Thin Privilege?

Interesting. I really like this. I'd like to hear what others have to say. Those that have actually read it.

This quote struck me. It was referring to thin people with eating disorders. But I thought, "that was me at 90lbs overweight!" Me all over.

And when you feel trapped in and controlled by your body, when you’ve reached that level of self-consciousness, when you’re suffering every single day just to make it through...

My experience with obesity was that it was a kind of eating disorder.

Back to the subject though. I lost a lot of weight a couple years ago. I gained it all back by the time I started this way of eating. But it was enough time for me to notice a poignant difference in the way people looked at and responded to me when I weighed this little. Men started to look appreciatively at me. People would come up to me and talk. Whereas, as I regained the weight, I didn't turn heads. No one wanted anything to do with me. I even got disapproving looks. I was still the same person on the inside. But judgy humans judge. And suddenly I was relegated back into the fat-woman club. Not a fun club to be in.
It never mattered how pretty my hair and face were, or how cute my outfit was, or how funny I was, the fat-club members are persona non grata.

Now again I'm getting a few looks. Positive ones. I'm not invisible. People are more friendly to me. It's nice, but it's also sickening knowing I'm the same as I was 50lbs ago, I just look different. I'm part of the "getting thin" club. And I'll enjoy the h*ll out of the "thin club" when I get there. I'll have worked very hard to get there. But I'm definitely going to remember what it was like as a fat woman. I'm still that awesome person. I'm not losing my empathy along with my weight.

Just putting that perspective out there.


edited for derpy typos...

Very interesting article, and well-thought out response from Baconslave. I agree with the author and appreciate her thoughtful way of saying "I'm not trying to say thin people don't struggle, but the struggle is internal rather than societally pervasive." It made me think a little more about my relative thinness and the privilege associated with it. It was a nice reminder that, though I personally cannot change the way society views overweight people, I can be sure that I, myself, don't ignore, snub, or overlook anyone based upon their weight (or any other appearance attributes for that matter). Thanks for sharing.:flowerforyou:

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privilege is BS. I can't stand it.

fixed that for ya. :flowerforyou:


ETA: I disagree with this article because the author is basically saying that fat shaming is worse than skinny shaming because fat jokes are more understood/culturally acceptable.

Following. To read/respond later.

I don't believe in thin privilege. I've been thin once before, in college, when I went on an unhealthy starvation diet and got down to 149 (looked quite thin on me). Of course, I put it all right back on, but I was thin long enough to notice how things are on the other side. And I've had friends that were truly very skinny by nature, and I saw some of the things they endured. Yeah, you get the benefit of having people noticing and sometimes flirting with you more often...but being thin comes with it's own list of problems.

One of my thin friends was constantly judged for being too thin. She ate an above average amount of food....yet I heard her get told very often that she needs to eat more because she looks anorexic. She was teased for being too thin just as badly as I was for being too fat, both as a child and an adult. When I was thin (and I wasn't even THAT thin) I had people telling me I looked like a stick. I had chubby friends telling me that my curves were too small and I looked like a boy. A boy!!! What 18 year old girl wants to be told that she looks like a boy? It was a total blow to my confidence.

Also, people say that when your thin, you never have to worry about clothes not fitting you in stores. Not so. I've already lost quite a lot of weight, fit into a size 12, and I have a lot of trouble finding clothes that fit my shape properly. Some of my thin friends have to shop in the children's department in bigger stores. All women have different shapes, no two stores are going to have clothes that fit us in exactly the same way, thin or fat.

Moral of the story? No matter what your body-type, there will be people who make fun of you for it, there will be stores that do not have clothes that fit you properly, there will be people who pass you over as a romantic partner because you do not have what they believe to be an ideal body.

i knew this thread was going to get really stupid real fast

the article is awesome though i like that she does not get all whiny claiming to be oppressed by fat people like most thin people who write articles on this do

i have gone from over 300 pounds to where i am now and with out a secound doubt thin privilege is real and fat shaming is so engrained in society it is a casual acceptable thing

skinny shaming is no where near the same level

I'll stand up and call BS on this one. It's completely acceptable in public to tell a thin girl to "go eat a cheeseburger" in front of everyone, and then laugh about it. If I were to say to an overweight person that she should stop eating cheeseburgers in front of everyone, I'd be slaughtered. It's much more acceptable to thin shame. I see it and feel it all the time. Every time a thin girl comes on the television someone has a comment about it, or there's a Facebook meme everyone has comments about it, or people feel free to make comments to me personally.

Kindness toward people should be universal, independent of gender, size or anything else. i try to practice this in my own life. I smile at everyone in public, open doors for people, and just in general be nice. It shouldn't matter whether people are thin or pretty or women or anything else. Shaming is ridiculous and needs to stop.

i knew this thread was going to get really stupid real fast

the article is awesome though i like that she does not get all whiny claiming to be oppressed by fat people like most thin people who write articles on this do

i have gone from over 300 pounds to where i am now and with out a secound doubt thin privilege is real and fat shaming is so engrained in society it is a casual acceptable thing

skinny shaming is no where near the same level

I'll stand up and call BS on this one. It's completely acceptable in public to tell a thin girl to "go eat a cheeseburger" in front of everyone, and then laugh about it. If I were to say to an overweight person that she should stop eating cheeseburgers in front of everyone, I'd be slaughtered. It's much more acceptable to thin shame. I see it and feel it all the time. Every time a thin girl comes on the television someone has a comment about it, or there's a Facebook meme everyone has comments about it, or people feel free to make comments to me personally.

