Think about it this way. Suppose you won the lottery by choosing numbers based on your children’s birth years. Would you tell others that if they did the same they, too, could win the lottery? Of course not. You recognize that you beat the odds—the lottery was about chance, not skill.
Weight loss is exactly the same. Oh sure, you may
think
it’s different. After all,
everyone knows
that if people just ate less and exercised more they could lose weight. Right?
Wrong!
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
While it is commonly believed that losing weight is a simple matter of taking in fewer calories than you burn off in exercise, research shows this just isn’t true. It may work on a short-term basis, but the vast majority of people have built in biological compensatory mechanisms that prevent diet and exercise from working in the long-term.
So when you share your weight-loss success with others, you may actually be setting them up to fail, rendering serious physical and emotional harm in the process.
Am I advising you to tell others to give up? Absolutely not. But instead of focusing on the weight, focus on the healthy things you did to get where you are such as taking good care of yourself, eating well, and engaging in regular physical activity. When you support these behaviors, disentangle them from the weight loss. Because the majority of people won’t lose weight or, even if they
do
lose weight, it will be temporary. You don’t want their feelings of failure on your conscience, do you?
Talking about your weight loss could backfire on you, too. If you happen to gain some weight back, you might feel like you’ve failed and be tempted to stop your health-promoting behaviors. So it is important that you make life-enhancing choices for yourself regardless of the impact it may have on your weight. Eating healthfully and moving joyfully have health benefits regardless of weight loss.
Please don’t promote the belief that if someone is disciplined enough, they can
choose
to be thin. This is not true for the vast majority of people. Many fat people face a great deal of discrimination and stereotyping because of the false belief that weight loss just takes discipline.
If you want to encourage people to exercise without shaming them, say something like: “I feel really good when I run. Want to try it?”, rather than saying, “I’ve lost weight running; maybe you should try it.”
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
We live in a culture that stigmatizes fatness. Focusing on weight loss continues this misperception and mistreatment of people who are simply a bigger size than this culture says they should be. Please don’t be a part of the fat hatred that consumes our society and causes countless eating disorders, body hatred, despair, discrimination, suffering, and misery. Think about the impact of what you say on other people. Everyone deserves to feel good about themself and enjoy their life, regardless of their size.
You have the opportunity to help people pursue healthy lifestyle choices for the sake of their health and general well being. You also have the opportunity to do a lot of damage. Which route will you choose?
For more information, check out
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
(
www.HAESbook.com
).
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
REFLECTIONS ON THIN PRIVILEGE AND RESPONSIBILITY
The word “privilege” is used to describe receiving unjust advantages at the expense of others. These advantages are often largely invisible—especially to those who enjoy them. For instance, I have what is called “thin privilege,” a consequence of weight discrimination.
Because I’m relatively thin, it’s been easier for me to meet and get approval from other people. This has helped me make friends, find a life partner, develop professional contacts, and secure jobs. It also means I am treated with greater respect when I shop or eat in a restaurant. It means I have a larger choice of fashions at less expensive prices and never have to pay for more than one airline seat, making travel and its accompanying opportunities more accessible. I could go on for days listing the ways in which I have benefited from others’ perception of my weight, but I believe these simple examples make the point. I can think of very little in my life that is untainted by “thin privilege.”
Thin privilege is as strong as it is because weight bias is so pervasive. Research documents that fatter people face discrimination in employment (including lower wages), barriers in education, biased attitudes and lower quality of care from health professionals, stereotypes in the media, stigma in interpersonal relationships, and, overall, are judged negatively and treated with less respect. Weight discrimination has reached such great proportions that it now equals or exceeds discrimination based on race and gender.
In addition to the advantages thinner people receive from thin privilege, however, there are also costs. For instance, since I know that fat people are expected to meet greater demands for achievement, I can’t have a full sense of legitimacy in
my
achievements. I know that I landed my nutrition professorship in part because many
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
potential competitors were eliminated before they even reached the rigors of academia while other were weeded out along the way due to others’ biased assumptions about their nutritional habits. We do not live in a meritocracy.
