post about fatphobia: fat people are systematically treated like shit and this extends deep into many aspects of life including but not limited to the medical field, school, fashion, etc.

the comments: well MaYbE if You CaReD AboUt BeinG FuckAbLe AnD HaTeD YouRseLF, you'd STARVE and bOdY BUILD!! fAT pEOPlE aREN't oPPRESSED!! You'Re OppRessIng ME by Enjoying Being Fat aNd Healthy. [insert rant about obesity here that is 90% lies] [insert follow up rant about being oppressed for being skinny]

"wuh buh skinny shaming!" "skinny people are medically neglected too!" like... y'all are ignoring the fact that *a majority* of medical neglect and things of that nature towards skinny people is in majority because of fatphobia, [the rest due to other factors such as misogyny, racism, transphobia and queerphobia, etc.. making them not take things like ED and ailments causing you to lose weight/be underweight as serious] Like from first hand experience, a lot of people & doctors would literally rather folks be sick and malnourished then be fat. They'd literally rather people's bodies fall apart due to lack of nutrients or be so underweight they can't get out of bed, than have noticeable fat on their bodies.

but yeah no let's just overtake serious discussions about fatphobia and/or posts uplifting and celebrating fat people and make it about skinny people //sarcasm

Body count.

Hidden but insidious little piece of fatphobia:

you cannot find a single fucking page on INCREASING your appetite. On coping, struggling with a LOW appetite. Having a lowered appetite. On managing your health when your appetite is low. On how to get yourself to eat and NOURISH MORE. more efficiently, more FREQUENTLY.

By which I don't mean "how to gain weight" but by which I mean how to MAINTAIN A WEIGHT that's healthy for you. or more specifically, how to nourish SUSTAINABLY. over the LONG-term. How make sure you nourish and KEEP nourishing CONSISTENTLY. How to maintain your health in spite of an appetite that is too low.

Hell. even just what it means for your appetite to be low, how to TELL if your appetite is LOWER than is HEALTHY for you. the consequences and problems people face when they have a low appetite. the RISKS and DANGERS of a low appetite.

Because every fucking search result is

how to gain weight (muscle)

how to eat more foods that don't make you gain weight (fat) as fast as other foods

Tragedy Strikes: the Misfortune of Fat & How to Protect Your Precious Soul from Falling Victim to This Cruel Fate😢

how to lose weight (fat) (new fad diet for starvation and you will have a net loss of 0 lbs or less by the time 5 years elapses)

how not to lose weight (muscle)

how to eat less how to fucking starve how to deprive yourself the little things and be miserable and fucking die

if I eat too fast I'll feel nauseous. As a result, I graze over longer stretches throughout the day (er I did, before meds changes slaughtered my appetite).

People were always fucking like "ah! I hear that's better for you anyway😊"

by which they fucking mean "To my understanding, that eating pattern facilitates weight loss a bit more than normal patterns do, therefore it is superior because weight and supremacy are inverse correlates😊"

Nowadays I don't eat that way because my appetite is really fucking low. Today I managed a bowl of oyster crackers, an applesauce, some carrots, a piece of cornbread, a few pepperonis, and a scoop of cookie bake.

Plus x2 cans of Mountain Dew (my usual daily caffeine intake is maybe 1 glass of Coke), because I have to pass this final semester at the expense of my body.

Fuck I did not even realize how jack shit I ate today until I listed that out. With that combination it's really not a wonder that my whole digestive tract has been fucked for like 3 weeks straight now. On top of that I'm not getting ample nourishment, neither in nutrient nor caloric terms.

Low appetite is a problem.

and nobody cares. Nobody cares! Nobody fucking cares. You know why? Because this problem results in weight loss. See high appetite on the other hand, that causes weight gain, so you understand all energies must be allocated toward solving that problem🙂.

Noooo low appetite is a gift! A blessing!!! A privilege!!!!! God I wish that were me!!!!!!!!

How to lower your appetite!! 3 Vitamins that will lower your appetite!! Lower your appetite with these 15 yummy recipes!

6 easy ways to shame yourself for having wants and needs! How to stave off hunger and ignore your body's signaling of needs! How to replace the sound of your body calling you to action with blaring fad diet commercials. How to convert your body's begging for its life into an incessant and intrusive need to self-sabotage instead.

How to dissociate from your body and fixate upon doing the opposite of what it needs to stay alive. How to fret over whether or not you moved enough in the last 24 hours. How to take the energy out of every day to meticulously COUNT every single piece of material you dArE put in your body. How to count your body. How to develop one or more of the MOST DEADLY mental illnesses. How to wind up having the sole variety of mental illness that fucking kills you whether you wanted to die or not

How to tally the body count

i'm sure this true to some extent for all forms of oppression, but when i learned about and understood fatphobia specifically it was like opening pandora's box because that shit is so fucking blatant and everywhere that i end up justing standing there like

but more angry.

was gonna leave this in the tags but nah. vent under the read more:

maybe its because fatness is both strangely specific and yet not specialized to any one group. like its similiar to ableism except fattness doesn't actually affect your health directly, so fatphobes also pull on racist and gender-based-oppression tropes too

and its just so fucking??? accepttedd??? by everyone?????? NOBODY NOTICES THE GIANT RED BIGOTRY FLAGS SURROUNDING THE WAY WE TREAT FAT PEOPLE???????

