Is Body Liberation An Excuse To Stay Fat?
Hi Musers, we’ll be talking about whether body liberation is an excuse to stay fat. Today, though, I want to address some of the miscommunication and misunderstandings around body liberation.
An Excuse To Stay Fat
No, it’s not an excuse to stay fat. Why? Because people don’t need an excuse! It is today’s society that tells us being fat is unacceptable, spearheaded by the diet and beauty industries. Their reach is so vast and their message so insidious that even doctors believe it. The truth is that there is a far wider range of healthy weights than BMI would have us believe.
Even if a person’s weight isn’t healthy, though, it is no one else’s business! I repeat, no one needs an excuse to stay fat.
What Body Liberation Is Actually About
The very essence of body liberation is that a person’s autonomy over their body is absolute. It’s their body, and they get the ultimate say over what happens to it.
This includes:
- Weight
- Gender
- Body Art
- Abortion
- Consent
Body liberation also protects a person’s right to exist without discrimination or harassment due to:
- Weight
- Race
- Gender
- The Way They Are Dressed
- Sexual history
It’s not enough to not be prejudiced in these areas. You need to be an ally to marginalised focus and active in fighting all forms of oppression.
It’s About More Than The Individual
All the internal work that fat individuals do to unlearn years of hatred and oppression is very important. To each of us, it is key to learning to love our bodies and dismantling the decades of self-loathing the diet and beauty industries taught us.
However, body liberation is about so, so much more than that. Body liberation works to dismantle the biases, hate, and discrimination society as a whole perpetrates against fat people. The very fact that someone would ask about an excuse to stay fat shows how fat people are viewed.
Medical Fatphobia
The internet is full of stories of fat people going to see doctors with problems completely unrelated to their weight. However, they are given unsolicited diet advice, and all problems are blamed on their weight. In some of these cases, the person has suffered years of pain, in others, their condition had deteriorated significantly by the time they were taken seriously, and in some truly horrifying cases, the person lost their lives due to a lack of medical care.
Lack Of Inclusive Sizing
This might sound minor, but the fact that many clothes shops are not size inclusive means these shops are discriminating against fat people. It marks them out as different and frankly unacceptable and unwanted. It’s not a nice feeling. Before you chime in and say lots of the retailers offer larger sizes online, I want you to think that through for a moment.
Would you be happy not being able to go out for a day’s shopping with family and friends? What if you have a last-minute event to attend and realise you need a new dress/suit/skirt?
If you can only shop online, you might be able to pay extra for express shipping and get the item on time. There’s no guarantee it’ll fit or look nice because you’ve never tried it on. It’s stressful and more expensive. A thinner person could just run to the mall and be reasonably confident they’ll find something.
If you want to learn more about this, Saucyewest does some great work.
Unsuitable Tables, Chairs And Seating
There’s nothing worse than planning a nice trip and having it spoiled by the worry that you won’t be able to fit into the booth at the restaurant, or the plane seat, or on the rides at an amusement park. There’s absolutely no reason all these places should not have comfortable seating for all patrons.
Why don’t they do it then? I suspect it’s because a) it would cost them money, leave fewer spaces, and affect their bottom line and b) they don’t care. Fat people are seen as non-entities, unimportant, and disgusting. They’ve chosen to be this way, so why should anyone go out of their way to make things easier?
I have a really easy answer to that: because we’re all human beings! Isn’t that a good enough reason?
Final Thought
I’ve said this before in many ways, but to close today’s post, I want to be clear:
ALL people, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality or economic status, deserve to be treated equally and with respect, and yes, that includes fat people! We do not need an excuse to stay fat. Our bodies are no one else’s business
