will burn away the fat that covers it.

And that’s okay.

When the culture believes that this aforementioned body is wrong, it doubles down on the notion that this couldn’t be true. They tell themselves that there is no way that someone should just be “big.” If that’s true, then at any point in time—any birthday, any metabolism change, any hormone shift—their body could change and just want to be at that forbidden weight.

These people will double-down again when they hear that your medical condition causes your weight gain or difficulty losing weight.

You take pills that have documented weight gain as a common side effect? They’ll either elect not to believe it (because, what if one day they need to take the same medication) or tell you to stop the medication. It can’t possibly be more life-saving than not being fat, they will rationalize.

You have multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia, or any other illness that causes extreme fatigue or just the actual inability to move? They will say it’s all in your head and you are lazy. Because, why wouldn’t you want to exercise that weight away? And, naturally, the weight must be causing all the symptoms because it causes everything. At least, that’s what the doctors say.

You have hypothyroidism, PCOS, or diabetes and it makes your body actually not work like everyone else’s? “You must be eating too much,” they cry. The idea that an illness will cause your body to ignore all your well-meaning health behaviors and punish you for the slightest indulgence, like a slice of cake or a few days of rest, must be a terrifying idea to those who haven’t faced this. To defend themselves from the possibility that they might be so lacking in control over their bodies one day should they suddenly be diagnosed with any of these, they will shame and demean you for not taking control.

I recently left a social media group after I experienced this.

I’d committed to Wicca in mid-2020 and connected to groups I thought would have like-minded, sensitive, caring people. In Wicca, we believe in a rede; “an it harm none, do what thou wilt.” To extend on this, what you put out into the universe you get back times three. I assumed, I suppose foolishly, that people of this belief would not commit fatphobia. Because what is fatphobia if not deliberate harm?

I asked a very specific question looking for weight loss spells, or spell elements, that don’t include making you eat less. I explained that I didn’t need to eat less and that PCOS made me hold onto fat due to insulin resistance. The first comment I got back explained to me that I wouldn’t get anywhere with this unless I understood why I eat the way I do.

To me, this is discrimination and shaming, against the rules of the group. I alerted an admin. I was told it was my fault because what I was asking for doesn’t exist.

They obviously don’t know or understand the craft and they’re certainly are no Wiccans, but the impact of their harm will reach them three-fold, regardless. That knowledge does little to placate me. Even in what should be the safest circles, fatphobia is found because it’s been ingrained into our society as “right” and “healthy.” These people don’t even know the harm they do because they believe it is not harm at all, but help.

In reality, it’s only there to help them be convinced they could never be fat. Every time they are proven right by their body simply just functioning the way it uniquely does, the belief solidifies even more.

We need two things for this cycle to end. One; the medical community to change the narrative. Two; society to take responsibility for their own feelings and fears rather than putting them on someone else.

Now I ask you at the end of this; how do you picture me? What size am I? What weight am I? What judgements have you been making deliberately or subconsciously?

You should know that I’m fine with me as I am. I do want to lose a few pounds, not for fear of the body I’d have but for the desire to not have to change my wardrobe yet again. Some items are getting tight and I’m really not ready to spend all that money and time again. Plus, I’ve got some cute stuff.