#thin people suffer from fatphobia too

[orangepeelshortbreadcookies]

Hello!!! sorry i jum in here but i saw many post of your as a polin pen hater. You can hate what you want of course but its necessary to lie just to hate a character because of her body??? it wasnt that bad, she was not mean.

yes, what she did telling the ton marinas secret was not the best choise but it was what she thought it was the only way. Do you all wish for colin a marriage with not love?? and in a more practical way this is fiction and we all now he was going t end with pen , they are end game and thi is romance, its suppouse to be romantic that theu found each other, and for me it is. She didnt told marina secret because she wants colin for herself , she never thought she cold have him. maybe yo dont understand this but we, fat girls who are foung unattractive NEVER expect love or having a man, even less somone like colin. I think you, as many sadly, jugdge Pen actions too strong and deep down its all becuase of how she looks. Depp down i know you judge her action strongly becuase you can't accept that a woman who looks like that get something. I know you will keep hating, just want to say my opinion

(2) I saw you ask once why we ( pen fans) are mad when people hate her like you do if we got everything, saying like she happy and get married and LW. i will answer that from my perspective. Im fat, people is mean and that herats and yes, maybe it not a good things but it nice to have a revenge for all that suffering , but beside that i feel represented FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME in a romance show, ALL THE ROMANCE FEMALE LEADS AND THIN WOMAN and for the first times she looks like me but everyone is hating her becuase of how she looks and the worst is anyone accept its becuase of that, you all write long essays jugdging her actions but as i said, Were her actions that bad???? think about it fr......

Others please also refer to this post for more context.

I did not intend to answer this ask, because honestly, I'm really very lazy. Since there are only so many ways I can make my argument against the same accusation over and over again, especially to someone who clearly doesn't want to listen, I figured ignoring was the right decision. I'd rather spend my creative energy and efforts on my own writings, instead of figuring out another elaborate wording on how being critical of a character's actions does not equate fatphobia, and that personal adversity does not equal a 'get out of jail' free card for repeatedly inflicting pain on other people on a mass scale. I've talked about it in depth in my own blog, as well as reblogging other eloquent, well thought-out posts from others, Polin fans and anti-Polin fans alike. You can just scroll through my blog to see that. But I don't think you have come after me, time and again, to be convinced.

Even now, I still think ignoring you would have been the smarter, or at least, easier course of action for me. But I digress. Maybe it's one of those days where I feel more confrontational, maybe my ADHD is acting up and my meds are not hitting as well today, maybe after weeks of stress-filled personal achievements I'm feeling talkative seeing someone trying to disturb my peace. Nontheless, since you've made diligent efforts in seeking out my response, today's your lucky day, once and for all.

Something my mutuals and followers might have learned about me, is that I, being pretty fucking lazy, don't post/write a lot. To remedy this, when I do post, oftentimes I try to be as thorough as I possibly can. So, in the spirit of being thorough, here's a little log of the things I have received in the past weeks, on this site as well as on AO3, some of which, @cherryblossom970sblog, I have reasons to believe came from you

So you feel represented by character. Awesome. Good for you. You should celebrate it with like-minded people. You think nobody likes Penelope the way you do? Find the ones who do. I can assure you, they exist. I saw them daily on my dash. Read fics that bring you joy. Don't read the ones that don't. I have seen way too many Penelope/Anthony, Penelope/Benedict or even Penelope/Gregory fics, or fics where Penelope just straight up abused Colin that are celebrated in the comments. I don't like those and you know what I do? Scroll past those fics or click out of those and not read them. You know what I don't do? Go after the writers, try to police their writing, and accuse them of bigotry for not catering to my preferences.

Accept the fact that it's not going to be a 100% percent approval rating. And that's fine. That's part of life. I'm a primary Benophie fan, I've seen people wanting Benedict to end up with different people. It's their prerogative, I leave them alone. I have mutuals who have different takes on actions of Kate, Edwina, and Anthony, with varying degrees of feelings regarding how season 2 ends, and I have my own opinions. Personally, I find all three parties were wrong in that triangle, especially Anthony, and the sisterhood between Kate and Edwina in that season ought to have been handled with more respect and care. And my mutuals and I have civil, nuanced discussions about such things and ending those with still different opinions. That's okay. They're fictional characters and their actions are up to character analysis. It's fine.

