Thin privilege is trying to invalidate fat acceptance by insisting that you’ve “worked so hard” on your own thinness. OK, champ, sure, you’ve “worked hard” for it. Are you actually any better or more interesting of a person for it? Are you more knowledgeable, more understanding, more empathetic? Or have you just put all this time and effort into acquiring a status symbol? Weight loss isn’t a hobby or character development. Weight loss isn’t a skill to be learned or a negative personality trait to be worked on. Acquiring thin privilege doesn’t make you more deserving of respect anymore than acquiring a Rolex or an iPhone does.
This whole “thin privilege” thing rubs me the wrong way.
Media promotes skinny persons, that’s true. But I met several thin persons (as in catwalk model thin) and they were mocked for their weight, suspected of anorexia nervosa and called “skeletons” and other names. Not to mention the whole “bones are for dogs, real women have curves” shit.
That’s not to say that fat people are not frowned upon in society. They are. But that doesn’t mean that thin people are always having it easy, as this whole thin privilege nonsense seems to imply.
Also, thisisthinprivilege is one of the most toxic blogs on Tumblr, because it insists that fat people do not have any health problems whatsoever, which is grossly inaccurate, especially if you have morbid obesity. They are also “yay for body positivity”, but hate and mock skinny people because those people somehow “oppress” them just by existing. So yeah. Fuck’em.
1) You’re assuming that skinny=’skeleton’.
2) Fat fetishization is NOT a privilege.
3) Anyone can have anorexia. Fat people can have anorexia. It’s not JUST the mindset of being ‘skinny’ , its depraving yourself of any form of enjoyment, including food, ON PURPOSE, not only to be ‘skinny’ but to maintain an internalized minset of control, punishment, discipline, etc. Its not just ‘not eating’ or being ‘stick thin’, its feeling like you have to prove to yourself you’re not weak over and over again, even when you realize you’re not doing well, you realize this is killing you.
3) Comments like ‘eugh skinny bitch’ are meant to split the scope of the feminine demographic into ‘fat girls’ and ‘skinny girls’, and ultimately you could argue this is more of a sexist issue than it is a fat/thin privilege issue. Go watch ANY Youtube video on ‘Skinny Girls vs. Fat Girls’. 90% of the time, the shit will sound like ‘look, if you’re beautiful, then you’re beautiful just the way you are….BUT OMG SKINNY BITCHES HAVE NO ASS HUEHUEHUE AMIRITE THO LOL’
4) Thin girls have clothes made for them. Thin girls are represented in media. Thin girls are associated with the gentle, kind qualities that the patriarchy favors; patience, prudence, unaware of her attractiveness, innocent (with enough of a hint to be sexualized), etc. Yes, thin and fat girls suffer from oppressive behaviour from their own weight, but when it comes to media representation and favor, thin girls’ names are held to the most high for a thing that’s not worth all the trouble. Thin girls have visibility.
5) But they have sources to back their claims up. They don’t claim obesity is healthy-no one claims obesity is healthy- but even unhealthier is a fat person going on too strict a diet too fast. Their body cannot handle that; their metabolism is not used to processing that little energy. Now, I’m not a weight expert or nutritionist, but thinness is portrayed as ‘not eating’ or ‘eating less’, as opposed to eating the same amount but healthier ingredients- which is fine, not alot of us have time to cook. But overweight people have higher odds of being healthier than skinnier people because they get enough energy in their systems to metabolize nutrients and energy, and MORE.
6) Look, whether you agree or not, you can easily argue that fat people are not treated the same way as skinny people. Skinny people get treated better, they get taken more seriously, they’re not treated as caricatures based on their own thinness. That’s what that is; not that skinny people are mean to fat people, or fat people are mean to skinny people; that’s a product of internalized discrimination. Privilege is when you get treated better than a group of people.
Hey, you make several good points. Probably I have a bias when it comes about “thin privilege”, I won’t deny this. Just to clarify this, my issue is not with body positivity per se. As long as you stay healthy, I literally don’t care how you look. And yes, diets who aim at losing weight at a rapid pace are unhealthy, definitely. But you see, some people in the fat acceptance movement seem to have a problem with encouraging people to lose weight by exercising and dieting. Lily Rygh-Glenn, a former member of the movement, wrote a very interesting article about the subject of eating disorders in the movement.
This is why I have an issue with the mods of thisisthinprivilege. They just push this too far. Literally. Like in this case, for example. It’s not just about a ridiculous beauty standard, as they seem to imply. In Romania, a kid died because he was morbidly obese - he had Prader-Willi syndrome and his parents didn’t afford to feed him a proper diet, so they fed him large quantities of what they ate. He died at six years old after two heart attacks; his weight was 264.555 pounds. So yeah.
Thank you for taking your time to reply to this - as always, your feedback is very interesting!
Thank you for your kind words, and I’m glad we had this civil conversation. I myself have thin privilege, but its not the result of any sort of prudence or patience or self-restraint, as many people like to imagine; rather, it is a side-effect of my ADHD medicine. Stimulants typically diminish your appetite.
However, I must point something out when it comes to the moderators; whether or not the mods are agreeable people in general or whether you are on good terms with them or not,
1) The submissions are not from them. They are from other people, just like you and I, who deal with this discrimination every day because of their weight.
2) This isn’t meant just FOR them. This is a safe space for people who suffer through weight discrimination on a regular basis all over the world. Its about THOSE people, not just the select few moderators.
Reblogging for the interesting discussion.