i'm losing my mind. bigotry is so fucking insidious. and like i get it. society is complex and deep in history and customs. we are all raised in a fatphobic society and it takes effort to learn and push back on that.

but when we're already moving in a progress direction, i find it so frustrating when people don't/can't/won't take these ideas to their logical extreme. if trans people can cut their boobs and dicks off (/hyperbole), if disabled people can live wonderful lives with their disablity, surely, one would then assume there is nothing wrong with fat people existing. but its not that simple and a lot of people haven't even accepted any of these tenets.

i want to send love to all of the fat people who've had to put up with this bs. as someone who wants to be fat but is struggling due to health issues, i HATE that i have to JUSTIFY wanting a fat body.

like its not just a kind of body one can have or get. like its not the default / desired body type for general survival on an evolutionary scale. like its not a body that belongs to a PERSON.

its just a Body guys can we maybe calm the fuck down here???

Seeing like, young transmasc peeps talk about hrt and then getting upset they get masc characteristics other than height and voice deep is uhh genuinely concerning and doesn't make me feel good.

Like when I did T right off the bat I knew I'd end up with lots of body hair and a bit of pudge BC I take after my dad a lot genetically, but I still had a hard time adjusting BC people were giving me crap for getting body hair like??? Which didn't help when adjusting at all. I can say though that I am much happier with myself now than when I was not on T (except for my back hair lol).

I'd have to agree, and it's a large part of why I made the tenderizing post a few months ago. I have to say, for a generation that loves to prove how much they're on their phone and have access to information, they have no media/critical thinking skills or even think to research on their own. Not to "back in my days", but back literally the last 10 years, youtube/forums/articles/blogs were HUGE for knowing about HRT and trans stuff. Nowadays, people only want bite sized information transmitted to them through instagram infographics or tiktok videos.

And I have to say that I've only seen white people act so ignorant toward transitioning and HRT. I have not seen BIPOC trans people who are just so ignorant to their own genetics or about HRT in general. There's also just a huge problem within the community to uphold and love white standards of beauty, on top of the fatphobia, ableism, anti-blackness, racism, etc and etc. The hatred of body hair, of smells, of bodies in general is a Western concept; most cultures outside the US are like yea we all have bodies and it's pretty much accepted that our bodies are weird and fun. Does that mean social purity doesn't exist outside the US? No, but there really is something insidious about the way the colonial mindset in regards to bodies being othered...especially when your body is ALREADY othered...like why would u internalize that onto yourself and others...i dont fucking know its like insanely exhausting at this point

the best we can do is just keep campaigning for media literacy/critical thought, share accessible information, and share as much knowledge as possible, because there is already a LOT out there

Trauma Posting

I've always said that ADHD is ruining my life, when comparing my mental illnesses. Autism makes me strange to the ordinary observer (and affects my day to day functioning in noticeable ways), Depression makes my room messy (executive dysfunction is a right bastard), but ADHD is what's ruining my life.

And it is, kinda. Really what's making things difficult is the high cost of living, the lack of social support, and the way that I cannot afford to live on my own while working full time. Not to mention that my silly little brain is not suited to 40 hour work weeks, and all the jobs that I might be able to stand are gatekept to hell and back.

I'm back with my parents, and they're a little better than they were the first time I moved out, but not by much. They're both still highly traumatized people, both with poor emotional regulation skills (despite teaching me and my siblings those same fucking skills). It's subtle and insidious, and I'm so fucking stressed all the time. Cause it's not like they're yelling all the time, or spewing hateful rhetoric at all hours. Most of the time, they're chill Gen X parents with a fun sense of humor and a strong Christian faith. If you aren't careful (and oh how much it hurts to be careful), the bigotry will sneak up on you. The big emotions will startle you, the fatphobia and the snide comments and everything else. If you relax into who they usually are, you'll get knocked on your ass when their damaged edges show.

I can't relax here. I can't fully be myself here. I can't talk about my partners, or my beliefs. I can't even correctly refer to my sibling because they aren't out to our parents. The safest options are to stay in my room or to stay out of the house.

Which brings me to the ADHD ruining my life thing. I guess it feels so trivial after processing all of that, but I've been spending a LOT of money on things which don't feel all that important. (granted, spending money on anything feels the same kind of awful, so it's hard to differentiate). The 100$ I've spent on groceries in the last week was important and I'm glad I spent it. the 150$ I spent on two skirts?? Not so much right now.

Especially because my car is in the shop with transmission issues. If things don't go well, I might need to get a new one and I want to have enough money to spare that I won't need to take out a loan again. (I don't have a steady stream of income, I can't afford it right now)

I'm stuck I'm stuck I'm stuck I'm stuck...

(I'm not stuck forever, I know i'm not. I just need a little more help than usual, that's all.)

Wow, actually, it’s not cool for other fat people to put blame on those who are sick with eating disorders for having those disorders. “Having a fear of being fat that makes you self-harm is fatphobia and you need to shut up.” (Literally saw something worded like that.) Tell me you don’t have empathy or understand eating disorders without telling me you don’t have empathy or understand eating disorders.

People with anorexia and other eating disorders suffer. And guess what? You can be sick at any size. I was a skinny person because of my eating disorders, and now I’m a fat person who still has those eating disorders. To think that other fat people think others like them can’t be sick, or that we can help being sick is absolutely horrendous.