What ISN'T fine is obssessively stalking inboxes of strangers, REAL people, unleashing insane level of hate and prejudices in defence of a FICTIONAL character, and accusing them of crimes they OBJECTIVELY did not commit, all because they don't share your opinions. I know you don't think this kind of behaviour is okay, you said so yourself that it's not a good thing. You've experienced fatphobia, you have my sympathies for that, but it doesn't give you the right to be shitty to other people. Your own bad experiences do not entitle you to disrespect, dismiss, invalidate and insult the people you harassed, including me, many of which are WoCs who have valid concerns regarding how their own experiences are represented and treated on the show. My struggles of being a bisexual, Asian, immigrant woman does not excuse me from being toxic to people who have done me no harm. I will not be vindicated in demeaning someone who have criticisms against the actions of fictional character who share my traits, criticisms that I just happen to disagree with.

And frankly, I find reducing the nuances of a character or person to only their bodies, to contribute (as either condemn or excuse) their actions to be only the result of their bodies, fucking insulting. It's infantalising and dehumanising.

Have a nice day and happy shipping. Leave us alone.

[darrengrave]

All in all, I can boil down the things I don't like into actually a fairly small list;

- no psychosexual element to pyramid head? is it even sh2 without it, really.

- half of the key ph moments felt really off to me, particularly the first look (they fucked up the pacing for like no reason? He's not supposed to appear until after you hear that man's dying scream, there was no build up like the og's "wtf was that?" to "wtf IS that???" to immediately finding a body in his wake. I also thought it was too bright and you can see him too clearly.), mannequin/closet scene (apart from the lack of psychosexual menace, the blocking, storyboarding, and pacing was just weird in a bad way, it wasn't creepy or threatening), and hospital hallway scene. The hallway scene was just a mess.

- mary/maria's actress had an impossible act to follow and she was functionable most of the time but man was the delivery of "anyway", "i'm not your mary", the hotel hallway dialogue, and letter flat and disappointing. she particularly doesn't ever get angry or menacing enough.

- the insane level of just flat out mean-spirited fatphobia of changing a scene of eddie eating a regular food after empying the entire contents of his stomach to literally shoveling ice cream into his face with his bare hands

- the way that they decided to make the sweater the 19 year old sexual abuse victim wore to conceal her body paper thin and clinging to her body.. like so thin that sweater would be actually see through in real life

- real time models used for most of the cutscenes was a mistake for a $70 game and the scene after the tape looked rough

- I felt like the prison was a drag which was really disappointing compared to the heavy oppressive menace of the original, so oppressive that the og prison is always just as scary as when I first played it over a decade ago

- Nurses outside the hospital

- Didn't care for any time an item pickup triggered a monster wave, particularly in the overworld where the fog turned into a storm. Felt lazy and boring to me.

- Really leaning into Angela's panic attack as much as possible at the end of the mirror scene. That's a moment that doesn't need heavyhandedness at all. It only suffers from it. It actually needs restraint. Her reacting as if James was going to hurt her just because he stepped closer to her is more than enough to get across what happened to her. This version just felt cringe at best, voyeuristic at worst.

- Not allowing you to linger on the flaming staircase or futally attempt to follow Angela. But this is bloober "some people are so damaged that they should just die" team so it probably never even crossed their minds that most players try to follow her on the stairs because they want to save her.

- The weird changes to puzzles and events but also directly referencing them as if they'd be done before. I thought FOR SURE this was going to be revealed as an eva requel like ff7 with a time loop or something, because it's flat out just weird otherwise, and now it's just a weird choice.

- The traversal stutter. It was my main criticism of the gameplay trailer and it did not get better.

- How inaccessible the og is for new players, of course. Ff7 and most of the resident evil games are ported to basically everything, for comparison. Fans can mod an enhanced edition for pc but konami can't do shit? I don't think so.

[my-exmo-life]

|| TW for Mormonism, internalised fatphobia, discussions of fatphobia and diets, negative self talk ||

Pls excuse me I’m mildly tipsy (but not tipsy enough that I can’t add a TW bc we respect people here on this blog)

You know what we don’t talk about enough? The idealisation of thinness in the Mormon church.

All the aesthetics and ideals are of these size 0 blonde white women and, shockingly, that’s harmful.

I discovered this week that wearing a skirt is triggering for me bc it makes me look a little bigger and makes my belly relax from the default “must suck in”.

IM NOT EVEN OVERWEIGHT.

I’m a little “bigger” than I “should be” according to society but dear fucking god who cares?? Call the goddamn police, I guess it’s a crime to love food.

