ABCE

Design by Kris Owen Fat people have a right to exist in our fat bodies.  We have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and those rights are inalienable – they are not size, health, or healthy habit dependent.  Those rights include not living under ceaseless institutional stigma, bullying and oppression, or being made combatants in a war  waged upon us by our government , which is also trying to recruit our friends, family, co-workers, companies and anyone else they can get to   engage in combat  against us for how we look. You cannot have a war on obesity without having a war against obese people.  You cannot have a war on childhood obesity without having a war on fat kids.    Wars have casualties .   So when you use words like “war” and “eradicate”, when you say that you want to eliminate obesity and suggest that fat people should do extremely dangerous things like  have our stomachs amputated ,  or eating 500 cal...

I got an e-mail from a blog reader who prefers to remain anonymous who said “My mom just told me that studies show that dust makes you fat. I’m freaking out and I’m too scared to Google – do you know anything about this? Is this really a thing?  WTF?” I did some Googling and found that the source is likely an article posted on a diet site that claims it can help people lose weight by showing them pictures of things they could eat instead of other things. The article (which I’m not linking to – if you want to give them traffic you can Google it,) was called “The Weird Way Your Dirty House Is Making You Fat.” After spending the first two -thirds of the article suggesting that this is based on research and evidence, they admit that the research team has, in fact, no idea if it’s true. Further, if it is true they don’t have any idea how much dust exposure might cause what amount of weight gain. The research team themselves say is it is only “a potential novel threat.”  This a...

My family had to switch insurance recently. That meant doing the thing that I hate the most ─ finding a new primary care provider. I dreaded it and stressed over it for months. Then I had my first appointment this week. I needed to get in quickly to get a particular vaccination, so I took the first available appointment with the first available doctor. He was not one I would have picked for myself, since he specialized in men's health and sports medicine. Ugh ─ my experience is that sports specialists are very biased about people of size. I uneasily anticipated a fight over weight loss, weighing regularly, and lectures about nutrition, dieting, etc. I went in primed for a fight. I am so happy to report I was totally wrong. Not that we were in total agreement about everything, but he listened very respectfully to my point of view and conceded some arguments. He took a very long time in my appointment, much longer than I expected, in order to get a very complete history, and he was ...

CrossFit Logan Martin in Pell City, Alabama has put up a sign that says “Tired of being fat and ugly? Just be ugly.” When people pointed out that being in the business of appearance-based shaming is not a great look for a gym (or, you know, anyone,) owner Scott White decided his best move was to tell the people who he targeted with his offensive ad how they should feel and react: “Come in and talk to me. We’re super nice. I get along with everybody. I love everyone. We’re a Christian-based gym. And so a message of love is what we preach here. You know you can’t take yourself too seriously. Especially when it comes to a fitness journey.” I’m not feeling the love there Scott (or the “super nice-ness”) and you’ve made it very clear how you feel about people who look like me, so the absolute last thing I’m going to do is walk into your gym to talk to people who put up this sign and then defended it. What I am feeling is that you think it’s perfectly ok to harm fat people. I’m feeling th...

As a Fat Studies academic, I’m delighted at the number of undergrad and grad students who are interested in studying Fat Studies. I’ve met them all over the world! Some want to take a course or two, some wish for a qualification in the discipline, and some would hope to acquire a terminal degree. Unfortunately, nowhere in the world can you earn a qualification in Fat Studies. Some FS courses exist, mainly in the US, but neoliberal Universities are culling disciplines such as Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, Indigenous Studies – not supporting new ones. That’s why it’s important we support each other in our quest to study – learn – build – the discipline of Fat Studies. We share texts, we host conferences, we cultivate FB groups and Tumblrs, we share our lived experiences and connect with one another as best we can. For my part, I act as an unofficial supervisor to many PhD students around the world; allowing them a space to talk about our epistemologies, and methodologies, and ontologie...

Picture of a adorable pug named Biscuit walking toward the camera saying “If I want the Food Police I’ll call Pie-1-1” Today a new blog reader asked me “I’ve heard you talk about “diet culture” but what do you mean when you say that, I mean, what are the downsides?” Well, unless you are one of the people profiting from diet culture, it’s pretty much nothing but downside. Still let’s look at some specifics: Conflates size and health, pathologizes some body sizes Diet culture sells the lie that weight and health are the same thing (despite the fact that it’s plainly observable that there are healthy and unhealthy people of all sizes – knowing, of course, that health isn’t an obligation, barometer of worthiness, or entirely into our control.)  Diet culture seeks to pathologize body sizes (with terms like “overweight,” and “obese”) because it creates a greater market for diet products that don’t work . Encourages following external rules about what, when, and how much to eat...

This popped up in three Facebook messages from readers at virtually the same time today, so I decided it was a sign to post about it. One reader did her research to make sure that a destination that she wants to check out at on vacation is accessible, but is worried about how to ask for it when the time comes. Another was uncomfortable at the doctor’s office because they don’t have many fat friendly chairs (don’t even get me started about fat people and chairs ,) and the ones they had were taken up by thin people. The third wanted to know when it’s appropriate to ask for accommodations (spoiler alert: you are obviously never obligated to ask for accommodations, but it’s appropriate to ask whenever you need them!) Asking for accommodations can bring up a lot of emotions – stress, embarrassment, shame, fear, anger, guilt.  I think that one massive problem is that we’ve been told that asking for accommodations is asking for some kind of favor or special treatment above and beyond what...