#fatphobia has killed people

[jenjensd]

If you ever consider a job where you have to care for people, you are not allowed to be a bigot. I don’t give a shut if you’ve “always wanted to be a nurse”. Quit. Now. If you are in a position where people depend on you, you cannot be selfish.

Doctors, Nurses, Teachers. If you are a transphobe, racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic, ableist, eugenicist, fatphobic, misogynist, any of that shit. Quit right fucking now. You cannot be trusted to care for people unless you are able to put aside your biases and help people.

We’ve all heard stories of that shitty bully who became a nurse and acts like they never tormented the weird kid at school. The nurses who don’t like you because you’re not a typical case. The doctors who dismiss the person with a brain tumour because she happens to be fat.

If you are a Fucking bigot about anything you can get the fuck out of your job. If you won’t help everyone no matter who they are, you cannot do your Fucking job.

[martyrbat]

in the newest edition of skinny bitch audacity (fatphobia):

comparing weight gain to... being a meth addict. and that you can look at someone and be qualified to say theyre degrading their health if they arent a small enough size for you to be attracted to them/be 'acceptable'

[IF YOU SHAME ADDICTS ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. IF YOU SHAME FAT PEOPLE ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. I WILL NOT WARN YOU TWICE.]

[lgbtlunaverse]

I've been wrestling with two beliefs I hold simultaneously but that I previously (incorrectly) thought were contradictory: that sexuality is inherently harmless, but also that specific kinds of sexual desire have been used to enact and justify grievous harm. The notion that men's sexuality is more important than women's consent, that white men's sexual access to white women must be protected from the "threat" of men of color, the idea that this specific kind of desire is so inherent to a proper society that if you have the wrong kind of sexuality you deserve to be shunned and harmed.

How can sexuality both be inherently harmless and measurably harmful?

Anyway, the answer is very easy, and part of why I feel like we should stop treating sex as something completely unlike other things and horniness as unlike all other emotions. Because I realized that, oh, right, this happens to other feelings too.

You know another feeling that is not inherently dangerous but is frequently used to enact and justify violence? Fear.

Fear is not inherently evil. Not even if it's irrational and your level of fear does not correspond to the level of danger you're actually in. In fact, irrational fears are such a common phenomenon we literally have a word for them: phobias. Which you are not evil for having. (Am I calling phobias the fear equivalnet of kinks? Kind of... I guess)

But fear and discomfort are used all the time to harm people. Let's say some random white woman is walking home late at night, and she notices a man is following her. This man might just be walking in the same direction by coincidence, but there's a small chance he's following her on purpose. It is quite natural for the mind to wander, and we frequently fear what we do not know. Discomfort or fear, in this situation, is neither inherently harmful nor unusual. However, if this white woman has been inundated her whole life with 'stranger danger' narratives and stories of women being brutally kidnapped, assaulted, and murdered by strangers. (Even though the vast majority of female victims are killed by someone they know, most often a romantic partner or family member) and she then, by the flash of a streetlight, spots that the man following her is black, and she has also been fed a narrative that black men are inherently violent and dangerous, that feeling of discomfort is enhanced and distorted until she believes she is in genuine danger and calls the police.

Statistically speaking, that guy really was just walking in the same direction, and is unlikely to be a threat. However she has now seriously endangered him, and justified it by the fact that she was scared.

A man justifying sexual assault because he couldn't help it, he was just so attracted to her. (And she led him on! She was barely dressed!) Is weaponizing his horniness in exactly the same way as people who call the authoroties on a disabled homeless person because they were "acting weird" are weaponizing their fear.

And all emotions can be weaponized this way. Anger is used to justify domestic violence ("you shouldn't have provoked me") Happiness and fun is used to jeoparidize safety (the last 30 years of olympic games have had a death toll among construction workers of over 116. The 2022 world cup alone has an officially admitted death count of 40, but the real cost is likely in the hundreds) disgust is used so often it's hard to restrict it to a single example (queerphobia, ableism, fatphobia, racism, misogyny, it's everywhere)

Sexual desire is just one way among many where the comfort of the powerful is valued above the safety of the opressed. It's not unique, but instead painfully common. And it's useful to keep this in mind not to devalue it or deny it's happening, but because we can borrow tactics and learn from similar situations rather than getting stuck on endless debates on whether porn is intrinsically evil or not, which will get us nowhere.