I bought a beautiful skirt. It’s got kinda witchy vibes. These cool suns and moons and it’s so breathable and comfy. I wore it work. AND GUESS FUCKING WHAT. I was uncomfortable all day.

I looked fucking amazing even tho I was just at work. But my stomach said lol nope you don’t get to be comfy without suffering.

I’ve taken to just measuring the waists of pants I want to buy so I don’t have to try them on (usually works just fine) so I did that to a pair of jeans I was wanting to buy (I’d already bought a smaller size that didn’t fit and I was doing a great job feeling neutral about having to size up)

So I measured the waist and saw it should fit but out of paranoia I measured my own and IT HAD GONE UP 10 FUCKING CENTIMETRES.

So I tried the jeans on anyway bc hey, why not, I feel like shit anyway. And it was too tight. Logically I know I was just bloated and shit but there was that little voice in my head that was going “fat, gross, disgusting, whale, etc”

And it sounded just like all the Mormon women that came before me. My mom. My grandmother. My aunt. All women I love and adore and who I don’t have a single memory of when they weren’t on a diet.

I hate that fat phobia is so baked into this religion. I’ve been out for going on 3 years and it’s still fucking affecting me. I can’t wear my beautiful new skirt because it fucks me up too much.

I’m planning to deprogram myself so I can just wear the fucking skirt but I have no idea how long it’ll take. I’ll do it tho. I know that much.

Also guess what. I measured my waist again the next morning. Back down ten centimetres.

If we ever want girls and women and just people in general to feel even slightly normal about their bodies we need to teach them about weight fluctuations and that they’re normal.

I know through experience and research that they’re normal. But I still felt like shit in that moment. It’s just fatphobia, plain and simple.

[not-she-which-burns-in-it]

A Study in Emerald

The brainrot has fully consumed me, I'm writing fanfic for the first time since 2018. Any kudos or interaction on AO3 would be super appreciated.

Summary:

A character study for each of the major Magnus Archives characters, starting with Jon and Martin. Exactly 1,500 words each, it's a look at their perception of self and what's driving them. Written in prep for a larger project, it felt worth it to post them as stand alone pieces.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood

Additional Tags: Character Study, Canon Compliant, Martin Blackwood Has a Crush on Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood Needs a Hug, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Needs a Hug, Not really a plot here, Internalized Fatphobia, Internalized Acephobia (kinda), Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Everyone is doing bad

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61894225/chapters/158260423

Jonathan Sims carries such a strong aura of being overworked that when you spend more than a few minutes in his presence you start thinking about a third cup of coffee to get through the rest of your day. Jon would be handsome if he wasn’t so tired, or if he devoted any effort to his presentation. The dark circles under his eyes had been a common sight as long as he could remember looking in the mirror, but became permanent fixtures when he started working in the Archives. There were even frown lines beginning to form on his high forehead and a deepening of the lines around his large straight nose, stretching toward his sharp angular jaw. It was the perfect nose to look down at someone from behind his glasses, especially when his mouth turned into a scowling frown, which was often. His lips are a bit too thin to be called attractive but they match his high cheekbones and compliment his thick dark brows and long lashes. The bronze undertones from his mixed heritage are the only thing keeping him from being called “pale” or “deprived of sunlight” - something he would snarkily defend if anyone ever called him that. 

“Well, I do work in the Archives, in the climate controlled basement, so excuse me if I’m not working on my tan.”

His skin has become a map of his experiences. The handful of shiny, circular, worm-attack scars that dot his forearms and climb up his shoulders to his neck and peek out from under the scruff on his cheeks have started to fade thanks to Nikola Orsinov’s moisturizing routine, but the jagged line of a stab wound above his wrist, and a brutal burn scar on his hand have refused to be soothed away. The pale moons of worm bites are even easier to see when his dark hair is pulled back from his face. The soft brown waves streaked with silver obscure his young age. When he had started there were only a few pale strands, but the role of Archivist had doubled the gray in the couple years he had been on this journey, despite being in his mid thirties. He often left it hanging around his face, as if the curtain of hair that brushed his shoulders would create another barrier to prevent people from speaking to him when he was bent over an old dusty tome. When he was trying to look presentable he’d pull half of it back, in a look Georgie described as “his slutty little up-do”, and when he was truly agitated and didn’t want anyone to see how greasy it had become he swept all of it up. Tim had once said he was “sporting a man-bun” and the sheer violence in Jon’s gaze prevented Tim from ever remarking on Jon’s hair again. He hadn’t grown it out intentionally. When he was still in the research department it had barely curled around his ears. Now, every few weeks he would look in the mirror after a shower and declare his hair unmanageable and resolve to get it cut. But he never managed to actually get to a barber. 

