#thinsplaining

[whatbigotspost]

“Why should society extend fat people basic dignity and respect when instead you could just be not fat!!! This is my very original and superior suggestion!!”

[thisisthinprivilege]

I was reading the comments on a meme about how people will be like "no we can't adopt these policies from these capitalist nations because that's socialism" and saw this. Thin privilege is not being told your body is capable of ruining the economy.

[thisisthinprivilege]

i'm sorry this is kind of a disjointed post, but i'm really upset.

thin privilege is shane dawson forcing his skinny boyfriend to where a fatsuit so that he understands how horrible and depressing it was for shane to be fat. thin privilege is believing that fat is synonymous with self-hatred, and forcing someone to wear a fatsuit so they understand what it is to hate their body. because obviously fat bodies can only be hated. thin privilege is when you used to be fat and now you think it's fine to be fatphobic. thin privilege is when your own insecurities go beyond "i feel bad about my body" and into "being fat is gross and disgusting" and saying that's fine because you used to be fat. you're not fat anymore, and your comments make fat people feel like shit.

[thisisthinprivilege]

A question about body-shaming.

I’ve read through this blog quite a bit, and there’s still something I do not understand. The people here claim that shaming fat people is fatshaming and being afraid of being fat is fatphobia. But thinshaming and thinphobia (if fatshaming and fatphobia can be words, I’m sure the other two are as well) runs wild here. Is there something I’m missing? If you don’t want to answer this, that’s fine. I’ll just take it as there being no answer to my question.

And no, this is not a troll. Just a young 16 year old girl trying to go from 116 pounds back to 110.

Mod response:

Where do we treat thin people the way fat people are treated by society?

Also, we have answered your question over and over and over again. Please read further. Try searching the archives for thinshaming and thinphobia. Try actually looking.

-MG

[thisisthinprivilege]

Thin privilege is confidently standing in a small group of well educated people (most of whom consider themselves overweight or fat) and insisting that you are the only one who has done enough reading to be an authority on the subject of health (even though another person in the group is recently retired from a healthcare related career). Insisting that weight is an indicator of health (a good one no less); that “everyone ‘thinks’ they eat healthy, but if they really did, then they would lose weight; that losing weight is just as important as making sure to avoid things that put you at risk for cancer (yes! She did compare being fat to having cancer in front of a woman who just recently got the ‘all clear’ from her doctors). And on top of that (because this was at a women’s bible study), insisting that you can’t be effective in your Christian faith if you don’t care about your health because “your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit” (directly after we had a prayer for healing for over half the group with chronic conditions). I’ve never had a “concern trolling” argument outside of the internet before! The only good thing that came of it is that she agreed to read the Health at Every Size book. Concern

[thisisthinprivilege]

recipe comments

Tired of hearing about "moderation" and listening to people humble-brag (especially under some false guise of positivity) about their restraint in comments on the nytimes cooking section, this should be a place for people to post cooking advice, not shame people for their eating choices.

[thisisthinprivilege]