[fatphobiabusters]

This post is to remember the singer Cass Elliot who tragically died due to fatphobia. To put it simply, an entire life of cruelty about Cass Elliot's fatness caused her to resort to starvation diets, substance misuse, and what very well could have been an eating disorder. She attempted to survive the fatphobia by playing the fatphobic, stereotypical role of the "funny fat person." Not even in death was she allowed to escape fatphobia, as her tragic death was used as a fat joke by spreading a rumor that she had died by "gluttony." More specifically: choking on a sandwich. Despite that not being true, people continue to believe that debunked myth today. If not for this fatphobic society, Cass Elliot, an incredibly talented singer, would not have died at age 32, involuntarily leaving her only daughter parentless, and likely would have still been alive today.

If you're not sure who Cass Elliot was, this is one of her most iconic songs with her former band:

And here is a solo performance by her. Some people might recognize this song since it was apparently used for a TikTok trend:

For more details about the horrendous fatphobia she endured her entire 32 years, here is a video and two articles that explain. A trigger warning for the second article since it uses the slur "ob*se" and "overweight."

In memory of her, please do not call her "Mama Cass." She hated that nickname because it was used specifically due to fatphobic stereotypes.

If anyone needed an example of how deadly fatphobia has been for centuries, I hope you'll think of Cass Elliot, one of the plethora of people who have been killed by fat people's systemic oppression and still faces oppression to this day while 6 feet under.

-Mod Worthy

[the-overreactress]

I didn’t watch Gilmore Girls as it aired, and there are definitely people out there (likely some of my mutuals!) that watched it in 2000-2007. (For the record, I started watching it in syndication sometime around 2008.) But the thing is…I notice more and more that the show is intentionally misinterpreted or dissected using the standards and ideals of the 2020s. And you know, that tracks because it happens a lot with shows made during the 90s and early 00s. (Looking at you, 7th Heaven 😬)

I just…I feel like we also have to understand the cultural context for why a show like Gilmore Girls or any of the other WB teen dramas were made. The WB channel was created in the mid-1990s for several business related reasons, but one of them was to compete with teen programming made by UPN and Fox. The WB went through a lot of iterations (e.g. picking up Sister, Sister, original: the Jamie Foxx Show, Buffy, Felicity, Dawson’s Creek), but it’s primary focus at the time was making content for teenage girls. Gilmore Girls was the channel’s saving grace after a dip in viewing in 1999 until 2006 when the CW was formed with CBS.

Everyone has likely heard the story that ASP actually came up with the premise of Gilmore Girls on the spot when in a pitch meeting at WB, and it all evolved from there. The thing is…I just…other than the Connecticut setting and the WASP-y Gilmores, the references, music, and jokes of Gilmore Girls are entirely unique and pay homage to a bygone era of comedy. They’re also products of their time, both in positive ways and negative ones (i.e. any of the fatphobia jokes).

However, there’s not anything basic or cliched about having the likes of The Shins or any of the other alt/indie bands Lane, Rory, Jess, et al. listen to on a tv show in that era. In terms of music/soundtrack, Gilmore Girls is actually fucking stellar and better than the vast majority. You have to imagine Amy and the other music supervisors really knew what the fuck they were doing. (I’d kill for a biopic showing the making of Gilmore Girls from this angle!) Lorelai has peak Gen X taste, while Jess, Rory, and Lane are part of that really cool generation of Gen X/Millenial cuspers who got the best of the 80s, 90s and 00s underground.

Watching Gilmore Girls practically requires you to build up a certain level of pop cultural literacy. It’s actually why re-watches of the show are so great. You see and hear things you may not have seen or heard when you were 11, 15, 18, or even 28. I just wish this part of the show was given more attention and credit, in addition to the plots, characters, and fashion. It’s just as much part of the iconography of Gilmore Girls as the other things (if not more!)

[ayphyx]

Why is it that whenever someone talks about media literacy they only talk about things like rape, incest, pedophilia, and murder but never misogyny, racism, fatphobia, or ableism

Like it’s always about “problematic ships” and “evil characters” but never about how the treatment of woc in media influences how woc are treated in society and vice versa. How female characters are almost always the ones being singled out as “annoying” compared to male characters. Or how, yeah, there might be an in-story reason to why this lazy, depressed character is fat but societal views on fat people being lazy, depressed, unhygienic, etc., most definitely influenced the writer’s choice to make that lazy character fat.

I find that a lot of the “media literacy” arguments that pertain to subjects of sexual abuse and violence don’t really apply to other subjects in a way that isn’t wildly or even somewhat bigoted. Ofc there’s not gonna be a catch-all argument for how every theme should be treated in media but the arguments should at least be somewhat consistent.