His outfits suffered from a similar spectrum of hurried to forgetfulness. His slacks fit him well but desperately needed the creases pressed. The button down shirts also cried out for the touch of an iron, but it was harder to notice when he layered them under blazers and jumpers. It was the fashion sense only someone who missed the academic focus of their Oxford days would develop. The colors stayed in neutrals with heaps of green, navy, and maybe maroon. The day he wore a buttercup yellow shirt, no fewer than 3 people stopped to do a double take. It turned out he had spilled an entire cup of tea on his original shirt on the way to work and needed to stop last minute for a new one. 

He was normally seen with a cup of tea in his hand, or coffee if he was feeling desperate, and a pen in his mouth. Martin guessed that Jon had a tendency to chew on the end of his pens when he wanted a cigarette. He had smoked off and on since his college days, and always seemed to pick up the habit again when he was stressed. It was less of a nicotine addiction, than the desire to have a good reason to take a break and get some fresh air every once in a while. The reason he had picked the habit up in the first place in college, was that smoking was a perfect excuse to sit out on someone’s roof, or back garden, away from the loud music and loud people. Jon had been a grumpy old man even when he was 19. Something about the noise and press of bodies made him feel trapped and hot and like electricity was crawling up his spine. Or maybe it was just a very quiet upbringing that made parties feel unnatural to him. 

You could tell from the way he hunched over his work, as if it was a closely guarded secret, darting his eyes around before focusing in on a conversation, and jumped slightly when the doors slammed that he’d had a tough childhood. Jon never spoke of his parents, and it took years of knowing him before he’d slip and mention being raised by his grandmother. His father had died when he was two, but he grew with his image as a constant comparison. Athletic, where Jon was bookish; outgoing, where Jon was shy - the ghost of his father was the invisible standard Jon constantly failed to live up to in his grandmother’s eyes. No, he always heard that he was his mother’s child. He had more memories of his her, but they were hazy from toddlerhood: her soft brown face framed with delicate reading glasses, her long braid that she let Jon weave flowers into from the garden, the smell of chai in the morning, flowing bright colored fabrics, warm dinners packed with flavor that made the kitchen a bustling center of activity. His very British grandmother - his father’s mother - had not kept those colors or flavors in his life after he went to live with her at the age of six. He had Granny to thank for his accent, stiff shoulders, and degree from Oxford. He sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had gone with his mother’s family instead. But Jon would rather die than share these musings willingly, so his details had to be put together like a puzzle from observation. 

Observing Jon was Martin’s favorite pastime. For instance he had observed that Jon’s eyes seemed brown at first, but if you got close to him you could see little flecks of gold and green. And that while the scruff on Jon’s face could get messy, the effect was intentional - because even when Jon cleaned up scuff remained, just with straighter lines and a more pleasing shape. He’d also gotten close enough to feel how soft his hair was, in need of a thorough comb and maybe a deep condition, but silky nonetheless. They’d been trapped in the archives at the time, so there were bigger things to worry about than how soft Jon’s hair was or how he smelled of sandalwood and leather and books - but Martin had noticed nonetheless. 

On the rare occasions that Tim and Martin (or Tim and Sasha before) were able to cajole Jon out to the pub after work, they knew to take him to a quiet place where they could occupy a corner booth and find some topic to start a friendly argument. They had little luck drawing Jon on football or any other sport, and even less on the merits of various popstars. Once, when they still worked in research, Tim had started ordering whiskey instead of beer, and tried to play Smash or Pass with the other bar patrons. Jon had been so uncomfortable that he made an excuse to leave and declined any subsequent invitations for at least six months. 

Actually Martin had never seen Jon show an interest in anyone, in that way. And Martin was looking. But Jon had always found dating difficult. His longest relationship had been with his college best-friend-turned-girlfriend Georgie. He’d had a couple short, failed relationships after that, and a few semi-successful but ultimately fruitless long distance relationships after those. You could almost feel the repercussions of the string of disappointments when you talked to him. It was as if everyone started their acquaintance with him at a negative point balance, and needed to work their way up. He used his inherent mistrust of people as a wall to keep people from looking too closely at him. 

