Fugitivus Discussion Forum

These threads just keep multiplying!

This made me sad:



It's so true, too. :C Many fat people would feel that way, thanks to the kind of world we live in.

I dare anyone in my Fiction Writing class to tell me that there's a contradiction in my female character who's described as "average height", "150 pounds", and "thin".

WHOO! Go Eli! 8D

I bought a new dress today.

Mom immediately told me that I absolutely need to wear a bolero or cardigan over it to hide my "fat arms". Then she pointed out that even though she's 3 times my age, she's not 3 times my size, which means I need to lose weight (what?)

Also it's ok for her to be fat because she's an old widow, but because I'm 22 I need to be skinny. I just. What.

Ugh. Ffffffff. That's terrible, Karalyn, I'm sorry. I wish you could get away from her.

Oddly, fatphobia pisses me off more than any other phobias I know. Even sexism, which is the one oppression I really identify with, doesn't anger me as much as fat hatred.

Karalyn, I'm really sorry your mom said those things. My mom won't stop diet-talk, lately, even though she knows it bothers me. It's not the same, because I at least have thin-privilege, but I ... I never know whether sympathize or empathize is the right word. >.<

Hm, that is a bit odd. Is it because it's something you've encountered more than the others? Or because it strikes you as more unfair in some way?

I think it might be because I really hated my own body for so long. It took a long time to realize I was encountering sexism, but fatphobia I knew about before I had a name for it. I can remember being pre-puberty and lamenting that I was "thin in one direction but not the other" (those were the words I used at freaking <10 years old) - I realize now that I'm thin everywhere but at the time I was terrified of being even a little bit fat.

Fatphobia hurts thin people too (but I try not to say that too much because I get annoyed when people feel the need to too emphatically bring up how sexism hurts men). And I felt the effects of fatphobia first. I have a RIGHT to love my body, damn it, and so do people with more adipose tissue than me!

I think the FA movement also uses more direct words to express ideas that apply to all -isms. The unqualified acceptance of the self isn't danced around - or so it seems to me, having first met the concept via Kate Harding. In fact, I am using my familiarity with the ideas of FA, now, to come to a form of mental/emotional self-love via therapy. Being able to love oneself no matter what is a central, CENTRAL concept in FA, and it's one that strikes close to home and makes me want to write essays that are beyond my actual writing skill.

I hope this makes sense. >.<

Yes, it makes perfect sense, and thank you for sharing.

In light of that, I wonder why fatphobia doesn't anger me as much as the other phobias and isms do. I mean, it still does. But I started getting chubby by the time I was eight. My brother would poke me in the stomach and say, "Bloop! Bloop! Mashed potatoes!" When my mother had my brother packing my lunches for school, he'd leave things out of them, giving me maybe just half a sandwich and a juice box instead of the usual whole sandwich, cookies, chips, and juice box. I remember my mom dressing me one morning in a new outfit she bought me, and it wouldn't fit. And it wasn't because she got the wrong size, oh no. It was because I was 'too fat'. She got frustrated and snapped at me for being fat, and I ran off all upset. I don't know if I cried, but it seems like I probably did.

So, I do have a ton of history with this stuff. I guess it's just something I've internalized for a long time as being "normal", if not "acceptable". I was introduced to the ideas of sexism and racism and homophobia a long time before I was introduced to the idea of fatphobia.

I don't know if what you wrote warrants a box o' hugs, but I'm offering it all the same, Eirwyn.