Keep Your Body Image Issues to Yourself, Maura Kelley

Open and hateful prejudice against fat people is one of the last "safe" bastions of "isms". People who would never feel comfortable airing their dirty prejudices about minority groups still feel really comfortable spouting off about how disgusting and lazy fat people are, all under the guise of health and the cost of insurance and how "they have to pay for it". I'm reminded of this everywhere on the internet, and the comments to this article were no exception.

I remember when Lesley, the blogger at Fatshionista was featured in the Boston Globe, discussing her fat-positive take on life. The comments were filled with people who were plainly just ANGRY that this fat woman DARED to be happy with herself. They insisted that she must deep down hate herself for being fat the way they hated her for being fat, that she was delusional, that she was a drain on the healthcare system (a perfectly healthy fat woman, so far). It was horrifying.

This culture (Western) is obsessed with thinness in an unhealthy way. This culture tries to use the issue of health as a thinly veiled excuse to hate on fat people-- I mean really, how many of us really believe that the hateful people are really concerned about our health and aren't just offended that we aren't conventionally attractive? I mean caring about a fat person's health would require some empathy, something that is clearly not happening with the hateful context in which health is mentioned.

The rebel in me reads stuff like this and wants to stay fat, just to give the fat-haters the middle finger. But you know what, I'm not doing this for them, I'm doing it for me.