Weight Stigma Awareness Week

BEDA's take action for Tuesday: Express

We just saw the end to suicide prevention awareness week just as we're coming up on the first annual weight stigma awareness week. According to BEDA, the binge eating disorder association, " BEDA’s goal is to bring awareness to a common and entrenched social injustice that often results in serious physical and mental health consequences for those affected". Consequences indeed. I feel the need to point out that suicide and attempted suicide are common results of those consequences BEDA is talking about. 

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the two awareness weeks are almost back to back. Considering that teens who even think they're fat are more likely to attempt suicide and, let's face it, the fat  hate starts early  and children as young as three years old show weight bias against heavier people, attributing things such as being ugly, lazy, and stupid. By three years old, people. That's some seriously early weight hate indoctrination. One study shows that children 5-11 prefer underweight friends and react more positively to underweight stimuli than overweight stimuli (which they, of course, reacted negatively to).

So what's the purpose of weight stigma awareness week? It's just what it sounds like- to shed light on the constant discrimination and stigma that is associated with weight. Fat people get the majority of the load, but thin people aren't without their burdens and stigmas as well. Assuming a thin person doesn't eat does just as much harm to the fat liberation movement as assuming fat people eat too much- it's all playing back into the idea that weight is a choice and you have to choose to be one specific size and shape. We have a long way to go on the road to destigmatizing weight and especially fatness, but that's part of what this week is about. Banding together as a community, getting the word out, and making a change. 

When it's the system abusing the children

We all remember the recent hubub when Dr. Lindsey Murtagh and Dr. David S. Ludwig made a suggestion in a Journal of American Medicical Association issue that perhaps "obese" children should be taken away from their parents for child neglect/abuse. The obvious idea being that these parents must be shoveling food in their kids' mouths and letting them watch TV and play video games all day. This particularly hits home for me because I would have been one of those kids, weighing in at over 150lbs by age 10 which made me clinically "obese". I can't remember my exact weight, I only remember being in grade school and looking at a scale thinking "if I can just stay this weight and not gain anymore as I grow then when I get to be a grown up I won't be fat". My diet consisted of the exact same meals, snack, and exercise as my brother and my sister who were both slim. But my mom was obviously abusing me into fatness, right? I just wonder what would have happened if I had been placed in foster care and they had failed to make me thin too? 

the three youngest children seen on the right holding an adult's hands are
at risk for being taken away for being too fat

In the UK we're seeing this suggestion put into practice. According to the Daily Mail three children have already been taken away and placed in foster care for being too fat. They were later reunited with their parents but had every single thing they ate monitored and even had a check in sheet for bed time. The parents were forced to move into an apartment run by a state program and were only allowed to live with 3 of their 6 children at a time. They were told to enroll their kids in dance and football and now that their kids have failed to slim down they're at risk for being taken away again, permanently, and without visitation. The oldest boy, who's 12, weighs about 224lbs, the 11 year old girl about 150 lbs, and the three year old weight around 55lbs (it doesn't mention heights, but the youngest looks fairly tall for a 3 year old).

Yes, all of these kids are on the larger side, like their parents. That would make sense considering obesity is primarily genetic, but they're also all within the range of normal and they're not done growing. Can you imagine the strain of having a social worker watch your every move? The mother even came under fire for letting her 7 year old fall asleep and stay at her father's because she didn't want to disturb her. What the system is doing to this family is far more abusive than any "over nourishment" that may be happening.

The mother said "The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable"


These children have been emotionally and psychologically tortured by a system that is supposed to be acting in their best interest but, instead, act with feat, judgement, and bigotry. Any chance they may have had at health or happiness may very well have just gone out the window. What this family has been put through is inexcusable and they're not the only ones. The UK social services department will be looking at more cases of failure to produce thin children and what has happened to these poor parents and children may very well happen to many more UK citizens. 


And there is, as always, the issue that no one is looking at what is being fed to thin kids, regardless of whether it is damaging their health. I can't even express the sadness and anger and frustration that this story has brought me. I have a feeling that the worst fat hate and bigotry and discrimination is still ahead of us. I hope that feeling is wrong. No one, no one, here cares about our health or well being and they sure as hell don't care about the facts or the science. Anti fat policies like this are based solely in fat hatred and ignorance. We need to figure out a way to fight this. 


*thanks to Neil for sending me this story

Fattie Stigma

As you  may have already heard from your favorite fat bloggers, today kicks off the Weight Stigma Blog Carnival in order to raise awareness for National Weight Stigma Awareness Week which takes place September 26th-30th, created by the Binge Eating Disorder Association. The Blog Carnival is being done by Voices In Recovery Anyone can participate in the Blog Carnival so jump in and join me if you have a blog! So this is blog 1 of 3 from now until September for this particular event.

Today's topic: What does weight stigma mean to you?

Let's see if I can properly gather my thoughts on this. Apologies in advance for any rambly-ness as this wasn't a planned post.

To me, weight stigma is a form of systematic oppression. There are a lot of components that include fatphobia, sexism,ableism, and homophobia. Fist I'll point out that the majority of body shaming and weight stigma is perpetrated against women. Reducing women to their bodies, to how sexually appealing they are, is simply another means of controlling them. In our society a woman's body is pretty much free for public commentary.  Our bodies are constantly a source of debate. Weight stigma is used to judge our sexual worth, our value as "real" women, our to ability birth children, and even our fitness as parents. Women have a narrow range of body shape or size which is socially acceptable and there are very few places where we don't see weight centered issues specifically targeted at women. I'm sure you've noticed that the vast majority of diet ads, for example, target women.

That's not to say that men aren't also effected by weight stigma. When male bodies break gender norms by being either too big or too small, then you suddenly get a heavy dose of homophobia thrown in when these men aren't seen as "real" men.

So what does weight stigma mean to me? It means discrimination and oppression and control and ruining a lot of peoples' lives. It's control on so many levels because it encompasses so many topics and groups of people. The diet industry brings in (come on, we've heard it enough- we can all say it together!) 60 billions dollars a year. If that doesn't shout control I don't know what does. People are so desperate to conform to the right body type, and the right size that they'll do almost anything, listen to almost anything, believe almost anything just to reach that goal. The best way to control someone is to break them and weight stigma has done a great job of that.Weight stigma is violence against women (among other groups, but primarily women) and is part of a larger culture of misogyny.

Of course, that's not all that weight stigma is, but it's an important part and my brain just sort of took it and ran with it. So what does weight stigma mean to you?