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FAT ACCEPTANCE movement
FAT ACCEPTANCE movement
We often hear that being fat or overweight is a health epidemic. When society features thin or extremely fit people on tv, social media, ads, etc. as the face of their products, we have positive associations with them.
Meanwhile, images of fat people in popular culture are rarely positive. Featured in social commentary about health problems, portrayed as sex-less, undesirable (if funny) characters in media, fat people are generally viewed with disgust, considered amoral, and face considerable discrimination.
The purpose of the fat acceptance movement is to try to counter negative perceptions with positive ones and increase social acceptance of fat people.
Why does this entry uses the word "fat"?
Fat activists, and those involved in the fat acceptance movement, continually use this word. It is powerful to reclaim a word with negative associations.
You're not fat? That's okay. Mostly the consensus is that you can use fat as a descriptor, but not in a derogatory way. As an identifier, not as an insult. See the following for more information:
Why I let my loved ones call me fat | We're here, we're fat, get used to it? | Why I use the word fat
Want to change your attitude?
It helps to look at the characteristic you're thinking of as negative portrayed as positive (no matter what that bias is).
Some sources are The Body Positive, The Every Man Project, Nalgona Positivity Pride, EFF Your Beauty Standards.
FURTHER READING
FURTHER READING
"Hello, I am Fat" by Lindy West.
"Do you really want millions of teenage girls to feel like they're trapped in unsightly lard prisons that are ruining their lives, and on top of that it's because of their own moral failure, and on top of that they are ruining America with the terribly expensive diabetes that they don't even have yet? You know what's shameful? A complete lack of empathy."
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/02/11/hello-i-am-fat
"22 Examples of Thin Privilege" by Shannon Ridgeway.
"20. Friends don’t describe you to others using a qualifier (e.g. “He’s kind of heavy, but REALLY nice, though”).
21. The media doesn’t describe your body shape as part of an 'epidemic'"
https://everydayfeminism.com/2012/11/20-examples-of-thin-privilege/
Hunger by Roxane Gay.
“In yet another commercial, Oprah somberly says, “Inside every overweight woman is a woman she knows she can be.” This is a popular notion, the idea that the fat among us are carrying a thin woman inside. Each time I see this particular commercial, I think, I ate that thin woman and she was delicious but unsatisfying. And then I think about how fucked up it is to promote this idea that our truest selves are thin women hiding in our fat bodies like imposters, usurpers, illegitimates.”
https://worldcat.org/oclc/918590664 or http://www.roxanegay.com/hunger/
Fresh Air Podcast: "Columnist Lindy West Sees 'Straight Line' From Trolls Who Targeted Her To Trump" by Terry Gross
"GROSS: OK, great. So how did your weight - once your picture started to become more public, how did your weight affect the kind of responses you were getting from people?
WEST: Oh, we just don't take fat people seriously at all. Just every comment is a fat joke, you know? It's already pretty audacious to be a woman who presumes to have an opinion. And to be a fat woman who isn't even fulfilling, like, the duties of a woman - to then also presume to be a voice of authority on something, I mean, it's just - people cannot abide."
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