This is Thin Privilege

Thin privilege is not having your sister tell you no boy is going to want to date you until you lose weight.

Or constantly hear from family members that if you just lose some weight the boys will come flocking to you.

Thin privilege is not having to hide or play off the fact that you want a boyfriend or want to date because you’re afraid people will tell you there’s no chance of it happening because of your weight.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• submission
• dating
• attraction

I grew up as the youngest child of a family of three: my mom, my big sister, and me. My mother and my big sis were always struggling with their weight, and having to go through all kinds of crap because of it. My sis was severly bullied at school, my mom would blow all her money on all kinds of fad diets just to lose a few pounds and gain them right back afterwards.

Both of them had really, really low self-esteem because of the way the world treated them. So growing up, and watching these two amazingly strong, intelligent, beautiful, compassionate people hate their own reflections, I learned to hate mine as well. From a very young age, too.

Now, as an adult, I’ve learned to appreciate my body the way it is, but when I was younger I had zero self-esteem and would even display disordered eating patterns. I think it is very, very sad, that the society we live in is so harsh to larger people, that even their children suffer from the abuse they get. Of course, my mother and sister never consciously tried to teach me that my body is ugly or bad, but kids learn by example. I learned to have no self-worth and it took years to un-learn that.

Now my only wish is that my family would learn to appreciate themselves for what they are as well. Because they’re beautiful and I love them so very much.

• Tags
• parents
• family
• submission

Thin privilege is the new weight-loss ad on the radio describing fat people losing weight as “blossoming” and “coming out of their shell”.

Excuse me?!

My fatness is not a “shell” that I need to “come out of”!

My body is not something that needs to “blossom” by losing weight!

 I’m sick and tired of advertisement campaigns treating fat as some sort of horrible mass that a person needs to break out of before they can be seen as human.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• submission

I’m taking some exams at the minute and they’re all in one place: the exam hall. This place is a major trigger for me, because it it reminds me of all the times I’ve failed tests because of that place (I get real nervous and I blank) so not only do I feel like I’m going to faint when I enter, but the desks are so. close. together. My desk is always at the back, so I have to squeeze in between the isles. Once i knocked a boy’s water bottle off his desk, and before I could apologise he just rolled his eyes and called me a fat ass under his breath. I was in tears and I couldn’t concentrate on my physics exam.

I asked the college if I could move to a room that people with anxiety go to if they can’t face the hall - i was told no, despite my triggers. Yet a thin girl who sometimes cries when she takes tests? She doesn’t have to face the hall. I can’t help but feel this wouldn’t happen if I were thin.

Thin privilege is not being forced to confront your triggers every day, not facing humiliation for being yourself, and actually having a shot at doing well in your exams.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• fat discrimination
• trigger warning
• seating
• academia
• submission

“In 2014, The Classical World Still Can’t Stop Fat-Shaming Women" Excerpt:

What is stunningly apparent is just how much a woman’s body matters onstage — way more, if these five critics are to be believed, than her voice, her technique, her musicality or any other quality. (Hat tip to Norman Lebrecht for compiling these breathtakingly gross comments on his site, Slipped Disc.)

In case you missed them:

• Andrew Clark, writing for the Financial Times: ”Tara Erraught’s Octavian is achubby bundle of puppy-fat.” He adds, as an afterthought, that her performance was “gloriously sung.” (As our friend Anne Midgette wrote last night for the Washington Post: “If [that’s] true, surely merits more than an offhand mention?”)
• In The Guardian, Andrew Clements: ”It’s hard to imagine this stocky Octavian as this willowy woman’s plausible lover.” (Because relationships between people of different sizes is, of course, unimaginable.)
• My erstwhile Gramophone Magazine colleague Michael Church, writing in The Independent: ”This Octavian (Tara Erraught) has the demeanor of a scullery-maid.” (He didn’t bother to remark on her singing at all, though she was one of the two leads in the opera. One of London’s foremost critics couldn’t possibly have squeezed even a glancing mention within the roughly 250-word confines that the paper assigned him. Tough to write short, I guess.)
• Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph: ”Tara Erraught is dumpy of stature and whether in bedroom déshabille, disguised as Mariandel or in full aristocratic fig, her costuming makes her resemble something between Heidi and Just William. Is Jones simply trying to make the best of her intractable physique or is he trying to say something about the social-sexual dynamic?” (Let’s leave aside Christiansen’s strenuous attack on English syntax, and just look what he himself is trying to say.)
• Richard Morrison in The Times of London: "Unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing.” (Short and to the point, at least.)