If you didn’t need people, then you couldn’t be let down by them, you wouldn’t be vulnerable to them. And that’s the way he wanted to keep it, thank you.

[hope-for-olicity]

“But the widespread idea that we should learn to live with chronic hunger can, and should, be challenged. Not only are we not obligated to lose weight, for reasons canvassed earlier in this book, but there is something deeply immoral about the dictates of diet culture that posit and impose on us these pseudo-obligations. They often leave us perpetually hungry, and thus experiencing bodily discomfort - and sometimes suffering, even torment. We all deserve to be free from this, since it serves no valid purpose.”

Kate Manne - Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia

Like Kate Manne, the author of this book I have been on countless diets and developed an eating disorder all in the goal of being thin.

The only times I have successfully lost weight is through starvation. And I can't believe I have to say this but starvation is not healthy. Whether you starve yourself due an an eating disorder or trick you body into not eating food using a drug - you are starving your body.

Many people believe fat people should do ANYTHING to be thin. No matter the risks to their lives (bariatric surgery), well-being or activities of daily living. There is no action that is too much if a fat person can become thin.

Being fat is something that just cannot be abided.

I am fat. I have been thin through starving and purging. The praise given when thin was like a drug after the ridicule faced while being fat. You would think after losing 78lbs I would be "healthy." I was not.

I was never MORE unhealthy on every level. I was sick. My doctor worried I'd need to be hospitalized if I didn't start eating. My hair was falling out, I had brain fog and worse of all I was obsessed with food. All I could think was when could I eat next?

I now practice intuitive eating and I eat. I eat all the foods. Foods that you were never allowed to eat on diet, foods that are always in diets. I eat it all. I am fat.

I am fat, like I am short and I have green eyes. These are all descriptors of me.

I take medications for health conditions that add to my weight but they are needed. I exercise for joy. I actually like exercising when I'm not punishing myself to speed walk 5km a day.

I'm taking care of me.

But I know I am judged. These judgements could impact my employment, whether people think I'm intelligent and most important of all my healthcare.

But I know I'm doing what is best for my physical and mental health and that is most important.

[rebellum]

I was super thin as a kid and young teen and had some bad experiences related to it and that's exactly why when people are discussing fatphobia and someone goes "um? Thin people have it bad too?" I immediately just start Mauling that person like I'm Luis Suárez like

I DID have that experience! I did feel bad about my weight, people told me hugging me was uncomfortable, I had low self esteem, at one point I went through a brief phase of basically forcing myself to eat until I felt sick (and, sometimes, got sick) because I was so desperate to put on weight because even if I'm ugly and no one finds me attractive at least I can try to give my friends good hugs and not have people assume I'm anorexic or suffering from child abuse.

And that's still NOTHING compared to what the average fat person goes through! My self esteem was low because of my own thoughts and the words of people around me, not because the entire world felt like I deserve to die for my weight. I could still find clothes and didn't pay attention to my weight in comparison to models or celebrities because that never factored in. I never got bullied for my weight. I never had to be sure to not eat around people in case they made fun of me, I never had to be worried about doctors discriminating against me for my weight.

Like dude I have the Strawman Thin Person experience and I'm telling you what I experienced was still no where near as bad as experiencing fatphobia

[seakicker]

Even hourglass isn't always really treated that much better. Personally, I have like 20 cm difference between waist and bust/hips but also have thicker arms and bigger belly so you can't even really tell. Of course, everyone's experience is different I can only speak about my own. But the whole concept of it being 'ok' to be fat only when you're desirable is so stupid. Don't get me wrong fat ppl can and are hot but when I was a fat kid there was no 'saving grace' for me yknow. And eg when I got boobs they 'didn't count bc it's probably just bc I'm fat'.

im an hourglass shape myself (my measurements are roughly 46-37-48) and while i would never, ever claim that hourglass fat people are excluded from any sort of fatphobia bc that’s categorically untrue—speaking from experience— i think it’s important to recognize that, in a lot of instances, hourglass fat people are viewed with a bit (even if it’s just a bit) more respect than fat people who aren’t an hourglass shape. for instance, if you take a look at fashion magazines or store catalogues advertising plus size clothes, you’ll often find that the models they use have a defined waist, a smooth (or even entirely flat) belly, curvy hips, and bigger breasts as a means of promoting that, in the eyes of society, there is a “correct” way to be plus sized and that means having a small belly and a defined waist. apple, pear, and inverted triangle shapes receive even less representation than hourglass fat people do, and we already suffer from a severe lack of representation as fat people so i think it’s really important to be sensitive to how fat people who don’t fit the hourglass standard are treated differently.

