as small as a world and as large as alone

10:27am June 28, 2014

lovethyfatness:

[Series of texts by @fatnutritionist, which read: “People are mad at me because they ‘work so hard’ to be fit or lose weight. They have told me this explicitly. It implies that they think my rejecting the values they subscribe to can somehow take away the fitness they’ve worked for. That is totally delusional. If you’ve worked hard for fitness, no amount of fat people rejecting stigma can take that away. So this is obviously not actually about fitness, at all. It’s about the other thing they ‘worked hard’ for: social status. They DO think, and they know, that the social status they have worked hard to earn, through ‘fitness,’ can be devalued. It can be devalued if the hierarchy that rewards them is crushed. Crushed by people rejecting stigma. We can’t take away your fitness or whatever weight you’ve lost. But we can devalue those things by destroying fat stigma. So they are afraid of us, and for good reason. If fat people aren’t stigmatized, then there is no more thin privilege. Remember always, fat people: People are afraid of you because you have an awesome power - to destroy the hierarchy. If they were not afraid of losing their place in the hierarchy, they would not come after you so viciously.” All tweets were accompanied by the hashtag, #notyourgoodfatty]

Read the full thread of Michelle’s tweets on Storify.

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