Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia

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.

It is indeed an example of what we might call the “harder-better” fallacy: that which is the most difficult to achieve is judged the most praiseworthy, regardless of its actual desirability or value.

And it’s not that we abhor fatness because we discovered it is unhealthy. By and large, we decided it is unhealthy because we came, over time, to abhor it—for

Even if these interventions were perfectly safe and costless and painless—which they’re currently far from being—I would still find them objectionable at a social level of analysis. For they flatten out difference, in the form of human bodily diversity, which I believe we ought to value. They flatten out such difference not at random, moreover, but

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

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 lessons are clear: First, people routinely misinterpret their visceral disgust reactions as moral disgust, leading them to judge morally bad actions more harshly, and even to deem neutral actions morally problematic. Second, when this occurs, people reach for reasons to justify their moral ill feelings, engaging in post hoc rationalization of a

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.

Being thin has thus become much harder over the course of the past century—and, at the same time, vastly more valued.