Fat phobia was never about health
Oftentimes, I will hear people frame their fat phobia as concerns for a person’s health. This framing continues to make fat phobia a societally condoned form of discrimination. Endless research continues to separate health from weight, yet that we continue to lean on “health concerns” as a rationale for weight-based discrimination, proving that fat phobia was and is never about health. It is straight up discrimination.
Even if there wasn’t all sorts of scientific evidence out there untangling the assumed relationship between weight and health, weight discrimination would still not be okay.
Even if we could prove that with enough effort, everyone can be skinny, weight discrimination would still not be okay.
Yet, only one (!) state in the U.S. explicitly protects fat people from weight-based discrimination and there are no federal protections (Harker, 2015). I can’t imagine this lack of protections is unrelated to the prevalence of weight-based discrimination: it is the 4th most common.
Whether or not someone is engaging in health promoting behaviors does not determine whether or not they deserve to be treated with respect. Whether or not someone is actively trying to lose weight or be skinny does not determine their worth.
The proof is in the pudding: we have tons of research that demonstrates how weight is a poor predictor of health, how weight stigma is more detrimental to someone’s health than actually being “overweight,” how 95% of diets fail and those that don’t basically are just people with lifelong societally-sanctioned anorexia - and yet, we still use “concerns about health” to justify overt and and implicit weight-based discrimination.
A person’s worth is not determined by whether or not they are making decisions you think are the correct choices. I might not like how you style your hair - that doesn’t mean you don’t still deserve that promotion. I might think a friend should take ibuprofen to alleviate a headache - that doesn’t mean she is less worthy if she chooses not to.
We are all doing work right now to be less discriminatory in our daily practices - let’s expand these efforts to fat phobia as well. Next time you catch yourself making a fat phobic statement in your head, call yourself out. I’ll be right there with you, doing the same.