"The Stakes of Skinnybashing: Thin Privilege in Body Image Advocacy" - by Miss Mary Max
“Skinnybashing” claims are fundamentally a display of thin privilege. …And every time that we construct fat-hatred aspurely sexist – ignoring the extent to which it isspecifically fatphobic— we facilitate that system of oppression.
I’ll get back to why I believe this and why I think it’s important for body image activism to own up to this fact in a moment. …But first I want to discuss what I do not mean. I do not mean that it isn’t incredibly painful to be told you’re too skinny. I do not mean that it’s okay to attack a friend for being a “stick” or to make assumptions about how someone eats (or should eat) based on her/ his/ zir appearance. I do not mean that skinny people really are less “real” than the rest of us, or that “criticising the cultural pressure to be thin is [...] the same thing as body-shaming individual thin women.” In threads where skinnybashing is brought up, it is done so — almost universally — in the context of painful personal experiences, — experiences in which individuals were made to feel like their bodies were less worthy, less healthy, less beautiful, or less sexy because they were thin There’s nothing acceptable about that. However… Presuming that an individual experience of prejudice is “the same as” systemic discrimination is also unacceptable — because it disrupts the movements intended to address that system.
Think about in terms of a few other -isms: People with White privilege, for instance, routinely call out people of color (POC) for expressing prejudice against Whites, claiming that anti-White “racism” and racism against POC are equally damaging. But as Tim Wise recently discussed in relation to the Sherrod controversy, “racial bias on the part of black folks, even the most vicious and unhinged bigotry on their part, is pretty impotent” in a systemic sense. And that prejudice – toward White people — is far more likely to be called out and given attention than individual or systemic racism toward POC, despite the fact that it occurs more rarely. Because privileged groups have power - including the power to control the media – cases of individual racism directed at Whites — (even cases like Sherrod’s that turn out to be largely fabricated) — consistently receive attention, “while the institutionalized mistreatment of people of color goes ignored.” Keep in mind that Wise does not suggest that the exchanges in which a White person is discriminated against or bullied, on the basis of their race, hurt that individual any less than a Black or Brown person is hurt when they experience something similar. However, he makes an important distinction between the pain of an individual experience and the social context in which it occurs. Prejudice hurts, regardless. But we cannot ignore that it occurs significantly more often and with significantly more backing from social institutions, when it’s directed at POC.
We see the same arguments in response to every social justice movement. When feminists attack sexism, we hear about the oppression of men. When advocates attack heterosexism, there are sudden declarations of “straight pride.“ Particularly in American society – where “equality” is one of our favorite buzz-words – the notion that my experience of prejudice is not the same as your experience does not sit well. Why should my pain matter less just because I’m not in the so-called oppressed group? When you prick me, I still bleed.
The truth is, the pain skinnybashing causes individual people with thin privilege does not hurt less (or matter less) than the pain caused by fatphobia. But it does occur in a different context, and it has not been institutionalized to the extent that fat oppression has. And no matter how genuinely pained thin people are — and no matter how much we should be doing about that — skinnybashing claims re-direct discussions of fat oppression into terms of “body diversity,” erasing the power dynamics between body types and the continued prevelance of fat oppression. In other words, while body diversity is a laudable goal, to demand that fat-acceptance activists redirect toward “diversity” requires that they quit fighting fat oppression and embrace the false notion that thin and fat bodies are — on asocietal level — policed equally. It’s the more pallatable alternative, which we use to opt out of the challenging admission that our pain and our privilege exist simultaneously.
Read the whole thing here.