I rarely ever see anyone talk about media literacy in a way that doesn’t boil down to “ok but liking evil/bad/taboo characters/themes/stories don’t make you a bad person and authors can write things they don’t agree about.” This statement isn’t wrong and i agree with it but it shouldn’t be your only knowledge on what media literacy is.

Sometimes, a story that has a rape scene in it depicts rape poorly. Whether its because rape was written in a fetishistic light or because the victims weren’t treated with the respect that they deserve, you need to be able to know how and why that scene is (cant think of a better word rn but I’ll probably change it later cause i don’t really like using this word) problematic. The fact that the story depicts rape isn’t the problem, it’s how they chose to depict it. And yes, how this story depicts rape can absolutely affect how a person views rape victims irl.

Sometimes, an author includes racist views into their work. Sure, depiction isn’t endorsement but when an author writes primarily about white characters, and has the first character of color in their book be executed as that character’s introduction, don’t be surprised when that author turns out to be a racist.

Yes, fiction isn’t one-to-one with reality but they both influence each other in a way that cannot be escaped. You will never find a piece of media that isn’t influenced by reality and you will never find a person whose views havent been influenced by a piece of media.

(Also, there is a tendency that i see in a lot of fandom “media literacy” people. And that is the tendency to use leftist, anti-racist phrases and terminology to refer to fandom discourse. “Kill the cop inside your head” refers to killing that part of your brain that has been drilled by society to view black, brown, and poor people as threats. It does not refer to people who don’t like your 20k incest fanfiction and are kinda mean about it. Stop fucking fandomizing anti-racist rhetoric. You just look fucking racist)

Sorry if this is kinda incoherent, I’m mostly just rambling.

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

Speaking on the fatphobia, especially when pertaining to monsters like hill giants, it is definetly a WotC problem. Like, if the hill giants had any other trait then being described as mean, greedy, and overall just being unpleasant to be around then I’m pretty damn sure they would do better. Certainly doesn’t help that they tack on the whole “not all (x) are like this” while not giving any actual examples in their books.

Exactly. Most people read the description, and basically all of them are like "this is a horrible person who makes games out of torturing and killing people and doesn't believe in bathing. Also they're stupid and nobody likes them." at which point someone who's a "maybe" based on looks, even a solid smash, can become a "no." Though the depiction has a lot to do with it as well. Like, the hill giant in BGG is the same creature as the one in the MM, still supposed to have all the same traits, but like

Maybe it's because I'm a lesbian and the right is a top tier body shape, but I feel like there's a difference. The left one's slack jawed expression does it. he's waddling around in dirty underwear with a stick and a slack jawed expression while it talks about how stupid and mean he is. The right one (who we'll poll on later) actually has some intent, and it just talks about how they throw rocks while running people over and devouring them like a living avalanche. Granted, also a little less stupid with only a -1 on intelligence instead of -3. but it doesn't spend the whole time throwing shade. and I'm sure that'll do a lot better!

[neuroticboyfriend]

thanks to ableism, heightism, and fatphobia, almost nothing is made to fit or work for my body ever. mobility aids. furniture. clothes. shoes. cars. etc. etc. if any of these do work out for me, they're usually expensive and i have a much more limited selection than abled, average height, straight sized people.

this isn't just inconvenience, either. things like furniture and shoes not being made for me causes me pain and takes a toll on my body, because i physically cant use them properly. making things fit me takes energy and money that i cant afford, but sometimes have to spend anyway. the safety measures in things like cars could injure or even kill me if i were to get in a bad accident.

being short, fat, and disabled in this society is so much harder than it has to be. it's unfair and downright dangerous that our bodies aren't being taken into account when designing almost everything around us. disabled people deserve better. fat people deserve better. people with short and tall stature deserve better.

we're just as much part of this world as everyone else, and we deserve to live in a world that acts like we exist.

[the5thcellar]

The only reason why people are against the perspective of Luke and Nicola having it, it's the internal fat phobia for me. Same thing for the group 'no chemistry' in the series. Anons wouldn't say all that shit about one sided crush from her, if she was indeed a woman with a skinny body, not a mid size one. The thing is she doesn't need it, cause she is ethereal and perfect in her way. She is a beautiful woman. She is gorgeous, while people project much of their own insecurities on her. Luke, though, is just the other typical male celebrity. If they'll ever jump on the train, it will certainly be him asking her out, not her following him. I don't see this woman in her golden retriever stage for anyone. She knows her worth and is sure to be aware of impulsive decisions of his.