of course, for some thin people, body shape doesn’t matter and they’ll be fatphobic regardless of how you look because fat is fat to them and as long as you’re fat, regardless of how it’s distributed, you’re undesirable to them. my point isn’t that hourglass fat people like you and i don’t experience hardships, of course we do and of course we can experience harassment, abuse, doctor discrimination, etc., my point is that it’s important to be sensitive to how different fat bodies are treated on a basis of shape and even on a basis of gender, sexuality, and race too.

[life-in-the-monster-haus]

I thought you and Cupid stopped talking about each other what happened? /gen

We did. Our argument ended and I haven’t spoke to her since. She did dox me though by publicly posting our private conversation against my will so if she thinks me speaking out is “unfair”… now we’re even.

However, if someone else who isn’t an anon has an issue with Cupid, I’m obviously going to share my experience because it proves it wasn’t just a one time argument with me and that “I was the problem”… it’s Cupid and her fatphobia back at it. I can’t just stay silent while she hurts more people. That’s exactly how evil people get away with shit!

It’s her at war yet again with some one new ( @neck-bolts ) over the same stuff she crucified me for. Her hatred of fat people is showing her true colors, she’s a menace to the MH community. I’ve read @neck-bolts blog and while I don’t know them personally they seem to be a decent enough person who probably did not ask for this fight. But Cupid has a history of this destructive behavior, including but not limited too sending her friend to send me anons calling me ugly, delusional, ETC. She hurts people & is cool with it.

and if you think I’m being hyperbolic not even 2 weeks ago I was talking to someone named Skinny Boo* who told me 3G Draculaura was fat & unhealthy, I went to lecture and his person about their fatphobia but what I found was an individual who was in extreme pain, this poor soul was suffering from an eating disorder and their goal was to be so extremely skinny that their menstrual cycle stopped… it was never about being “healthy” they just want to be thin. I tried to help them, gave them resources for someone in their position but I was too late, society’s obsession with thin-ness had already got its meat hooks into this young person. I HOPE they took my advice but… one person can’t stop media brainwashing.

When you have a war against fat people THAT is whom you’re hurting! Young, vulnerable and desperate to confirm to an arbitrary beauty standard!

I’ve blocked her, she can’t hurt me anymore. I strongly suggest for you’re own peace of mind y’all do the same.

[vaspider]

No, it's not a recipe for early death, please stop mindlessly rabbiting back what the multi-billion-dollar weightloss industry pumps into the world.

I beg you to listen to like one episode of Maintenance Phase or read a book or two. This modern obsession with thinness is not just wrong, it's racist as hell.

Firmly in place by the time the diet industry began to flourish in the 1920s, the development of fat stigma was related not only to cultural anxieties that emerged during the modern period related to consumer excess, but, even more profoundly, to prevailing ideas about race, civilization and evolution. For 19th and early 20th century thinkers, fatness was a key marker of inferiority, of an uncivilized, barbaric, and primitive body. This idea—that fatness is a sign of a primitive person—endures today, fueling both our $60 billion “war on fat” and our cultural distress over the “obesity epidemic.”

Whatever you do, stop putting this fatphobic and factually wrong bullshit on shit you reblog from me. Medical fatphobia almost lost me the use of everything below my L1 vertebra because a doctor was so BLINDED by my BIG FAT ASS that he didn't even bother to do any tests past looking at me and saying YEAH YOU FAT. I lived in fucking agony for years because my doctor didn't listen. He just put me on 1300 calories a day (which is about what you feed a fucking toddler, not a 35yo adult) and ignored me when I said I wasn't getting better. I just needed to work harder to lose the weight. Never mind that I was furious with everyone all the time because I was literally starving, and couldn't exercise because I couldn't fucking walk from the pain.

When I needed help to walk to the bathroom at work, my wife finally got pissed off enough to demand that I go back to my family doctor, who looked at me for a very literal thirty seconds before sending me to get an MRI of my spine. That very simple test which - again - the other doctor didn't bother ordering for two years as I slowly lost my ability to do fuck all and missed doing cool shit with my daughter from ages 10-12? Yeah, it revealed a 2.5cm tumor growing on my spinal cord sheath, compressing my spinal cord.

