Fat Propaganda: ‘You Deserve to Take Up Space’

Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:

Fat Propaganda Roundup: Documenting the meatiest, juiciest cuts of “fat acceptance” propaganda from corporate and social media.

‘You deserve to take up space’

It seems to me a major problem with Western culture is the pervasive mantra that individuals “deserve” this or that by virtue of just existing. People deserve what they earn.

There is limited space here on Earth, and the fats want all of it — even on airlines — via this empowering affirmation from a body-diverse “nutrition counselor.”

Via The Witty Avocado (emphasis added):

“The weight stigma we experience can make us feel like we need to hide. That we need to be silent. That we lack willpower and motivation. That we cannot take up space.

We learn to hate our bodies. We learn that our bodies are wrong. THAT WE ARE WRONG.

The most ironic part is- those words, the resulting internalized weight stigma, is what has the greatest potential impact on our mental and physical health. Not the size of our bodies (correlation does not equal causation).

It took me years (and a lot of therapy, effort, and emotional energy) to unpack the weight stigma I had internalized from such a young age. Discovering intuitive eating, Health at Every Size®, and body neutrality allowed me to challenge that inner voice- to rewrite that obnoxious commercial jingle into something with a little more love and empathy.

If you, too, are in the process of challenging and unlearning your own commercial jingle of “I hate my body,” I want you to know that I see you. I grieve with you. I stand with you.

Please know that you deserve to be heard.

You do not need to hide.

The size of your body does not determine your willpower or motivation.

You deserve to take up space.

Most importantly, you and your body are not wrong*.”

*This gravy-monger’s BMI north of 40 is arguably wrong, and what she offers as “nutrition counseling” (gobble up whatever you want if it makes you feel good) is definitely wrong — objectively, metrically wrong.

But, wrong as it might be, this is inspirational stuff — a brave and stunning taking-charge story of perseverance through the wilderness of the cold, hard, fatphobic world.

I am diabetic lioness, hear me roar!

Related: #BodyPositivity Propaganda Roundup: Fats vs. Airplanes

Anna Jones, while she markets herself as a dietitian nutritionist and actively recruits clients, refuses to help her clients lose weight even if they want to, because, she explains, that would be stigmatizing.

Via About Me (emphasis added):

“The desire to lose weight is not a bad or shameful desire. It honestly makes sense considering how AWFUL people in fat bodies are treated. They are ridiculed, stigmatized, and bullied for the size of their body. If this has been your experience, it seems logical to want to further avoid this pain and trauma by losing weight.

There are a couple of reasons why I do not assist with weight loss. The first being, there isn’t great research that demonstrates a strategy for sustainable weight loss (meaning the weight is kept off) beyond five years and does not further harm your relationship with food. For this reason, I do not believe it is ethical to accept money for something that is not sustainable and may cause harm to you.

The second being- focusing on weight loss as the primary goal tends to negate the benefits of newly established health behaviors.”

Jones is a card-carrying member of the Weight Inclusive Toolkit Initiative and serves on its DEI Board, which counters something called “weight-normative care” that allegedly oppresses women, Persons of Color™, fat people, and the poor.

Via University of Washington School of Public Health (emphasis added):

“In response to a new 2022 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirement, the Weight Inclusive Toolkit Initiative (WITI) Committee (a subset of the Weight Inclusive Education Initiative) was hired by Nutrition and Dietetic Educators and Preceptors (NDEP) to develop an educational toolkit. The problem being addressed by the WITI Committee is that the majority of nationwide nutritional sciences curricula are based in
“weight-normative care.” This is an incredibly far-reaching population level problem, because this kind of healthcare is built on the premise that larger bodies are less healthy, and that weight
loss is a reasonable, possible, and valuable goal for people in those bodies to become more healthy (despite reams of evidence to the contrary). Predicated primarily on the fraught Body Mass Index (BMI), this principle, and the ideas that flow out of it, perpetuates the health of the most privileged, while impeding the health of those who find themselves not identifying as: white, male, small-bodied, wealthy, etc.”

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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