Fatphobia: What is it, and why is it important?

By: Lillian Green

Fatphobia can be defined as a system of oppression and discrimination based on one's weight, size, or body shape. Simply put, it is a prejudice held towards individuals who are deemed fat or overweight by society’s standards of “fitness”. 

Conversations surrounding fatphobia were not commonly held until around the 2010s, as the diet culture of the 2000s ran rampant in the media. Current conversations still lack depth, nuance, and historical context, especially when examining the dangers of fatphobia and the reality of the fat people it targets. 

While most people have an idea of what fatphobia is, they aren't able to pinpoint how it affects people in their day-to-day lives. That's because fatphobia, generally, isn't considered much of a problem, nor is it seen as a valid form of oppression compared to other systems like racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

In this piece, I hope to combat the harmful ideas surrounding fatphobia and hopefully shift how we think about fat people as a marginalized community. 

First, I would like to establish the need for the use of the word “fat” in this article. The word “fat” has been demonized by our society as a way to deter people from being fat and dehumanize those who are. Our hesitation to use the word fat stems from the negative connotations behind it. Society tells us that the worst thing you could ever be called is fat; however, fat, just like skinny, is a descriptor, and attaching connotations to it, like good and bad, which we are unintentionally doing by refusing to use the word, fuels the stigma behind fatness, as well as fatphobia itself. 

Even in the most progressive of spaces, the topic of fatphobia is avoided People pretend that fatphobia doesn't exist, but it does. And like any marginalized group, fat people are denied validation of their experiences with discrimination, while simultaneously having their personhood stripped from them. There is a complete lack of empathy. Fat people are indeed a marginalized group, and fatphobia is a systemic issue that deserves to be talked about. 

When trying to understand the violence that fatphobia creates, it is important to know where it comes from. Like most things, fatphobia is undoubtedly rooted in White supremacy. By deciding who gets to be deemed “pretty”, which in our society is also synonymous with being “worthy” of love, respect, and decency, more often than not, people of color are excluded from the conversation. 

Historically, Black bodies have always been demonized by White society. When not being treated as a commodity, the Black body is judged and degraded. This is done through the establishment of beauty standards that intentionally target features associated with Blackness. 

White supremacy not only demonizes fatness in terms of weight or body mass, but also how bodies are shaped to satisfy Eurocentric beauty standards, along with pale white skin, thinness, and straight bodies. These traits are indicative of  White society’s idea of beauty, leaving plus-sized or curvier bodies out of the conversation. This phenomenon began as a way to further separate and dehumanize Black people by othering their features and emphasizing their lack of proximity to Whiteness. For example, the objectification of Sarah Baartman. Baartman was a South African woman born in the late 1700s who was enslaved and brought to Europe. There she was subjected to extreme dehumanization for entertainment, and her body was made the main attraction of  “freak shows” for white audiences. The simultaneous demonization and fetishization of Black bodies under white supremacy is what has established our modern-day understanding of fatness. 

Though fatphobia is rooted in White supremacy, it rears its head in multiple spaces and is not an issue that exists within a vacuum. It plagues every community along with all other forms of oppression. For example, fatphobia intersects with both misogyny and ableism. 

Misogyny, with the expectation for women and femme-presenting people to be thin. Ableism, as it promotes ableist notions of what it means to be “fit” and the emphasis on the mobility and health of fat people. 

To emphasize the importance of having these conversations surrounding fatphobia, I would like to detail some of the real-world implications that fatphobia has and show why it is so dangerous. First, contrary to popular belief, fatphobia kills people. It is far too common in the medical system for care providers to have biases towards fat people. These biases result in medical inequity, dismissed health concerns, misdiagnoses, and overall mistreatment and neglect. The violent contempt that fatphobia breeds towards fat people costs people their lives, providing proof of fatphobia’s white supremacist roots. The way that fat people are denied proper healthcare due to bias and misconceptions about their bodies is no different from how Black people have historically been disproportionately harmed by the American medical system. Especially Black women, who face significantly higher rates of maternal death and are forced to experience traumatizing pregnancies because of the negligence of their healthcare providers. 

Second, the stigma of fatphobia and the constant dehumanization of fat people fuel harmful practices. Self-hatred driven by the world telling you negative things about your body feeds into things like ED culture. Especially online, where fatphobia runs rampant and meets young impressionable people who then learn that the body they exist in is “wrong”. 

Some of the most relevant examples of fatphobia that are fairly popular come from the internet. For example, the trending use of the phrase “big back” or the rise in popularity of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Both the “big back” trend and Ozempic are joked about across social media platforms; however, they are both incredibly harmful. From the encouraged use of fatphobic language, as being a “big back” is seen as something negative, to the popularization of using and abusing drugs for weight loss, these seemingly harmless trends are examples of casual fatphobia. Causal fatphobia leads to the normalization of fatphobic rhetoric and ultimately behavior.

Fatphobia is as real as it is dangerous and should be addressed with the same seriousness and weight as other forms of oppression. As Audre Lorde says, “there is no hierarchy of oppressions,” and although people often forget this fact, it is crucial to remember how forms of oppression intersect to create one overarching structure for marginalization and disenfranchisement.