OH CLOCK IT OMGGGGGGG. 193829293912% !!!!!!!!!!

I would like this post a hundred times if I could. I've been pretty much silent about the issue of fatphobia in the fandom because the arguments I've witnessed / been involved in on twitter ALWAYS get the same dead end responses - "not everything is fatphobia they just have no chemistry" / "you have to admit that Nicola isn't that attractive it has nothing to do with her weight".

It's LITERALLY fatphobia. Most of the times it's not even internalised - people are literally saying the quiet part out loud by insisting Nicola doesn't look good enough to warrant attraction from a "hot guy" like Luke.

LIKE BE SO FUCKING FR RN OMG ??? I've had to sit through people shipping SO many weird ass pairings that I personally felt were completely absurd - pairings that the mainstream audience ate up just because it was a skinny girl with a hot guy.

(Truth be told - and on a more relevant note - I literally felt like Phoebe and Regé had no chemistry. both of them were so absolutely compelling and gorgeous as individual characters but they didn't work together for me)

Isn't it strange how no one really said much about the previous two Bridgerton pairings where aesthetics were concerned... and were lauding the couples for all having such GREAT chemistry with one another ... but when it came to Luke and Nicola they were all suddenly so insistent that there was no chemistry at all and that their views are completely objective? Nah. Pack it the fuck up. All these people are fatphobic as hell.

What's made it worse is the bloody ozempic obsession that has swept over Hollywood in the past year. Suddenly celebs who used to advocate for body positivity are all skinny - doing a hypocritical 180 on the self love ethos they were preaching.

But anyway that's diving more into social commentary and I don't want to veer too far from the original content on this post.

So 100% yes - a HEFTY MAJORITY of polin antis and lukola antis are blatantly fatphobic. If you cannot imagine Luke Newton can EVER have feelings for Nicola but think him and A are obviously a great fit - you're fatphobic. You can pretend you're objective all you want ... but think about why you're so FUCKING QUICK to defend Antonia and say she'll be together with Luke forever / she's totally his type when 1) she's barely been in the spotlight - she's done no interviews or anything for y'all to even get enough of an idea of her personality to stan her or bat for her 2) y'all don't fucking KNOW his type you just assume it's skinny women because his celeb crush is dua lipa and everyone loves hot and skinny women right? newsflash guys my celeb crushes are Zac Efron and Mads Mikkelsen and HELL YEAH I'd fall over myself to date either of them... but in a fuck marry kill contest I'd still choose to marry Jack Black.

What you think is attractive as a fantasy is not always what you find attractive in a long term partner.

You're here on my page defending Antonia and insisting she's a better fit for Luke not because you know her, or like her, or even because you respect Luke. You're here on my page because you're using her as an excuse to come for Lukola. You're here on my page because you cannot imagine that a fat girl can be together with a "hot man."

Now check that.

[oddlittlestories]

Look I get that the way the show portrays fatphobia is intense…,

But please I’m begging you to acknowledge that while CHARACTERS are fatphobic, the SHOW is not

In Que Sera Sera the doctors spend the entire episode trying to pin the patient’s illness on his size. There IS portrayal of fatphobia, and it’s probably painful for some people to watch the character repeatedly advocate for himself because they won’t listen. But HE’S RIGHT. He’s right to advocate for himself, and he’s right about his body. His illness has NOTHING to do with his fatness and! AND! It’s NOT HIS FAULT.

I get that these days many of us prefer non-tragedies, representations of fat people living happy normal lives where they don’t die or generally experience fatphobia. I get that.

But this is a real experience real people face. And House MD unearths this and proves fatphobia wrong. It shows the BS and what it costs people.

The other fatphobia issue isn’t as good in my opinion, but it does show how horrific childhood bullying over fatness can be. It shows how fat people get blamed for being fat, their experiences denied.

And then you have the episode about the fitness trainer who NEEDS to be fat to be healthy. How her own internalized fatphobia is literally killing her. Look that is brilliant. Gorgeous exploration that imo holds up EXTREMELY well in the modern day. You could make her a fitness influencer and bam, no other modernizations needed (that I remember).

At the same time that plenty of other shows and people were vehemently on the fatphobia bus, this show said, “by the way, stop taking people to task for being fat. Sometimes it’s just how their body is, sometimes it’s because they’re sick, and sometimes being fat is the healthiest a person can be. Fatphobia shames, humiliates, and kills. It’s a prejudice. Go mull it over for a while.”