Bonus disgrace points to Christiansen, by the way, for going after the other lead inRosenkavalier for having the temerity to be a working parent: “Kate Royal … has recently sounded short of her best and stressed by motherhood.” Kudos for pinpointing motherhood as the source of Royal’s putative shortcomings. She couldn’t possibly have been overbooked, or feeling under the weather — couldn’t have been any other reason, right?

There is a beautiful video of her performing embedded in the article.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• fat discrimination
• body policing
• working while fat
• submission

so i’ve been heavily involved in my thespian troupe the entire time i’ve been in high school. i’m a talented singer and a pretty great actor, but i haven’t been able to star in or have significant parts in a lot of plays or musicals due to my size (and i’ve been told this multiple times). i just finished my junior year and my thespian troupe leader said that we are doing hairspray next year so i would have a chance to showcase my talent, and i was immediately stoked. finally, i would have a chance to play the lead in something and show everyone that i’m not just that fat girl in the ensemble who sticks out like a sore thumb. but then a few days later i sat down and got to thinking about it and i realized that our director could have picked any show that was even more heavy on acting or more vocally complex. but no. she picked the only musical in existence with a fat lead because apparently audiences (and directors) can’t conceptualize fat people portraying roles with emotional complexity. fat people have to either be comically large and flamboyant or not there at all.

thin privilege is getting to play roles other than tracy turnblad

((sorry if this sent twice btw))

• Tags
• thin privilege
• fat discrimination
• attraction
• school
• submission

[[TRIGGER WARNING: TLDR, Abuse, and some foul language. Even the photo can be triggering, so I’ll try to space it lower]]


























This right here is fat oppression.



A few things I want to point out about this… It’s bullying and exploitation. And this particular image, found on Facebook, obviously had some nasty comments.
But none were worse than the comments made at people calling these people out on their bullshit.

Here’s a few directly in response to someone standing up against it:

”Wow. Nobody has a sense of humor anymore!! You must have someone in your family like this to be THAT offended. *smh*”

"um is it someone else’s fault that she looks like a gluttonous fn hog n dresses inappropriately for it? thought not, so stfu ya butt-hurt lil sis "

"Well, Mr Byrd it seems to me she’s the one humiliating herself. She has to know things are hanging out in places they shouldn’t.

” if everyone accepts this look and no one ever says its wrong you’ll see this more and more. its not healthy it kills you.”

The others involved calling names, “Umadbro?”s, and pretty much just telling people it’s wrong to stand up for these people. Because we’re not people, I guess, right? Lots of “Don’t promote this kind of being!” comments, too.

And yet if that was a picture of Jennifer Lawrance, people would be offended. They would stand up for her. They’d be like “We all have Fashion Mishaps!” and “It’s sexist to shame her for a simple nip slip!”. Anyone who even attempts to stand up for these people are quickly and swiftly cut down by the other 5,980 commentators. The entire page is toxic, but if you want to go raise a riot on it, by all means, go right ahead.

[[MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING ON THIS PAGE. IF YOU GO HERE, IT WILL NOT BE EASY. BE WARNED; THE COMMENTS ARE TOXIC LIKE ARSENIC! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!]]
https://www.facebook.com/webn1027/photos/a.10151285626285494.810067.126679670493/10153920430315494/?type=1

Honestly, reading the comments made me have to go take my fucking anxiety PRN. It’s that bad there.

