Thin privilege is not finding yourself incredibly angry at someone for consistently downing your body type.
Recently, I found the page of a person I know and was overcome with rage.
Most of the posts are centred around this person feeling “fat” with lots of “how I look versus how I feel” posts, and even one that talks about how “fat is a (bad) feeling”. (most of these posts were from thinspo blogs, ugh.)
This person has never been above a size 10 (if they’re lucky) and have sat at a size 6-8 for the majority of their adult life, and these posts just sent me into a spiral, mostly for the reason that this person is a privileged little sod who will never know what it’s like to have a yo-yoing weight, or even know what it is to be plus sized, or be discriminated against or bullied because of it.
They will never know how much their comments hurt people, even if they don’t consciously lash out at fat people, they don’t realise how damaging these things are!
Fat isn’t a freaking feeling, and especially not a bad one!
On a tangent- fat is a survival mechanism, and the majority of the reasons for why I’m fat are due to anxiety and stress and awful lot of self-loathing, and leftover issues from eating disorders.
What caused that self-loathing and disordered eating? People like this one, and bullies.
This person will never know what it’s like to be punched, thrown to the ground and kicked repeatedly for being fat. They won’t know what it’s like having someone make “BOOM BOOM BOOM” sounds as you walk or run, or being called a “whale” and told to “go eat some krill”. They won’t know what it’s like to come back from holidays and receive streams of comments on how much weight gained. They won’t know what it’s like to walk into a store and not find your size. They won’t know what it’s like to be afraid of ordering food or eating it in public at fear of being thought of as “fat”. They won’t know what it’s like being turned down for relationships because the potential “lovers” are too embarrassed to be seen with you. They won’t know what it’s like to be labelled as unhygienic.
They might (maybe) have been bullied for other reasons but never because of their weight.
However, my body is trying to look after me. Fat isn’t a bad thing, it’s my body trying to protect me from harm. And I love this body for all that it has given me, because when you suffer a mental breakdown, you begin to find a new appreciation for what health really is, and weight doesn’t really factor into it, and the only time it does is when people treat you horribly, but even then. I love my body, and I love being fat, and it isn’t a bad thing.
If you can afford to say “I’m so fat” without people agreeing and slamming you further, and get met with running streams of compliments stating the contrary guess what- YOU’RE NOT FAT AND YOU SHOULD SHUT THE HELL UP, AND NOT MARGINALISE THOSE THAT ARE WITH YOUR STUPID, IGNORANT, ATTENTION-SEEKING COMMENTS.
I hope this person gets a reality check soon, but I doubt it, they’re the sort of person who have everything right in their lives (combination of good luck and having everything handed to them on a silver platter, never really hard work though), so they need to have some issue to whine about for attention.