And I for one think that’s rad

[positivelybeastly]

Love seeing such nuanced and interesting explorations of the Big Blue! Speaking of big, how would you think Hank would respond to someone more indulgent in his hankering for Twinkies and such? With some of his body dysmorphia, do you think he'd be surprised to find someone appreciative of added bulk to his blue?

Thank you so much for the kind words! Apologies for the late reply, been on hiatus and have just started making a poke at my inbox.

So, I have some thoughts on this, because this has come up in both 616 canon and in alternate universes. Let's start with the alternate universes.

This is Hank McCoy of Earth-32098! He is friend shaped. He comes from a universe where . . . well, things are kinda cushy and moved past the need for conventional X-Men, really. Instead, there's an X-World, a Federation that Hank is a member of (which appears to be a Star Trek reference, given that he's on some kind of five year missions), and a lot of people have gotten old and settled down, hence the curious idea that Hank can go bald despite being furry. Then again, I've long been an advocate for Hank to be able to have facial hair despite being furry, so who am I to judge?

Hank looks relaxed and happy here, honestly! He's a bit rounder, but he is free, and I think that generally speaks to the fact that if Hank is eating well, then he's in a decent state of mind and he's being supported properly - he tends to do that genius thing of getting obsessed with an idea and not eating because must do science, so if he's eating well, he's being taken care of in a way that, generally, he isn't in Earth 616, or he's developed healthier behaviour patterns. There's no mention of him having a partner in this universe, but honestly, he's a jolly, happy fellow and his usual charming self, I expect he'd have no shortage of people interested in him. A partner encouraging of his shape and body would be a welcome surprise, I think.

Then we get into the less . . . positive, depictions of this.

First off, we have the Ultimate Universe, which is always a wellspring of healthy behaviour and kind words.

Like . . . this Hank isn't even fat?

He's just physically large because he's built like a brick shithouse. He has size 42 feet. You see him without a shirt on later and he's got full comic book godlike proportions going on, like, what here is even fat?

It was the early 2000s, so this just feels like braindead bullying, to be honest, but given that this Hank canonically struggles with his self-esteem and body dysmorphia even more than his other selves, to the point where it drives him to destroy his relationship with Ultimate Storm and gets him killed, I feel like he would have definitely benefited from someone being able to help out his headspace and get him to unlearn some of the garbage his parents abused into him. As much as I like his relationship with Ultimate Storm, she was not a version of the character equipped to deal with Ultimate Beast's mental trauma and issues, and he ended up in a bad place as a result.

Then we get to . . . 616 . . .

Where Hank becomes fat when he becomes evil.

I'm gonna link an article here, talking about fatphobia in comic books, but this is the salient part of the article, wrt Beast in particular.

This is me letting you all know that this is something comic book writers are still deploying in comic books in 2019, all the way up to 2024. Fat = evil. Fat = gluttonous = evil. Because, you know, why bother examining the way that we tell stories in an age where we're supposed to be more respectful and tolerant and accepting of people? Why bother examining the tropes we use, in this, allegedly the most welcoming of all X-Men eras?

And, you know, let's make some fat jokes here and there. Just in case you didn't get the message.

It's especially transparent because Percy established on Twitter that Beast was 'stress eating,' because of how much of a toll protecting Krakoa was taking on his person. Except that that's not what was actually happening. You saw Beast eat on panel, twice. Both times, they were while he was explicitly saying he was evil, or doing something transparently evil. He isn't stress eating, he's eating to demonstrate to the audience that he's a gluttonous pig who can't stop what he's doing because he's just so hungry and evil and he'll devour anything and everything and blah blah fuck off.

The stress eating garbage was Percy covering his ass for using shitty, outdated, fatphobic tropes to establish a visual language for Beast turning more and more evil. Because, you know, the fucking James Bond villain scar, the overgrown tusks (pig/boar imagery! Because he's a pig!), the actual visuals of him murdering countries and friends, aren't enough, you need to be shown that he's evil because he's fat, unlike our toned, lean, lithe heroes in X-Force.

It's such a shame because it's a good look for Beast, honestly. I love a blue furred Hercules as much as the next guy, but chunky thighs, love handles, a bit of roundness? It doesn't hurt. It's an attractive body shape.

I wish we didn't have to pretend it wasn't.

It's especially galling because we literally went from a bigger figure Beast in X-Force #48-50 when he became good again, to a lean, skinnier Beast in X-Men #1 coming next week because he's on a full on heroic team again.