For the past 24 hours I’ve been seeing horrible comments about eating disorders. So, some fucking reminders for you all:

There are multiple kinds of eating disorders and someone can have one or more

You only know as much about someone as they share with you

There is no specific “look” for someone with an eating disorder. You can be sick at any size.

Everyone’s body type is different, and even if we all ate exactly the same and moved our bodies exactly the same, we’d still look different.

Diet culture is insidious and the cause of many eating disorders.

Oftentimes, people with eating disorders aren’t fatphobic and are just going through a lot of suffering. Does that mean they can’t accidentally say harmful things to the wrong audience? No, they definitely can, and often it’s just another symptom of the illness that they need to work on.

Eating disorder thoughts themselves are insidious and recovery is very hard.

People with eating disorders are not self-centered and shallow.

Fatphobia and eating disorder thoughts are two different conversations, and mixing the two and getting mad at people who “self-harm because they’re afraid of fatness and fat people” is not it, fam.

People need compassion to heal.

Seeing other fat people be cruel to those with eating disorders is hurtful. Don’t be cruel to anyone. It’s not worth your time or theirs. And maybe, just maybe, do some god damn research before saying something and being an asshole. And if you actually just want to be an asshole, please recognize that that’s a toxic behavior and see what you can do about fixing it. We need kindness, not cruelty.

i would really love to know what you have to say re: feeling afraid of speaking to men :)

ok like i said this is a really nuanced topic so i'm gonna do my best to be kinda coherent here - bear with me :)

the first thought i have - men aren't from mars and women aren't from venus. i think it's a deeply patriarchal idea that men are just sex monsters who are incapable of platonically talking to a woman without rating her attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 and choosing how to act towards her accordingly. like - the patriarchy is real, fatphobia is real; i don't want to invalidate your feelings bc your fear IS based on reality to some degree. but like. men are literally just people. if we understand that women are more complicated and nuanced than the stereotypes and prescribed roles that the patriarchy forces upon them, i think it's also essential to recognize that men are ALSO more complicated and nuanced than their little boxes. some men are fucking scumbags who reinforce gender roles and stereotypes, but like - so are some women! patriarchy is SO much more insidious and complex than just "all men objectify all women at all times forever" - which sucks on like a systemic level, but it's good because it means that men are capable of being better than the worst caricatures that our anxieties have drawn of them.

i think you already understand this, at least on some level, because you're reaching out to men and asking for help with this problem rather than diving into the depths of radical feminism, which means you have to do the difficult work of unlearning an instinctual fear and internalizing these ideas. i'm going to echo a little bit of what romcommunist said here and say that talking this out with a professional might be helpful, but if you don't have access to professional help for whatever reason, just talkin about it can help! i also agree w/ what he said about starting out with socializing in group settings. socializing in general - with all sorts of people of all sorts of genders - is a really great way to teach yourself deep down that other people are just as afraid of you as you are of them. if you can't get out and meet ppl IRL right now, meeting ppl online is a good place to start too (and you're here on tumblr so i know you can do it :) )

anyway yeah! that's kind of a jumping off point - i don't know a whole lot about you and your specific situation other than what u said in that ask so i don't know if i'm on the right track or if i'm going in the totally wrong direction, but i hope this helps a little!

reading update

friends, I have no time for bullshit. this is gonna be a long one, I have a tremendous TBR pile waiting for me, and we need to just jump right in. remember how last month I said I was going to get back into comics in a big way? I've made good on my threat.

without further ado, here's what I've been reading:

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (Sabrina Strings, 2019) - maybe one of my favorite nonfiction books I've read so far this year. shockingly comprehensive despite the sheer breadth of time it tackles; it's genuinely a bit dizzying to see antiblackness and fatphobia traced so succinctly across centuries and straight into the 21st century. prepare to spit nails learning about all the ways that the English have invented the most heinous bullshit you've ever heard to justify why they're just naturally biologically better than Black people, Asians, Natives, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Jews, and the Irish. tremendous breakdown of race-making and how deeply, truly insidious so many ideas about bodies are.

Dead Collections (Isaac Fellman, 2022) - a quirky little oddball of a novel about a trans vampire working in an archive and a recently widowed fanfic writer who have a totally typical meet cute - obviously the best way to get back out there is to hook up with the archivist handling your dead wife's screenplays and letters, right? Dead Collections follows Our Protagonist, the aforementioned vampire Sol, as he struggles with pretty much everything; if you're a fan of the Guy Having An Elaborate Internal Monologue While Having A Pretty Bad Time genre, this one may be for you. I was a little underwhelmed by Dead Collections, but it's got a sharp and interesting take on vampires + a queer sexy little romance that's worth the while.

Siren Queen (Nghi Vo, 2022) - listen: I am a Nghi Vo stan first and a person second. she can do no wrong. Siren Queen was, to my understanding, actually the first novel Vo wrote even though it's hardly the first book she's published, and while I think it shows a bit of first novel overambition, Siren Queen is still dazzling in its atmosphere and creepy factor. Vo brilliantly blends fey mythos with the early days of Hollywood - changelings roam the movie lots, actors' true names are bartered and sold, and studio heads are inhuman monsters who treat their stars like playthings. one of my favorite details was an older actor being described as having the color actually bleached out of them, turning them literally black and white, from back in the day when cameras were hungrier. spooky! and a brilliant concept, which Vo plays with in all kinds of thrilling ways as her protagonist, Chinese-American lesbian Luli, fights to make a name for herself without having to compromise any part of who she is.

