Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia

But, ultimately, it felt like a confession of a sin that was less mine than a completely predictable product of the social world I lived in.

Healthism seems to be less a general moral mistake, then, than an ideological weapon wielded selectively against those who are already stigmatized and othered.

The thought that has helped me the most, in navigating all of this, is that my body is for me. Your body is for you. My body is not decoration. Your body is not decoration.[4] Our bodies are our homes, as the slogan has it.

Pride says, despite the way we are treated, we have no reason to feel ashamed.

Fatphobia is an inherently structural phenomenon, which sees people in fatter bodies navigating a different world, containing numerous distinct material, social, and institutional barriers to our flourishing.

There’s also an individualistic—and, arguably, masculinist—assumption at work in diet culture, which minimizes the role of food in shared pleasures, both daily and during special celebrations. But there is something immensely valuable about being tied to the world, and our bodies, and each other, by the thrice-or-so daily practice of satisfying our

Fatphobia can be defined as a feature of social systems that unjustly rank fatter bodies as inferior to thinner bodies, in terms of not only our health but also our moral, sexual, and intellectual status.

Fatness serves as a potent class and race signifier. And so, when we wring our hands or jeer at fatness, we are often tacitly and unwittingly expressing classism and racism.

Body reflexivity offers an escape from the apparently exhaustive options of positivity, negativity, or neutrality, by proposing a different focus. Rather than changing how bodies are assessed, it urges us to transcend the mode of assessment entirely. (“I don’t look at you with a critical eye,” is something often said to me by my husband—which means

There should be no shame in not being healthy.