Can someone please explain to me this whole "if fat people accomplish it then it takes away from my accomplishment" mentality?! I'm a long-distance runner, and I look and train like a typical long-distance runner -- lean and long. I run 5-6 times a week, in upwards of 50+ miles a week. I've finished four marathons, nine half-marathons and more 5/10ks than I can count. For those of you who don't run, marathons are a lot of work: it took me a year of training for my first marathon, and 4-5 months of training for the subsequent ones. Marathon training requires a lot of running, eating, planning and forethought, and especially as you get to about a month out, it consumes your daily life. It's hard fucking work. At every single race I've done, there has always been fat participants -- and yeah, that means fat runners who run the entire race. In fact, my very first half -- for which I spent almost six months training -- I came in behind a woman who was easily 50lbs heavier than I, and I know how long and hard I worked to be that fast. I have never once thought to myself, "well, since a fat person beat me in the race, it completely takes away from MY accomplishment." I have never once thought that anyone else's accomplishments -- fat or not -- in any way diminish mine. I'm not out there racing for anyone other than myself, so why would anyone else even matter?! Today, there was a discussion about an overweight woman running a marathon. When the commenters then realized that they couldn't dismiss the woman's accomplishments as being "faked," and that she actually completed the entire marathon, the comments turned to, "it takes away the achievement" from thin people who completed the race. Others commented that "marathons aren't a big deal" and "it's only 26.2 miles." It's a cacophony of bitter basic bitches whining that it's so unfair fat people run races. WHY THOUGH? Is it because you've been touting marathons some kind of proof of the ultimate personal health, and now you have to accept that includes fat people, too? Is it because you're jealous you can't run 26.2 miles and a fat person is more fit than you are? Or is it because you hate fat people so much that you just can't STAND to see a fat person succeed at anything? Marathons ARE a big deal. Only .5% of Americans have ever actually run a marathon, and fewer still have actually completed the entire race. Very few runners have the endurance, strength and mental capacity to take on the entire 26.2 miles. And yet, this fat woman did it. She not only ran it, she finished it. How many of those bitter ass commenters can honestly say the same? I'd venture so far as to say most of them aren't even runners -- the running community, in my experience, has always been incredibly welcoming to newbies and "unconventional" runners. As a woman who had actually ran marathons, I am so proud of that woman, and any other woman, regardless of size or fitness level or anything else, for taking on the challenge and crushing it. Her accomplishment doesn't take anything away from mine, because her accomplishment isn't about me. It's about HER. She didn't run that marathon for you, for thin people, for anyone other than herself. Get over your fucking self. You complain constantly about how fat people make everything about them, and yet here you are, making a fat woman's accomplishment about YOU. Trust me, you are not that important that she or anyone else gives a shit. Not everything is about you, dumbass random stranger on the internet. Stop being a jelly nelly and accept the fact that a person can be fat and still run better than you. Thin privilege is running a marathon without being accused of having my accomplishment "take away" from another thin person's "achievements."

[thisisthinprivilege]

This may not be appropriate for the blog, and it also might be more appropriate for the ask box, but I wanna just share an experience. As a disclaimer, I am thin. I have been thin my entire life, with the possible exception of when I was a child. And when I was in around ninth to tenth grade, I finally hit over one hundred pounds on the scale. Yeah, I'm that kind of thin. But when I saw that, I freaked out. I knew I wasn't fat by any stretch of the imagination, but the idea that maybe I would become so was abhorrent to me, and my desire to be androgyne and pretty to myself. Society is so obsessed with thinness that even people like me are worried about being fat, when genetically I probably never will be. As with most -isms and bigoted phobias, fatphobia doesn't only hurt fat people, but anyone who is worried about not being accepted. And I guess that, if thin people don't think stuff like this is a problem, they could take the selfish route and know that it hurts them too, if only the slightest fraction of how much it hurts actual fat people. I can see my ten year old cousin going through this as well, and it breaks my heart. She actually is a little fatter than normal — her parents are kind of health nutty and her siblings are of "average" weight so it absolutely has nothing to with her diet — but I'm looking at her and seeing all the anxiety and low self esteem that I had, but she's getting it three years earlier when she's still in grade school because of how her body works. She's asked her mom about dieting before, and it's just, she's got so much self-esteem issues and it's awful, My family has relatively a thin body type in general, so I can't really talk about more extreme cases of fatphobia, and I will say that her family and friends have been incredibly supportive, but even just her story is kind of indicative of how fat people are given such the short end of the stick. This is probably something you've heard a lot before, and there's really not a lot of substance or reason for this submission beyond the fact that I like your blog and want to contribute in some way, but I wanted to share it with you. I don't know what I should tag this as except maybe thinsplaining, but I don't even know if I should tag it as that. I'm going to just in case, and I think you can edit submissions so if you even post this, you can add appropriate tags. Sorry for bothering.