Bleh. It frustrates me.

You had a question! And I've gone on a long ass tangent about problematic depictions of body shapes in comic books! My apologies!

I think that Hank would do well with a partner who doesn't mind a bit of a roundness to him. As I mentioned, Hank has a tendency to fall into bad patterns of self-neglect when he's busy, and someone who can not only be there to make sure he's taking care of himself, but assure him that he's a handsome, beautiful Beast whether he be bigger or smaller would be good for him.

I don't necessarily think it would 'fix' his image issues or dysmorphia, because I don't know if that lingering doubt ever goes away for Hank, but it would definitely help. And it probably would surprise him, even more than finding out that people actually really dig the fuzzy blue monster look.

[57sfinest]

What do you think about Evrart Claire? You mentioned you think about him in one of your tags I think.

okay i will first direct to you to trusted mutual @sydmarch for the most in-depth evrart thoughts with the appropriate warning for nsfw lmfaoo

but like. evrart is one of those characters where you have an initial knee-jerk reaction to them and then you kinda have to reevaluate after all is said and done because you get a LOT more context on them as you go.

most shallowly, you're meant to see evrart as the slimy "fantastically corrupt" union (mob) boss who sits in his office embezzling and making others do his dirty work (the hardies as his enforcement, you as his little errand dog, you get the point). however, a first point i want to make is that comparing a justified labor or civil rights advocate group to a "mob" is such a ubiquitous piece of capitalist/bigot rhetoric that it should automatically clue you in to the fact that something else is going on here. also taken in context with the fact that kortenaer poses as a scab to break the strike, further framing the union as a lazy, entitled, unreasonable splinter faction of stupid socialists-- obviously we know that the people who made this game are leftists, so it's not just Ough Unions Bad. there is Something Else Going On! because we are seeing this union strike filtered primarily through the lens of someone who is, consciously or not, a moralintern lackey! even at his most self-aware, calling himself the moralintern's bitch, harry does not have enough awareness of the world and his role in it to recognize how he is being manipulated by the various agendas at play here, and that affects our perception of it.

i think evrart presents as corrupt and weaselly on purpose! again syd has said a lot of this already & i've added some stuff in their tags, but i'll reiterate here for convenience. he is aware of the rhetoric people can use against him and he uses that to his advantage. he's using his personal reputation as misdirection. we see in dialogue that even joyce, an ultraliberal diehard capitalist who obviously dislikes the union, concedes that it was respectable in and of itself before the claires came in:

and we can infer that a lot of that might be because the union was *less effective before the claires took charge*. of course a capitalist will respect an ineffective labor union! but on top of this, the claires' open "corruption" give anti-union people an easy target for criticisms that serve to legitimize the union itself. oh, they say, well, the union is alright, it's just the claires that are ruining it. it's misdirection and it's genius. evrart's reputation isn't a concern if the union is doing its job, right? and here's another thing: i think people will trust open corruption more than they'll trust altruism that seems to good to be true. especially in a world with something like moralism, where this organization has killed millions and will kill *millions more* for a "greater good" that is literally just the status quo. if evrart's corruption is an open secret, as joyce puts it, people feel they can trust him *because* he's transparent about the bad things he supposedly does or supports or whatever. at least he's honest, right?

this makes the juxtaposition of evrart with joyce SUPER interesting, too. i think they both have that 'honest about their bad traits' way of going at people- joyce with her self-aware but relentless ultraliberalism, evrart with his intentionally misrepresented agendas. of the two, i think people tend to like joyce a lot more, despite her and evrart using pretty much the *same exact tactics*, and i think that tendency is largely explained by the intersection of gender and fatphobia and ingrained capitalist rhetoric, but i digress.

yes, the way evrart's little tasks are presented makes them *feel* slimy- you're evrart's peone, you're a little bitch dog running his errands to get a gun you never should have lost to begin with, he knows how to help and he's toying with you- but it's on purpose!! you can be joyce's little bitch dog too and it's not framed anywhere near as scummy. It Is On Purpose. because if evrart pretends to be the "socialist" mob boss, maybe it really does get martinaise the youth center, or enough money to, you know, fix the crumbling buildings that could kill the tenants at any moment. there are genuinely good things he is sincerely trying to accomplish. he is curating his image exactly as he needs it to be to get things done and that's partly why joyce hates him *so much*.

and of course this isn't to say that the claires never do anything wrong. contracting dros to kill the previous union head, for example. if i had to pin evrart's major sin, i think he's an "end justifies the means" type of guy. the other union head candidate needed to die for progress to be made. the fishing village will have to go so we can build martinaise up properly. some people, if not willingly cooperative- like harry- need to be used for their status regardless. we see the union at the opposite end of "for the greater good" as moralism: where moralism wants to stall the world, the union represents ruthless progression. why else the red-vs-blue juxtaposition of the union vs the moralintern and its financial interests? the red banners draped over shipping containers?