Another cost we pay is not being able to feel truly valued for who we are. This is commonly noticed by people who lose weight and suddenly get more attention. They also feel enormous pressure, worried that if they regain the weight they will lose their new-found admirers. This wreaks havoc with their self-esteem.
All of us regularly judge and react to others. Sadly, we have all perpetuated weight bias ourselves. When we are subjected repeatedly to images of fat people as lazy gluttons, to images of thin people as attractive, desirable, and healthy, to notions that weight is completely controllable by diet and exercise or that fat causes people to get sick and die early, it should come as no surprise that these ideas have become ingrained in our psyches. Yet these “beliefs” are nothing more than cultural constructs of dubious scientific and social merit.
1
Weight bias harms everyone across the size spectrum. To understand how it might harm thinner people, consider these examples:
• As long as it is more difficult to live in a fat body, everyone fears becoming fat. The internalization of the belief that thinner is better drives the body anxiety that most people—fat
or
thin—experience. It fuels our preoccupation with obtaining or maintaining that “ideal” weight and conjures up the feelings of shame if we don’t. It also supports the development of eating disorders.
1
This is a short essay on thin privilege and it’s beyond space constraints to bust those myths here. For easy reading on those topics, download the “Health at Every Size (HAES) Manifesto” at
www.HAESbook.com
, or, for more detail, check out my book,
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
.
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
• An enormous amount of time, money, and energy is wasted trying to maintain or achieve a thinner body. Many of us put many aspects of our lives on hold until we achieve those elusive results. We avoid certain clothes, skip out on parties or other social ventures, postpone job searches, or hide in the background, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves until we lose the weight and feel more presentable.
• The oppressive values we absorb limit our world. When prejudice rears its ugly head, we become blinded by our preconceptions, unable to see people for who they really are. We are cheated out of seeing people in all their wonderful uniqueness because we’ve formed ideas about who they are long before we can really know someone. How many friendships and networking opportunities do we miss out on due to this prejudice?
Until our society fundamentally changes, we can’t completely escape or renounce the various privileges we have, whether it’s based on our size, skin color, socioeconomic status, education, or other attributes. We’re taught to recognize oppression as individual acts of meanness, not as a system (often invisible) conferring advantages. It may be painful to own our role as unfairly advantaged individuals, reaping benefits that at the same time limit and hurt others and ourselves. But whether or not you have actively chosen your privilege, if you are committed to fairness and social justice, I challenge you to be accountable for it; unearned privilege comes with responsibility.
Tips on Living Responsibly with Thin Privilege
Reflect on your privilege. How would your life be different if you were heavier? Think about your daily activities, whether it’s meeting a new person, buying a candy bar, ordering fried chicken, shopping for clothes, or speaking out on weight bias. Would others view or
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.
treat you differently? Would
you
feel more or less self-conscious about others’ judgments? More or less entitled in whatever you’re doing?
If you think weight bias doesn’t affect you, if you’re not outraged by what you learn from this exercise, keep repeating it until you understand. It may be hard to see yourself as a person of privilege; after all, you probably sincerely want to do the right thing and be a good person. Give yourself a break. You can accept your privilege without blaming yourself. No one expects you to carry the weight of our culture’s sins on your shoulders alone. You can use your privilege to make this a fairer, more compassionate world.
Challenge your assumptions about weight. No doubt you have absorbed some of the assumptions of our culture without critical thought. It’s not too late to do that critical thinking. Listen to what fat people say about their own lives and read the exposés that have been written about weight. Commit to fighting oppression. Explore the movements for Health at Every Size and Fat Acceptance.
Use your privilege responsibly. What are you going to do to lessen or end it?
This is an abridged version of a longer article that can be accessed through the Resources link at
www.LindaBacon.org
.
More information can be found in
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight
(
www.HAESbook.com
).
Excerpt from
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight
© 2010 by Linda Bacon.
May be freely distributed, provided that it remains in its entirety
and this copyright message appears. More info at
www.HAESbook.com
.