Real Hero Shit (Kendra Wells, 2022) - a real fun D&D-esque comic about a ditzy and horny tiefling prince running off with a party of hardened adventurers. absolutely worth the twelve bucks I spent to scoop it up at Pride! my only complaint is that we got to see some lovingly drawn tits but absolutely zero purple cock and/or balls, which just feels wildly unfair. it's about equality, Kendra.

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, 1915, trans. William Aaltonen) - hey gang, at risk of sounding like a dumbass, I did not know what actually happens in The Metamorphosis. my knowledge began and ended with Gregor Samsa waking up as a bug and going "ah heck how am I gonna get to work?" and I was like cool commentary on capitalism bro, I get it. but did I? because I had no idea that Gregor then proceeds to spend the rest of his life scuttling pathetically around his room while his family feeds him garbage and ignores him. I assumed he would put on a bug tie and go to work or something and the commentary would be about the absurdism of being expected to sit at your desk doing paperwork despite being a fucking giant insect. but instead it's about, like, taking on a form that's alien and inconvenient to your family and becoming an isolated and reviled burden through absolutely no fault of your own because something about your body has become disruptive to the familial peace. and then he just fucking DIES because he gives up on life and the family's RELIEVED and get on with their business thinking about how great it is that they can move now and how lucky they are to still have a daughter with a beautiful normal body. frankly really chilling stuff, Franz.

Batman and Robin Eternal, Vol. 1 (James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder) - first off in the name of proper credit, I'm extremely aware that Tynion and Snyder are NOT the only people who worked on this by a country mile. unfortunately, there are so many issues jammed into this trade paperback that I'd be here all day if I were to list every individual writer and artist; for my sanity, I'm defaulting credit to the names listed on the front cover even though I know that's technically wrong. anyway, having said that: I remember liking Batman and Robin Eternal pretty well when I started it a few years ago, but sweet lord it has not held up for me very well at all. the story is fine, it's your standard global espionage Bat-shenanigans and every sidekick from Dick to Duke puts in at least a cameo, but god. christ. it's just... it's so New 52. according to my own math, the Batfamily timeline proposed by this book seems to suggest that Bruce has inducted a new Robin every 18 months for YEARS, and Dick somehow can't be any older than 24 at most. it's messy out here, kids. on the plus side: if you like Harper Row and you're gonna get a lot of Harper Row, and she and Cass are definitely dating.

100 Boyfriends (Brontez Purnell) - god, WHAT a collection of stories. Purnell has put together a roller coaster of messy gay experiences - drugs, sex work, infidelity, sex addiction, cruising, etc - and tied them up in poignancy and humor. there's a man having sex with his co-worker's husband, an actor who's washed up after his days starring in a campy gay sitcom, a musician touring Europe in a whirlwind of hookups and drugs and cancelled plans. each story is whip sharp and crazy fast, hardly ever lingering more than a few pages, but they leave unforgettable impressions.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman, 1988) - so my mom is moving and consequently shipping me boxes full of my shit that she doesn't want to be responsible for anymore, including all the Sandman trade paperbacks that I almost bankrupted myself buying the first summer that I had a job. for me The Sandman very much falls under "things that everyone says are good and are, frustratingly, actually good" - and yes, that extends to Preludes & Nocturnes even though we all know it's the weakest part of the series! I know it's absolutely going to get better from here once Neilman starts abandoning the larger DC universe doing his own thing, and I'm looking forward to that, but for now it is kind of charming to watch him bend over backwards to get characters Martian Manhunter and the Scarecrow involved.

The Vegetarian (Han Kang, 2016, trans. Deborah Smith) - I checked this book out at the same time as The Metamorphosis because 1.) it was also short and 2.) the jacket described it as "Kafka-esque," and I can be persuaded to do almost anything by a sufficiently amount of serendipity. it's certainly also EXTREMELY UNSETTLING! the tl;dr is that a Korean woman decides to give up eating meat after having some sort of fucked up dream, only for her husband and family to lose their fucking minds. to her husband she's an embarrassment; to her brother-in-law, an object of sexual obsession; to her sister, an inconvenient obligation. I can definitely see thematic parallels to the Metamorphosis in terms of that looming question of whether your family will still love and care for you if you become someone they no longer recognize, but there's a major difference in the fact that all the narration comes from other perspectives. we have no idea what's happening in the titular vegetarian's head as she seems to grow more and more distant and passive, nor what she feels about the ways she's being (mis)treated. great book, hurt my head.

Batman: Year One (Frank Miller and David Mazzicchello, 1986) - straight up? excellent. delicious. NO notes. Gotham (the tv show) desperately wants what Year One has but is too cowardly to actually let Gordon run Flass off the road, beat him senseless, and leave him handcuffed butt naked in the woods in the middle of winter. grow up!!

Batman and Robin Eternal Volume 2 (James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder, 2016) - pretty much the same as Volume 1 but dumber and more chaotic; a story about the Batkids teaming up to take down a human trafficking ring that even Batman couldn't bust turns into just. a whole convoluted take over the world scheme that we can't call the Justice League for help with, For Some Reason. and yet. and yet. I am not immune to the scene in which Damian chews out his brothers for thinking they're failures for not being Batman clones and reminds them all that Bruce not only knows they aren't like him, but it proud of and grateful for it. or the reveal that Bruce has spent years trying to do right by Harper to give her as much control as possible over her own life. or the ending when he takes Cassandra on after getting his memory back (Bruce was an amnesiac for this entire story, I don't know why or care. comics are like that). I have feelings about daddy!Bats your honor.