Kindness toward people should be universal, independent of gender, size or anything else. i try to practice this in my own life. I smile at everyone in public, open doors for people, and just in general be nice. It shouldn't matter whether people are thin or pretty or women or anything else. Shaming is ridiculous and needs to stop.

I have had people say things like that to me in public and worse. No one slaughtered them. No one told them to knock it off or that it wasn't nice. People laughed and joined in. My experience doesn't invalidate yours and yours does not invalidate hers.

skinny shaming is no where near the same level

That doesn't mean that fat shaming is "worse" than skinny shaming. Body shaming in general is wrong.

It's funny how people demand that we have to care when someone else is offended.

i knew this thread was going to get really stupid real fast

the article is awesome though i like that she does not get all whiny claiming to be oppressed by fat people like most thin people who write articles on this do

i have gone from over 300 pounds to where i am now and with out a secound doubt thin privilege is real and fat shaming is so engrained in society it is a casual acceptable thing

skinny shaming is no where near the same level

I'll stand up and call BS on this one. It's completely acceptable in public to tell a thin girl to "go eat a cheeseburger" in front of everyone, and then laugh about it. If I were to say to an overweight person that she should stop eating cheeseburgers in front of everyone, I'd be slaughtered. It's much more acceptable to thin shame. I see it and feel it all the time. Every time a thin girl comes on the television someone has a comment about it, or there's a Facebook meme everyone has comments about it, or people feel free to make comments to me personally.

Kindness toward people should be universal, independent of gender, size or anything else. i try to practice this in my own life. I smile at everyone in public, open doors for people, and just in general be nice. It shouldn't matter whether people are thin or pretty or women or anything else. Shaming is ridiculous and needs to stop.

But... cheeseburgers are delicious?

i knew this thread was going to get really stupid real fast

the article is awesome though i like that she does not get all whiny claiming to be oppressed by fat people like most thin people who write articles on this do

i have gone from over 300 pounds to where i am now and with out a secound doubt thin privilege is real and fat shaming is so engrained in society it is a casual acceptable thing

skinny shaming is no where near the same level

I'll stand up and call BS on this one. It's completely acceptable in public to tell a thin girl to "go eat a cheeseburger" in front of everyone, and then laugh about it. If I were to say to an overweight person that she should stop eating cheeseburgers in front of everyone, I'd be slaughtered. It's much more acceptable to thin shame. I see it and feel it all the time. Every time a thin girl comes on the television someone has a comment about it, or there's a Facebook meme everyone has comments about it, or people feel free to make comments to me personally.

Kindness toward people should be universal, independent of gender, size or anything else. i try to practice this in my own life. I smile at everyone in public, open doors for people, and just in general be nice. It shouldn't matter whether people are thin or pretty or women or anything else. Shaming is ridiculous and needs to stop.

so you think you can call BS on my experiences? lol no

i suffered from anorexia as a teenager and was rail thin the way i was treated as a over 300 pound women is sooooooooo much more horrendous then how i was as a rail thin teenager its not even comparable

honestly thinking you can compare a "eat a cheeseburger" or some harsh comments about the thin pretty girl to the way fat people are treated in society is pathetic , ridiculous and it needs to stop

You need to realize that different comments/behaviors affect people in different ways.

You can't just say that just because you weren't hurt when you were thin, nobody else is or was.

It's funny how people demand that we have to care when someone else is offended.

Few people actually respond and satisfy that demand in real life. So no need to worry.

People will argue ad nauseum, but nothing really changes. People are people.

It's funny how people demand that we have to care when someone else is offended.

Few people actually respond and satisfy that demand in real life. So no need to worry.

People will argue ad nauseum, but nothing really changes. People are people.

Ideas do change the world. So does winning hearts and minds. (Arguing not so much though...)

It can be as effective as chaining yourself to railings or throwing yourself in front of the King's carriage.

Thank you sociology majors for bastardizing a concept and spreading it all over the internet.

Hey now. Don't be blaming sociology. Some sociologists are good decent people who don't buy into the popular bully/victim dichotomy of American existence and expand their scope of research to include topics that fall outside Marxist conflict theory.

:flowerforyou:

But it doesn't address how frequently someone who is thin is bullied for it... Told to eat a cheeseburger or asked if they are anorexic. If they are working for it, then they experience a lot of negative feedback from people who haven't gotten the same results. Or if they aren't somehow it makes it ok for chubby friends to tease them "in good fun?"

I get what the author is saying.... Thin is just considered beautiful somewhat universally and maybe fat is not. But with all the love yourself even if you're fat stuff going around, they've really managed to encourage body shaming of smaller women too. Especially when the smaller woman doesn't have pronounced curves.

^^exactly