I was really lucky - it was benign. I didn't die like my friend Ginny, who had a tumor in the same spot and lost the tumor lottery. I'm lucky. Genuinely. I know of far too many fat people who fucking died because their doctors didn't do the same tests on them that they do on skinny people.

And it's all fucking lies! It's all fucking lies. All that suffering and fatphobia is because of racism and money.

And here you are, vomiting up the same fucking garbage.

Don't respond. You're wrong, and I'm not arguing with you. Sit down, shut up, and learn before you keep perpetuating the same harmful bullshit that caused me years of agony.

An 8,000-year-old marble figurine of a voluptuous woman was unearthed in 2016 in the Neolithic urban settlement of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The figurine is 17 centimeters long, 11 centimeters wide and weighs one kilo.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

TW ableism, body shaming, fatphobia, gaslighting mention, accusing someone of faking stuff and manipulation ///////////

I appreciate the post you made not too long ago about peoples disability being "enough" (idk if the quotes are correct to put, I put them there because all disabilities are valid and putting "disability" and "enough" in the same sentence isnt a gr8 thing Hdhdjhdkd)

But yeah, I need to get rid of my internalized ableism as well, it also comes from trauma and although I validate others disabilities no matter what, what I say about my own can reflect onto others, and I'd hate for that to effect (affect???) people.

I had a horrible friend group once who gaslit me into thinking i was faking my fibromyalgia for attention/using it as an excuse to be lazy and fat (I'm very much fat but LOL fuck them.) Or using my brain fog and pain as an excuse to be a shitty person and such. I developed a horrible case of imposter syndrome bc I believe it all, it sucks. I feel like a manipulative, compulsive liar that only uses people and that my disability really is made up and all in my head (they especially say that about fibromyalgia) and they said I'm just obsolete and that's why I'm in pain.

It's strange because, why would you make me feel bad about being obese if I was obese? Why is being big so frowned upon?? Why is it that thin people get cared for WAY more easily compared to bigger people who are suffering? (But btw, to clarify, body shaming is horrible, and I'm not denying that thin people suffer too, I hate that society is horrid towards anyone)

SORRY JUST RAMBLING TO YOU ALL HOPE YOU DONT MIND I JUST FELT VALIDATED BY THAT AND I APPRECIATE IT.

Correct me on anything I've said please!

(Agreeing with you)

It's really dumb because fatphobia is rooted in being unhealthy. The whole idea behind being an ass to fat people is because "it's unhealthy".

The fact that fat isn't an indicator of health aside.

They're literally putting someone's value in their health.

They're literally looking at fat people and saying "you have less value because you're unhealthy".

What are us disabled people supposed to say/ think when we see this fatphobic society pointing at fat people and calling them less than because they're unhealthy?

Not to mention, a lot of people are fat because of their disability, but the opposite is also true. A lot of disabled people are skinny because of their disability. At my worst I couldn't hold down food for days on end because of my migraines. DAYS without eating. I wasn't just skinny, I was hella out of shape because I couldn't exercise because I couldn't move because I couldn't eat.

I'm not trying to compare my experience to yours. Obviously fat disabled people get more shit from doctors and society because they're fat.

But since the vomiting was the worst symptom for my, I felt like ignoring my weight because I was skinny was equivalent to ignoring the worst part about my disability.

I also just feel gaslit by society because everyone calls migraines a headache disorder, when it's a neurological disorder where headaches aren't even the most common or the most severe symptom. A lot of my internalized abelism was people calling migraines "just a headache" and it took me years to realize and accept that the headache wasn't even the worst part. Depending on the severity, I could deal with just the headache. The WORST part is the vomiting, vertigo, and the fatigue for days after.

One migraine was so bad I had a bruise down my back for 2 weeks after because I fell on my desk trying to get my meds, and I ended up crawling to my meds.

(That doesn't include the memory issues because that's a whole nother post.)