Batman: King Tut's Tomb (Nunzio DeFillippis, Christina Weir, José Luis García-López, and Kevin Nowlan, 2009) - gamers, I'm not gonna lie: this is probably one of my favorite things I'm going to read this year. King Tut's Tomb collects issues #26-28 of Batman Confidential and employs possibly my favorite kind of Batman storyline: there's some weird-ass murders happening in Gotham again, and now Batman has to do something about it. in this case he teams up with the Riddler, because the insane white man doing brownface and calling himself King Tut while he kills people is also spewing riddles during his homicides, which is thematically a bit confusing and also pisses the Riddler right off. after Batman declines his first offer to help Eddie shimmies himself right out of Arkham anyway and proceeds to spend a full day cheerfully calling Bruce "partner," being rude to cops (based), and being right about pretty much everything. I really enjoy the way DeFillippis and Weir write the Riddler, employing sort of a "used car salesman" energy that really straddles the line between charming and insufferable, and Bruce makes a phenomenal straight man for him to play off. I would have read another 20 issues of this happily, but I respect a story that doesn't overstay its welcome.

It's really insidious that when people talk about weight, they cannot help themselves from describing weight loss as healthy. Even in discussions about unlearning fatphobia, the message always circles back around like "Don't lose weight for BEAUTY-- Do it for your HEALTH!" And there's a LOT of bile worth unpacking there, but first and foremost:

Weight loss and thinness CAN BE healthy. They ARE NOT INHERENTLY healthy.

For myself, at this point in my life, I can either be healthy or thin. Period. This is not debatable; it's a fact. That may change, or it may not, depending on many many factors that are nobody else's business, but the assumption that someone losing weight is inherently a sign of improved health is absolutely dangerous and false.

Studies have shown that fatness IS NOT unhealthy the way we've been warned, nor is thinness healthy in the way we've been promised. Not INHERENTLY.

Thinness is healthy for some people. Fatness is healthy for others. One of these things is accepted, while the other...? Even conversations centered on this exact topic dance around it, trying to bargain it away. "Sure, We shouldn't hate people for being fat, Even if it IS unhealthy. People shouldn't lose weight to please other people-- They should lose weight to improve their HEALTH!"

I was thinnest during the LEAST healthy years of my life. This is not a coincidence.

My grandfather lost a LOT of weight before anybody realized it was a symptom of cancer. He wasn't diagnosed until it was way too late. It wasn't JUST a side effect of his doctor's fatphobia either; his own internalized fatphobia likely had a hand in him underreporting his symptoms. He's been gone for a long time now, and that didn't have to be true.

The belief that weight loss is inherently healthy is dangerous and false.

I'm just SO tired of trying to have this conversation, and having even the most well meaning people let the point SAIL right over their heads.

Reevaluate why you feel the way you do about fatness right fucking now. Doubly so if the subject makes you uncomfortable.

is is possible to be fatphobic while being fat? i fucking hate and repulse myself and have awful thoughts about other fat ppl i hate being like this

yeah it's just internalized fatphobia at that point. i mean we're all bombarded with fatphobic ideals and diet culture from the moment we're born, regardless of how much we weigh, so it makes sense that no one is left unaffected. in fact your relationship with your own body could possibly be making your need to criticize other large ppl worse, kind of like a form of projection. i hope you're able to get some therapy so you can start talk through it with someone, and really break down why you think your body is so wrong that you're repulsed by it. who taught you that, what makes it true, who benefits from you feeling that way etc. what affirmations and coping mechanisms you can employ on a daily basis to start reframing the way you deal with this subject in your mind. ultimately, a big part of undoing the pain you're dealing with is by being heard and supported. if that's not an option, there are ways to help yourself understand why you think and feel this way, and what you can do about it. recognizing these biases and negative thought processes is the first step to rewiring how your brain sees fat people and bigger bodies, and yourself. especially if you're able to catch yourself thinking something bad (about you or about someone else) in the moment it's happening - then you can practice actively redirecting your mind. also just as a side note, i think seeking out media with positive fat representation (a very hard task task i know) could really make a difference, too. art, books, movies, TV shows - anything that normalizes bigger people just existing without apology. be aware of the type of media you consume often, and about what it's teaching you. i'm going to leave some books/articles i recommend below, you may be able to find their PDF's online if you can't pay for them. i think it's a positive sign that you're able to admit that you hate the way you think and that it's not conducive with the type of person you want to be. and i know this all feels like a lot of work but unfortunately it is, and it's life-long. it took years to get to a point of such deep self hatred, and it may take years to fully come out of it but life will feel a lot lighter if you try. not always, but often. for you, and the fat ppl around you.

books/reading recs:

you have the right to remain fat by virgie tovar

body neutrality: the liberating practice of accepting your body exactly as it is by ayla freitas ghibaudy

body talk by katie sturino

the body is not an apology by sonya renee taylor

fearing the black body: the racial origins of fatphobia by sabrina strings

the harmful and insidious effects of fatphobia: an article

i want to clarify that i don't necessarily agree with every statement, or every approach taken in these suggestions, and it's good to keep an objective and open mind while consuming them. but i think in this context, learning the basis of their overarching core messages and trying to really embrace them will help you out a ton. x

