“These myths persist not because they are factual nor because they help us better understand people who are fatter than us. Instead, they allow us to confirm what we already think we know about fatness and fat people.”
“Our bodies are believed to be meritocracies, direct reflections of the work we’re willing to put in.”
“If a marginalized identity or experience can be established to be a choice, then solving the problems that marginalized individuals face falls to those individuals themselves rather than a broader collective.”
“Whether being fat is a choice for an individual or not, they do not deserve discrimination, harassment, or unkind treatment because of the size of their bodies. None of us should have to change our appearance in order to “earn” basic respect and dignity.”
“Just lose weight is deeply dismissive, incuriously judgmental. It assumes that fat people have neither considered nor attempted weight loss and, more than that, that thin experts need to teach us about the wrongness of our bodies and how to make them right.”
“In its contemporary iteration, our cultural definition of health depends on thinness. “Get healthy” is used as a euphemistic shorthand for losing weight. Fat people are pressured to change our appearance out of a purported concern for our health, diagnosed solely by looking at us.”
“All of us deserve peaceful relationships with our own bodies, regardless of whether or not others perceive us as happy or healthy.”
“The fear of being fat is the fear of joining an underclass that you have so readily dismissed, looked down on, looked past, or found yourself grateful not to be a part of.”
“Anti-fatness regulates the kinds of bodies we see and trains us in who we are socially permitted or expected to be attracted to.”
“I deeply value the growth and solidarity of those closest to me, including those who proclaim that anti-fatness is the last socially acceptable form of discrimination.”
National Public Radio: Anti-fatness keeps fat people on the margins, says Aubrey Gordon
The Seattle Times: What does the book ‘You Just Need to Lose Weight’ get right? Everything