[audhdnight]

I made a post about fatphobia and how being fat is not bad or automatically unhealthy, and about how food holds no moral value. Got this comment:

First of all, being “overweight” by bmi standards means nothing because bmi is bullshit. But also, the studies that claimed to show higher weight being a risk factor for disease have been debunked. There is no sound evidence to suggest that being fat will give you heart problems and diseases and kill you early.

Secondly, all food adds nutrients to your body. In different quantities yes, but that really doesn’t mean much. Obviously we eat to fuel our bodies, but we also eat for enjoyment. You are not required to eat only the most nutrient dense foods. I would also like to point out that calories are what add fat to the body, not whether your food has more or less nutrients, and that is not a bad thing either. Plus, it’s not like every fat person is just on an increasing weight train, a lot of us stay pretty much the same weight for years at a time, and fat people are allowed to gain weight too.

And third of all, idk what the rest of that last sentence was supposed to say because I blocked this person before they could comment more filth, but the “especially female bodies” bit shows their misogyny quite plainly. Big men are just big men, but big women are disgusting because women are supposed to be tiny and fragile and dainty and feminine (barf)

(Also, this is why I say food and heath have no moral value. A lot of the worst most violent fatphobes claim they’re “just looking out for your health” and while we all know that’s not true, they act as if being unhealthy is both a) a choice you made, and b) a moral failing. It’s okay to be unhealthy, whether that be because of your weight or a disability or an illness (both physical and mental). How well you take care of yourself is not an indicator of how good of a person you are, it wouldn’t be even if your health were completely up to you like these people pretend. Which is why even if you could be smaller, even if you’re only fat because you made the choice to only eat food you enjoy and not to exercise, that’s still okay. It’s okay to be big. You are not required to “put in the work” and not doing so does not make you a bad person. We have to separate morality from health and fitness. Anything else is not only fatphobic, but also usually ableist and classist too.)

[genderkoolaid]

I'm interested in what others think of this video.

On one hand, it discusses fatphobia in a very easy-to-understand manner. It covers the racist, eugenicist, unscientific history of BMI, how it was used by insurance companies, the construction of the obesity epidemic using poor science, talks a good bit about men with eating disorders, calls out the "calories in calories out" model as well as the individualization of health rather than looking at systemic issues, and talks about anti-fat bias as a fact which harms people.

But on the other hand... I was disappointed by how lukewarm it felt. Like, the bring up that the deaths attributed to obesity were grossly inflated, and that doctors are negatively biased against fat patients... but they never connect the two? Like, they never say "hey, maybe the reason why fat people have poor health is in part because doctors are killing them via gross medical neglect"? Or questioning what exactly is counted as a "death from obesity"? Instead, they kind of say "the obesity epidemic is inflated, and might not be an epidemic, but also we aren't saying for sure its not a problem at all."

And they also never bring up the science of diets & how they don't work! They discuss diet culture and are very critical of diets, but they don't discuss how diets have been shown to fail by many studies. And they also don't bring up Health At Any Size & how that tactic has been shown to improve health regardless of whether or not there's weight loss. Their advice for how to deal with this problem is basically "don't fatshame people," which isn't wrong but its also doesn't really encourage people to confront internalized & systemic fatphobia on a meaningful level. I don't think they ever say the word "fatphobia."

Its just... disappointing! Like on one hand, you could say this video is good as an introduction into how the fatphobia industry has been built for people who have very little knowledge on it and are resistant to anti-diet culture ideas. On the other hand, its annoying that even leftist media is still so hesitant to actually engage with more radical fat liberation- most people don't even know that its been a movement since the 1960s. It just feels like a missed opportunity. It feels like the left is stuck at "don't be mean to fat people!" and refuses to move on to more radical notions of fat people as an oppressed class.

@fatphobiabusters do you have any thoughts on this?

[pine-needle-shuffle]

:0! I’d love to hear your Wedge thoughts!