I’m actually really pissed off now and entirely against my better judgement I’m going to rant about it here because Discord is down and if I don’t get my rage out somewhere then it’s just going to build so here we fucking go

do not reblog this, I’m not in the mood for when it is inevitably passed on to someone who gets mad at me for it

I’m gonna be talking about weight loss/dieting/calorie counting/etc below the cut, if it triggers you, don’t read it, if you think any form of caloric restriction is disordered eating and any form of dieting is dangerous or wrong then DON’T READ IT

So there I am, minding my own business on Twitter reading a tweet from a YouTuber I follow revealing that she and every other influencer out there have recently received an email offering them money to shill NFTs, which is why you’ve probably seen some YouTuber/streamer recently just bring up NFTs out of nowhere

and then I see Noom is trending and against all my instincts I click and I guess Buzzfeed News did an article about how Noom is a diet program (no fucking shit)* and everyone and their mother is losing it on Twitter about how Noom pushes you to hate yourself and develop an eating disorder and how dare you ever want to lose weight, examine your internalized fatphobia and on and on and oh my fucking head

[*’But Laura they say in their ads that they’re not a diet and it’s misleading!’ Look I’m not gonna defend their advertising which I don’t think that highly of but what they clearly mean when they say that, even if they didn’t articulate it well, is that it’s not based on some gimmick like juice cleanses or no carbs or protein only, they mean that they don’t restrict any specific foods, you can eat whatever the fuck you want even if it’s nutritional sawdust so long as it fits in a caloric deficit]

I’ll put all my cards on the table here.  I used Noom.  I lost forty pounds on Noom.  I’ve kept off forty pounds even after I stopped using Noom, and I only stopped not because it wasn’t working but because I learned how to do it on my own and so why pay for something when you can do it for free.  I very specifically sought out and chose Noom because it was basically Weight Watchers but with colors instead of numbers, and I suck at math.

Why did I want WW?  Because it’s the commercial diet program that has the best results for long term success.  That’s because it doesn’t restrict any foods, it just teaches you what portions look like and recommends foods that have a higher water content, so you feel full without eating as much.  And Noom did the same thing and didn’t require me to potentially attend meetings while a plague was happening or do math, so I went with Noom.

There are people all over Twitter claiming things like “I was a breastfeeding mother and it told me to eat 1200 calories a day!  I’m a 6′8″ man and it told me to eat 1200 calories a day!  It’s marketing an eating disorder!  It tells you what foods you can and can’t eat!  It makes you weigh yourself every day!”

okay so

If you get the app and you get some completely absurd number for your recommended daily calorie intake, then you have done something wrong.  You have either mis-entered information or you have set it for the most unrealistic goals possible, probably so you could post on social media about how awful and insidious it is.  I say this as a 5′5″ woman who told the app I wanted to lose fifty pounds as fast as I possibly could and the lowest number it ever gave me was 1600 per day.  Which isn’t even a locked-in number: you record your physical activity, and any activity you do increases the calorie allotment.

And just so you know, daily weigh-ins on Noom are not a permanent fixture, it switches to weekly after you’ve done it for a while, it’s just there to get you used to doing it so you don’t forget the whole thing and then give up like three days in

Yes, counting calories CAN be disordered eating.  Being vegan can be disordered eating.  Exercise can be part of disordered eating.  Hell, intuitive eating can be part of disordered eating.  It’s entirely possible for someone to excuse a binge as what they intuitively wanted at the time.  It’s happened before.

Can programs like Noom and WW be used by someone to unhealthily restrict themselves?  Yes.  But in those cases, the person likely either already had disordered eating habits or they would have formed disordered eating habits out of any diet or exercise plan they tried.  People don’t develop an eating disorder just because an app tells them “hey, grapes make you feel fuller than raisins” (I read this roughly eleven thousand times on Noom). We develop eating disorders because of a huge complex number of influences and stressors both internal and external.  Does the diet industry play into that?  Absolutely.  One hundred percent.  Can we blame the existence of eating disorders on diet programs?  Absolutely not.

(also why do people bring up that diet programs just want to make money off you as if that’s some insidious thing specific only to them and not any other capitalist venture?  do you think nabisco and taco bell actually care about you?  you’re a wallet to corporations no matter what you’re buying from them)

Look, I dieted because I wanted to.  I continue to count calories and eat at a deficit because I’m not at my goal yet, and I want to get there.  I don’t think that just because a program worked for me, that it will work for everyone, or that just because I used it in a healthy way, everyone would.  But just because you don’t want to lose weight, or you can’t handle foods being ranked or calorie deficits without falling into disorder patterns, does not make it inherently bad for others to create and sell a program that uses those things.

If you are happy with your body, that is awesome.  I mean that truly.  I don’t think anyone should hate themselves for their weight or anything else about their appearance.  I think that people can make healthy choices and perform healthy actions no matter what their size.  But there’s a Very Online contingent of the body positivity movement that just seems to want to tear down everyone who doesn’t feel exactly as they do or doesn’t look exactly as they look, and they’re fine smearing everything as evil and/or ineffective in order to do that.

Like how many times have you heard that it’s impossible to lose weight because your body will enter starvation mode and hold onto any calorie you’ll give it and then you actually gain weight?  Yeah, starvation mode is a real thing.  It was experienced by people imprisoned in concentration camps.  But this is what those people ate in a day.  And their bodies didn’t enter starvation mode until all of their fat reserves had been depleted.  And they never gained weight; at best, they maintained weight.

