"“WHY, IF SOCIETY WANTS ME TO BE THIN, CAN I NOT FIND CLOTHES TO EXERCISE IN?” Oh, it makes lots of..."

Comment I got on this post.

Reading comprehension, assumptions and logic are a bitch, ACTUALLY.

(via definatalie)

I just want to dissect this comment that definatalie received because it sort of encapsulates everything about fatphobia that I’ve been facing recently and does it very, very neatly, it’s as if someone compressed the enormity of fatphobia (LULZ, did you see what I did there?), fat hatred, and some other rancid *isms that like to hang with fatphobia because they’re BFF’s and put it into a few choice words. 

1. Commenter said: “The vast majority of people who exercise aren’t fat. BECAUSE THEY EXERCISE. High demand, high supply.”

The old “fat = bad diet, no exercise” assumption. Fatphobia loves this one because it some how is supposed to prove that fat is indeed a sign of moral and personal failing, that you can look at someone and know, instantly the quality of their self-care, work ethic, and other traits. Because if fat is your own fault, and entirely the result of you actively being lazy (because that’s the WORST thing you can be, OF COURSE), then you have defense, and that makes you fair game. 

Because the entire point was never to improve your self-care (if it indeed ever did need improving), the point was never to be concerned about your health. The point was to have a handy justification for hatred, meanness, prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination. 

After all, if you trumpet around study after study (whether they’re scientifically sound or not) about how fat people are going to get sick, because of Death!Fat and OMG!Diabetes and Epic Cholesterol and Heart Imploding Heart Disease of Heart Doom and then suggest that the way to improve a failing health care system is to make health care and items helpful to better self-care less accessible for those who you believe are most likely to get sick, you kind of need an excuse to prove they don’t deserve care and that their problems are self-made. 

Because eating too much or not exercising enough - or eating well and exercising but still being fat - are crimes worthy of being deprived of, say, medical care and dignity and compassion from other people. Is there a flow chart or spreadsheet I can get that tells me how many pounds equals what loss of medical care, because obviously my fat ass is straining the health care system beyond what it can take. 

So if I can’t get instantly skinny, the answer must be that I should be deprived of care, or that it should be more expensive for me, or that discounts should be denied me. 

If I’m just a little overweight (maybe 10-15lbs), can I still get annual checkups (pap smears, breast exams, prostate checks) and minor surgery, but not major surgery or chemotherapy?

If I’m really fat (30-50lbs over weight), do I even get stitches or antibiotics or just a lecture while I’m bleeding on the ER floor?

If I’m death fat (over 50 lbs) do I even get let inside the ER or just shooed away? Will my fat carcass even be returned to my friends and family should I die while being told, “Tsk, tsk, now if you just hadn’t eaten all those donuts, maybe somebody would actually try to save your life. Don’t you wish you hadn’t eaten them? Don’t you feel bad?”

Because obviously, this is all about my health. This is about SAVING THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. This is about justice and the American way and the glory of capitalism and other Really Awesome Things, right?

Otherwise you look like a hateful, sadistic fuckface who singled out a group of people to target based solely on their appearance and enjoys it when people they suffer a lot. Which would kind of make you something of a specialized sociopath who selectively dehumanizes certain people and then chooses to harass them with a sense of evil glee, wouldn’t it?

2. Commenter said: ”Because if they did, they wouldn’t be fat to begin with.”

So, following this train of logic, once someone discovers that they have become fat (I know the day I realized that I was obese was a day of stunning revelation for me, I mean WHY HADN’T ANYONE TOLD ME I WAS A BIG FAT FATTY?), and then decides “hey, I’d like to exercise and modify my body to be at a different weight”, your response is to tell them “sorry, fatty, you shouldn’t have gotten fat in the first place”.

Again, somehow this “concern” for people’s health doesn’t really lead to them getting healthier. Because unless the comments come with a time machine and a helpful guide on how not to get fat in the first place (BTW, you’re SOL if gaining weight happened due to a medical condition, you’re just gonna have to suffer, fatty).  

3. Commenter said: “Capitalism is a bitch, eh?”

A bitch this person doesn’t seem to understand all that well, actually. Especially when it comes to intersections between market forces and popular prejudices. 

