As a follow-up to some of my recent posts, I’m offering this as some additional thoughts about thin privilege and how we label large bodies.
I’d highly recommend reading the full article, and reading others that Your Fat Friend publishes. They have great content.
If you aren’t reading the whole article before you comment, please say so.
[Note from Kari: I’d also love it if folks would stop using “normal” or “regular” to refer to non-plus sized or petite clothes. Talk about othering bodies!]
What You’re Telling Your Fat Friend When You Call Your Body “Average”
When “average” stops being mathematical and becomes a value judgment“ - Your Fat Friend
“ As an undeniably fat person, descriptors are often foisted on my body without my input or consent. So rather than stumbling around language for someone else’s body, I do what I have long wished others would for mine: just ask.
“Why should I have to?” She bristles at my question, like so many straight size people before her. Her body has the privilege of disappearing, a cultural default that never needs to be named. Mine deviates, and is often named by others, without my consent. She is baffled at the thought of having to name her size; I am perplexed at the thought of not having to name, explain, and excuse mine. Despite my good intentions, I am now wading through the minefield of both of our bodies, looking for guidance from the expert of her own terrain.”
“ When it comes to defining average, bodies with privilege are often in the cultural driver’s seat, defining normalcy — and “average” — for the rest of us. Unintentionally or not, those of us with body-based privilege become accustomed to centering ourselves, often at the expense of those around us.”
“ For many, average is about a yearning for erasure, and the comfort of forgetting how hard it is to live in a body. It’s about the cold war so many of us wage against our own skin, desperate to forget the bodies we put so much stock in. And it’s about the discomfort of recognizing that, despite all those deep and difficult internal struggles, we may still benefit from the social privilege of being smaller than the average. After all, the average American body still has to find specialty plus size stores in order to get their size — something many people in self-proclaimed average bodies don’t need to do. That doesn’t mean they don’t experience body-based struggles — just that they haven’t traversed the bright line into undeniable fatness that so many plus size people have.”