But what about the study that proved ninety-five percent of diets fail?  Yeah, about that.  That was a single study conducted with just 100 people in 1959.  1959, when we did not have nutrition labels or serving sizes on food packages, when there was no easy way to know the caloric value of food unless you already happened to study nutrition.  The participants in the study were being treated at a nutrition clinic, and once they left the nutrition clinic, it’s not surprising that most of them regained weight.  Even one of the doctors conducting the study later said it wasn’t relevant in the modern world: “I've been sort of surprised that people keep citing it; I know we do better these days.”

Losing weight isn’t easy.  So much of our culture and social interactions are built around food, and so much of our food is calorie-dense without filling our stomachs.  It isn’t easy, but it is simple.  You eat at a caloric deficit and, barring some kind of medical complication, you lose weight.  Likewise, if you eat at a surplus, you gain weight.  Our world makes it much easier to gain weight than to lose it, but it’s not impossible and it shouldn’t be discouraged if someone isn’t doing it unhealthily.

Obesity is linked to a myriad of health conditions.  With most of those conditions, we can’t say that obesity causes them given that there’s no ethical way to test that, but we can definitively say that your chances of developing these conditions go way up if you’re obese.  Fat people have value.  They deserve the same respect and dignity as everyone else.  But obesity is not humanity’s natural state and it’s not unavoidable, and it’s not wrong or inherently unhealthy to want to change your body.

I’m just tired.

Fatphobia ist really insidious and shitty. I went to the work doctor (it's a thing here, haven't been in a long time because short time work, self employment and basically no work .. anyway) and it was a nurse and she made me weight myself (yikes) and I was off by +5 kg on my prediction (I do not own a scale) and she immediately commented on how I need to pay attention to my weight, before even asking any health questions. Then I answered that I do not smoke, I do not drink any alcohol and I do sports minimum 3 times per week (climbing, trail running, hiking, strength training, yoga, ok not a sport but you get the idea etc) which by the way is already 90% more than some of my skinnier friends (no offense) and still by the end she told me again to watch my weight!!

And when I told her I was worried because I got covid (catched it at work, the irony, get the plague or stay poor) and my recuperation time has been impacted and I still get fatigue flares 3 months after, she was so uninterested

And like I'm supposed to tell her about work things impacting my mental health at work, when the biggest one is that I'm not out as non-binary there and everyone keeps gendering me the wrong way, yeah sure Mrs straight fatphobic nurse I'm going to tell you about transgenderism, mdr

What utter bullshit, I'm fuming just recalling it. And yes I did tell her the bit about doing more sports than my skinnier friends and also about having always been fat, in what I hoped was a very unfriendly tone. Oh and she was definitely +size so yeah there's that - I mean if she's so intrapted in her own self hate, do not bring that bullshit onto me it's not working

Also I'm not trying to lose weight ever, I'm doing sport because I enjoy it and I want muscle gains to climb and run and hike and lift things without tweaking my back because I'm getting old

Anyway fuck fatphobia

cw disordered eating + fatphobia vent

fatphobia is literally one of the most evil forces on the planet I used 2 be chubby right like last year. I hit a depression in the summer that messed w/ my eating patterns. The September immediately following that my best friend took his life. I stopped eating not as protest but I think it was grief + grief’s influence on my sensory processes who knows anyway I went through months of horrible starvation and deprivation tht I am still trying to work thru every day... and the most insidious thing is I have felt the worst I have ever been in my life, the most unhealthy physically and mentally, and while a few people have expressed mild concerns about how quickly the weight drops it’s always immediately followed by a compliment. And it’s such a horrible experience because when I DID put on weight prior, when I went from being a skinny teen to a chubby adult (I say chubby to be as honest as possible bc there are fatter people who go thru much worse) I got immediately put down. Even tho when I put the weight on I was happy. 

Bc I was eating way more balanced meals. I was enjoying myself more. I was eating in public I was cooking I was just in general in a happier state of mind and body. But I was punished for it , not physically but socially and mentally. And to go from that to this , to feeling like I’m decaying in my body, my hair is brittle and falling out, my stomach hurts all of the time, I wake up in pain with nausea, I feel weak and shaky most of time - yday I got my period & I got a painkiller & I struggled to pop it from its foil - and that’s what gets me compliments. That’s what gets people who love me to tell me I look good. It’s just so fucked. Fatphobia doesn’t care about health. It cares about restriction, limitation, humiliation until you get back into line. It’s militant. I have nothing but the most searing of contempt and disgust for fatphobia in people and in culture, in diet fads and skinny teas and all the dead-eyed celebrities who parrot it and all of the doctors who refuse to save your life unless you’re skinny enough to have earned it. 

Nick and Trucy as a convo I had with my mom when I was super little;

Phoenix, upset after someone said something mean about chubby people: I am getting really fat.......

7-year-old Trucy: b-but that's not bad! Is it? You're perfect for hugs! It's like a big pillow! *pats his tummy and smiles*

WAAAAAGH... I like to think he's pretty comfy with his body but!! That's so sweet what the FUCK!!

⚠ fatphobia

Honestly though, even the most confident people can have bad days sometimes, and in my experience, internalized fatphobia can be really insidious. Someone might make a passing comment, and while Phoenix manages to brush it off at the time, it really gets to him later as he thinks about it more and more. It's a good thing he has other people to remind him he's perfectly capable and worthy of love just the way he is, and there's nothing wrong with his shape. (And that he's quite good-looking, to boot!)