And this… Taunting, suggesting suicide, exploiting, rejecting, provoking, hurting us emotionally and psychically… And then we’re told it’s our fault they’re such evil, demented bullies to us.
And anyone who tries to argue gets the same treatment.



Thin Privilege isn’t being exploited for the sake of shaming you, and having over 6 fucking thousand people make comments about how “Gross” you are and how you should “kill yourself”. Fat Oppression is when people get shamed for not hating you, and anyone who stands up for you are also lower beings.

And Fat Stigma is the fact that we’ve been so brainwashed into thinking that fat is the embodiment of evil and disgusting, we even have fellow fat girls liking and sharing this stuff.

Yeah, I guess I should mention that the friend I got this from on her timeline is only a little smaller than I am, and is also “Fat” by society’s standards.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• healthism
• fat discrimination
• body policing
• politics
• clothes
• trigger warning
• abuse
• thinsplaining
• submission

Thin privilege is: the fact that most of the body-positive popular posts here on tumblr aren’t about condemning fatphobia and raising awareness for thin privilege, but “Fat privilege exists too!!!!11! It’s just as hurtful calling someone anorexic as it is calling someone fat1!1! Telling thin people to eat a cheeseburger is offensive!!1!”

Boo fucking hoo, someone told you to eat a cheeseburger like once in your life, that must be just as bad as fat people getting bagged on and insulted every single day.

Dear everyone who has made a post trying to raise awareness of ‘fat privilege’,

There is none. Fat privilege doesn’t exist.

(Just a note: I tagged this with thinsplaining, but I’m not sure if it is. Feel free to correct it if it doesn’t fit under that category)

• Tags
• thin privilege
• thinsplaining
• submission

Thin privilege is when you lose +50 pounds in only two months due to developing a chronic illness, and have everyone tell me how HEALTHY I look, and how much better I look now that I have developed IBS. Thin privilege is when those people continue to say those things even after you have asked them to stop, that it’s not good to tell a recovering anorexic that they look healthy when they’re basically starving, because it triggers past eating behaviours. Thin privilege is when your own mother tells you that she’d rather you be sick and thin than fat and happy. 

• Tags
• thin privilege
• health
• healthism
• parents
• weight loss
• submission

I’m staying with my parents over the summer and I’m dreading it.

My mom is fat, and I am fat.  We didn’t use to be, but my mom kept gaining weight after she had her kids, and I got fat in college.  My weight has been up and down for the past few years, but now I’m the fattest I’ve ever been.

My mom hates being fat, and I know she beats herself up for it.  She’s always telling me to lose weight because she’s concerned for my health.  And I know it’s coming from a loving place, I know it’s because she loves me.  I don’t think it’s about health, though, at least not primarily - it’s because she doesn’t want me to have to go through the bullshit and hate that all fat people have to go through.  She can’t protect me from that, so she wants to get me to lose weight.  I understand where she’s coming from, and on some level I can appreciate her love.

But it hurts.  And my choices for dealing with it are:

1) Pretending I don’t care that I’m fat, that I love being fat. I’m trying to, but it would also be nice to have a safe place at home to be insecure and hurt from how the world treats me because I am the fattest person in my department at school and my circle of friends.  And I secretly hope that it will encourage my mom to feel better about her body too, but it’s a tough act for me to keep up.

2) Beg her to not mention weight to me because it hurts.  She will always tell me that it’s not actually hurtful, though - I’m just “taking it that way.”  I would not be able to convince her - really, all I could do is beg.

3) Argue with her about being fat and try to convince her that I’m fine.  But it’s not worth the tears both of us will shed.

I don’t know which one I’ll end up choosing, but I’m dreading them all.  Thin privilege is not having to choose one of the above.

• Tags
• thin privilege
• parents
• family
• submission