I want to preface that a lot of my observations and feelings stem from my personal experiences, which is why I had said I felt very empathetic. Also, discussions of fatphobia, be warned is all. This turned out a bit more negative, at least in the beginning, than I had originally intended. There's just a lot of experiences and feelings that feed into how I understand him, and that means talking about some less than fun topics first.

There's something about how he presents himself and how he is treated(in several regards) that is very familiar to me. Deep down, he's a very nervous person, he shows this in varying degrees to different people. Oddly enough, he hides it from the people he's closest to. but in a way, that makes sense. if you're used to being in the out group, whatever that may be, you will put up with a lot in order to have a group at all.

His friends very clearly care about him, but there's little things here and there that clearly hurt, things that get brushed to the side. Jokes that, on the surface, are meant to come off as "endearing" or "supportive", but carry a quiet message. One that's hard to pick up on unless you're on the receiving end.

While I truly believe that Jessie and Biggs mean the best, a good portion of what we see when they interact with him is. Not nice. There's a jab about his love life, or lack there of (what's implied to be the reason for that?). There's the way him getting injured was shrugged off (or even the fact that they'd hit him, 'as a joke'. That shit still hurts even if you've got 'padding'). And, in a couple of instances, it feels like they hold him back, like he's going to embarrass himself.

And this all feeds into that feeling of inadequacy that he describes after the parachute fall. He plays into the role of "the funny one", cause why else are they keeping him around? Because clearly he isn't anyone to be taken seriously. This is the one thing about the writing that I can stomach, that there's a clear effect on him from how he's treated. As much as I'd rather he not get treated like this at all. Par for the course, unfortunately.

But he legitimately has so much merit. He's the teams exit strategist, he's an impeccable shot, he's willing to put himself in danger for others even when he isn't the most qualified to do so (Cloud's the fighter for hire, and he took a shot for the guy anyway). It's clear he has a deep love for his community in the slums, and is just an incredibly kind person.

Despite his own reservations and anxieties, he does what he thinks is right, just, with the understanding that it could very well get him killed. He calls himself a coward, he always puts others first to the point he's worried he's a burden, but he truly does so much. And he's very emotionally intelligent, being the only person to see that Cloud actually cared about what he was doing in the beginning. He's just severely underappreciated, and it messes with how he views himself.

I think he deserves the world, honestly.

[unhetalia]

I really want to talk about fatphobia for a second. This isn't directed at anyone in particular, but it's still something I want to talk about.

Let me start off by summarising an incredible article from The Guardian -

Fatphobia is a problem in our society, and it's a problem that kills fat people. Fat women are less likely to receive cervical cancer screening and breast cancer screening than non-fat women, and are more likely to die from both conditions than non-fat women. All on the basis of weight.

Unfortunately, while leftist spaces have become more aware of issues such as racism and homophobia, fatphobia has basically remained pretty rampant, and a study done at Harvard showed that "body-weight attitudes showed the slowest change toward attitude neutrality" (read an article written about the study here, if you don't want to read through that .pdf).

Mostly it's because fatness is often perceived as a choice, despite a lot of research that disputes this. Whether it's genetics or environment, stress, inequality, or even the medication you take, fatness isn't necessarily a choice someone makes, and that even when someone successfully loses weight, it's often temporary, with "sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority."

It's hard to explain what this has to do with Hetalia, and why I'm posting this on my Hetalia blog, but I'm going to try.

I am sometimes frustrated by Himaruya's depiction of Alfred's 'struggle' with weight.

Alfred is drawn as very fit and thin - so to me, his fear of scales, his obsession with diet, asking other countries how they eat to stay thin... all of it looks like it stems from body dysmorphia. EXCEPT, other characters validate Alfred's obsession. We have the Hetalia strip where Alfred has to convince his boss that his weight gain is due to muscle, and not because of fat.

It's difficult, because as a reader, we're supposed to understand that in this case, Alfred represents the U.S., yet at the same time, Himaruya brings Alfred back into it by discussing his physique. So now I'm left wondering why you would think someone like Alfred, who is very much not drawn as a fat man, is being forced to justify his weight to anyone.

Then we as a fandom pick it up, and he's still incredibly fit and thin but at the same time he's fat-shamed, and characters talk about how his burgers and fries and cola and grease are making him fat, once again perpetuating that being overweight is a character failure, and one that Alfred has (and secondarily, all Americans).

I just wish we were a little bit more careful about this in the same way that we became more careful about differing cultures and politics because, as I have tried to highlight above, it's a prejudice that is rampant in society and we should care about not perpetuating it.