I posted 26,490 times in 2021

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My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Genuinely where is this energy for Chris "I attend a homophobic church" Pratt? For Scarlet "whole ass Zionist" Johansson? For Chris "let's sign bombs that will kill brown people" Evans? For Ryan "got married on an actual factual Plantation" Reynolds? Anthony Mackie makes one (1) tone deaf statement and now he's the King of Homophobia. Meanwhile y'all can't even write his character with any nuance or without any racial tropes coming in to play in the gay ships, but you want him to gaybait for you? The fuck is he supposed to do? Play coy and lead you on so you can give Disney/Marvel more fucking money? Or do you think they'll actually make him gay so he can be their 46th "NEW LGBT CHARACTER!!!!!"?

4311 notes • Posted 2021-06-18 04:00:48 GMT

#4

I absolutely HATE how people are focusing more on the "tik tok is having a major ethical scandal" aspect of this whole bone selling company cuz that shouldn't be the focus at all. Like it's not just some "scandal" it's a major ethical issue that's emblematic of how white people view bodies of color- even after death- as things for them to profit off of. We are not afforded the same respect white people give even to animals (other animals, whatever) and now people are being rude and turning this into some "lol tik tok/twitter are always behind tumblr in major drama" thing and it's just not funny to me.

4975 notes • Posted 2021-08-15 20:27:17 GMT

#3

I think it's funny how white people (yes ALL of you) will whine about poc asking them to learn about racism from poc and not just through "fiction" and the excuse is that that's the easiest way to teach people lessons, but then those white people can't analyze ANY media or current events and find the racism in it. Like they will try to justify making all your villains dark skinned and then scream about why h*try p*tter is radical text (also missing Rowling's rampant *checks notes* racism, antisemitism, transphobia, transmisogyny, homophobia, fatphobia etc.). Like.....if fantasy racism is the only effective way to teach about racism, why can't y'all recognize racism better? Everyone and their mother wants to compare Trump to Voldemort and yet y'all can't recognize how the Capital Coup was a push in favor of white supremacist fascism? Are you reading the books or just reading names of characters so you can write a smut fic?

6354 notes • Posted 2021-01-14 04:51:09 GMT

#2

I think a lot of non-Americans forget that America has dropped bombs on and around communities of color in America either to outright kill us or to slowly kill us while terrorizing us. Like I know y'all get tired of learning American history cuz America is a global power but like if you looked into the insidious shit that the American government has done to it's own "citizens" of color to stop us from overthrowing it you'd realize WE aren't so different from you in terms of suffering under American terror. Just saying.

7228 notes • Posted 2021-05-05 17:46:04 GMT

#1

No but when JKR was being casually antisemitic on twitter and homophobic with her reveal that lycanthopy was an AIDS allegory, how was that not the creator of a bigoted media coming through in the media she produced? How do you separate the content from the creator when the creator defends her choice to include racist, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic content in her media? Like you hp fans are doing gymnastics to justify your love for a franchise that at its core has always been flawed and you just shrug that off. You just hand-wave it away and say "separate the art from the artist" but the art is flawed and the artist has defended those flaws. So where does the separation happen when the artist admits to purposely being cruel?

Not a single HP fan can answer this btw because you'll all circle back to "B-b-b-but the art can be sEpArAtEd". None of you have any argument that deals in real life material affects.

The facts are that the HP series is riddled with bigotry and JKR has fought tooth and nail to justify that bigotry. JKR is a Terf (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and has included transmisogyny and casual transphobia in the books since the first book. JKR has taken her fame (from continued public support of HP) and hatred of trans women and used it to get laws in the UK passed that endanger the lives of trans people, specifically trans women and tried to get laws passed in the US. JKR has also written a new violently transmisogynistic book.

No matter how much you try to separate a series filled with bigotry from the bigot that wrote it, you're going to fail. And you want to know why? Because art does not spawn from no where. Art is not made in a vacuum. Art is not some mystical power that comes to some people in the night. Art is a product of the people that create it and if the person who creates the art is a bigot that bigotry with always shine through. People create based on what they know and what they believe to be true.

7248 notes • Posted 2021-09-23 03:04:10 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

finally braced myself to watch the brittany murphy doc last night. just so sad. also howard stern is fucking evil and if anyone deserves to be “cancelled” it’s him. he had ashton kutcher on while they were dating and kept asking him “did you think you’d ever be dating the ugly girl from clueless?”, “she was so fat” — fatphobia aside, she was never even a big girl. reminds me of when he tried to get anna nicole smith to step on a scale live on air. absolute pig and i totally agree with kathy najimi, people like stern are complicit in brittany’s death. bullying, harassment, emotional abuse all led to her e*. early 2000’s media was absolutely insidious and would have shaped the last years of her life so much. it shaped me as a young girl in ways i’m still learning to heal and it obviously wasn’t even about me. i wish she lived to see the other side.

it makes me so sick that she literally lay dying in her house for days (maybe even weeks) with the two people who should have protected her the most, her husband and her mum. i don’t think her mum was purposefully complicit, but her husband was. such a cruel irony of a beautiful, joyful, selfless girl being lured into an emotionally abusive relationship with a self serving, greedy, conman. 😪💔