The thing is, businesses don’t always do what makes the most sense economically when *isms get involved. Case in point: many, many businesses in the U.S. actively refused to do business with non-white people for decades. Do you think Black people in the U.S. didn’t want to buy things (ie, demand products) before the Civil Rights Act? Do you think they didn’t want to buy cars, clothes, food, shoes, and all the other things people like/need to purchase? 

Yet company after company turned away a source of revenue out of prejudice, not business sense. 

So it may be that those who design exercise clothing, market it, and are involved in it’s manufacture at a high level where decisions are made hold prejudices against fat people, believing that fat people don’t exercise, so there’s no demand. Or they simply just don’t want to design and sell exercise clothing for fat people because, well, they “shouldn’t have gotten fat in the first place”. 

Which is, of course, out of concern for how unhealthy it is to be fat. 

Also, keep in mind that supply and demand don’t just run one way. People will stop or fail to demand things as consumers if they believe the supply isn’t there. If I believe no one makes exercise clothing for fat people, I’m not going to spend time searching for it and making purchases. Even if it’s there, unless it’s well advertised (has anyone even seen an ad for plus sized exercise clothing in the mainstream? Commercial? Newspaper ad? Billboard? Flier? Anything?), the demand is going to be extremely low, but not due to a lack of desire for the product on the part of potential consumers.

Or: there’s a reason there’s an advertising industry.  

4. Commenter said: “Should have thought about it before eating that 3rd big mac for breakfast, fatty.”

Ever notice how these types of remarks never accuse fat people of eating too many filet mignons, too much escargot, maybe eating too many fine Belgian chocolates, indulging themselves in one too many white truffle risotto dishes or going to Daniel or Le Cirque (both five start, HIGHLY expensive restaurants in NYC, fyi) one too many times. 

Always it’s pizza, burgers, MacDonald’s, ice cream, french fries, donuts, fried chicken, cake, candy - fast food or food that’s more associated with the lower classes. Never mind if you, actually fat person, have never been to McDonald’s and maybe are allergic to say, gluten, thus making pizza, cake, donuts, and a lot of other “bad” foods completely off the menu for you. 

This is why fatphobia and so many other *isms get along so well, why they’re BFF’s, because society has this similar theory about Why People Are Poor. We see a woman with children paying for food with EBT or food stamps and we think “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you had three kids, bitch!” or we see her buying some wildly outrageous luxury item (brand name cereal *gasp*, fresh fruit *gasp*) that isn’t bread, eggs, or milk (what the FUCK can you even make with those things?).

We like to think that someone’s choices are so easy to dismantle and dissect, that obviously, if someone finds themselves in a situation where they’re poor (or fat or both) that you can trace the root of it back to one lousy decision, one sin after another until finally this person has just driven themselves to poverty and/or obesity and expects good, hardworking, thin people to bail their fat asses out. 

Because it’s more important to stand by the principle of “bad choices get punished” than to help them. Because better to see people living in squalor and decay, better to see people eating the only crap available to them, better to see people unable to access care and items/services that would assist with better self care, better to see the bodies drop, better to just watch the suffering and let them fall through the cracks and meet their well-deserved fates than to waste compassion or empathy or understanding on these hideous fools. 

Because that’s how it goes. Because (self) righteousness is more important than righting wrongs. Because even if compassion and understanding and respect and a shedding of dominance and oppression would create this wonderful, prosperous, equal society in which we all lived happily and peacefully, it’s not worth it if we have to surrender our scorn. Because we’d rather just keep on hating each other. 

Which leads me back to the original comment. Obviously, the answer to a fat person who wants to exercise but can’t find the clothes for it is to tell them it’s their fault for getting fat in the first place. This will obviously help them exercise in their invisible Shame!Clothes and lead to them losing weight and becoming thin. 

Congratulate yourself, anonymous commenter. YOU HAVE SOLVED THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC IN ONE SWIFT MOVE. Fat people will now begin dropping the pounds in a veritable wave of weight loss, because you have told them that they should have thought about it before having the 3rd big mac for breakfast. Now they’ll only eat ONE big mac for breakfast. You’re like THE MOTHER TERESA OF FAT PEOPLE, YOU RADIANT SAINT, YOU. 

(via madamethursday)

Ok trolls, pack up your internets and go home now. CONSIDER YOURSELVES TOLD BY MADAMETHURSDAY.

(In all seriousness massive props madamethursday, I was far too @%@#$@#%@#$ to get into it!)