-fae

[fatphobiabusters]

actually, i don't really think that a fat character being in love with food is that bad? (in response to all of your posts about soos and hunk, specifically)

it's not like their eating habits are something forceful, it's not like they bodyshame themselves or are disgusted by their own eating.

don't get me wrong, i've watched gravity falls, i'm two episodes into voltron and i really see all of the points you made. the stupid or lazy stereotypes for example and i'm not here to argue with those.

but so far i get the impression that eating isn't something bad for these characters. like you said, hunk's always thinking about food and that's supposed to be some crappy kind of joke but eating seems to be something hunk genuinely enjoys. and if you genuinely enjoy eating, there's a chance you're fat. and maybe the intention of these jokes is fatphobia but there's no fatphobia itself in the show, like hunk doesn't get really insulted for being fat and therefor doesn't lose his positive attitude towards food. that's a good lesson i, as an overweight person, take from this character. (please correct me if i'm wrong, as i said, i've just watched two episodes so far.)

and soos gets insulted from characters in the show a lot, that's true but it's not like he's bothered. he doesn't mind the fatphobia in his surroundings and whether that is because he was written to be rather stupid or because he just doesn't care, it's not something to make out as bad. if little me who was teased and bullied for her weight would've seen this earlier, maybe she would've been off better.

again, feel free to disagree and i'm not here to fight or say that you're entirely wrong, that's just my view on the eating thing because as long as the love for food is genuine and not made out to be a toxic element that the characters suffer from, i don't see a real problem there.

This is probably about a older post and tbh I don't know which mod originally posted about these characters. Hopefully I can explain this:

Loving food can be a neutral character trait but it disproportionatly is applied to fat people. Because content creators think people are only fat because they eat too much. That's the crux of it.

"Like you said, hunk's always thinking about food and that's supposed to be some crappy kind of joke" but nothing that's it that's the joke. "Fatty gonna eat." The implications is that food is a source of earthly pleasure and fat people don't have any other hobbies other that food because again, content creators think you can only be fat from over eating.

"and if you genuinely enjoy eating, there's a chance you're fat." There's a chance that any body type can enjoy eating, fatness has nothing to do with it.

People should enjoy eating anyway. Being obsessed with food is not enjoying eating, is a disordered eating condition. Thinking about food 24/7 is an obsession. (IRL this can be a sign of malnutrition, dieting/starvation/caloric deficit or working in a way that requires meal planning, like chefs or a soup kitchen coordinators. I don't think even mukbang people think about food all the time.)

Why would they change Hunks character joke, it's a tried and true one after all. Even if the in universe cast don't mock Hunk doesn't mean it doesn't play into audience expectations in a negative way.

Next character:

"he doesn't mind the fatphobia in his surroundings and whether that is because he was written to be rather stupid or because he just doesn't care, it's not something to make out as bad" if a character is being bullied and harassed and doesn't call it out its still bad? Even if he doesn't get on a soap box and have a speech he needs to have friends checking up on him, defending him. Especially on a children's show. I have no idea if this ever happens (I haven't watched it all) but bullying a character and showing that character and his friends putting up with it isn't great. Little you deserved to feel impowered by a fat character saying "fuck off" to bullies, not someone putting up with it.

If he's supposed to be "dull witted" and can't realize he's being bullied I just....the fuck? I mean "fat people are stupid" is a stereotype, so, yikes.

You know, I'd hate to bring this series up but you know enjoys eating? Like in a healthy way? The family in Blue Bloods. I catch parts of it because my mom watches it, I hate it so much its clichéd cop propaganda. They have family meals together. Delicious food, variety of foods too, everyone has helpings of food on their plates (including the women no bird eating cliches to be found!) and they talk and enjoy meals together. It's probably a nightmare to film, but delicious to watch.

No one character is obsessed with food. But they enjoy these meals. Some are more chubby than others but it's all equal enjoyment.

Anyway,

If a character is fat and is shown constantly eating then its a stereotype. Especially if there is no thin people to match.

Fat people have assumed relationships with food. Thin people don't. Fat people are assumed to care too much about food, eat too much and that's why they are fat.

You don't have to blacklist and throw away media that you love when there are problematic elements either. If you personally found it comforting that Hunk is still obsessed with food but his friends don't mock him for it then I won't try to take that from you, we all like stuff that can be bad. The media is out there and can't be changed, but moving forward I want better rep. I hope I kinda explained why it's a sticky situation.

[lorbanery]

Anon, the mistreatment IS the oppression.

Like sure, there's more to it than that. But if someone who was thin gains weight and suddenly finds themselves taken less seriously by the people around them, being trusted less, being dismissed or ignored more, having assumptions made about how active they are and how much food they eat, having their health concerns dismissed, getting passed over more often for jobs and/or promotions, etc etc etc

^That's it. That's the oppression. That's fatphobia, in its most everyday common form.

And you know, if we want to get even more nuanced here, even before that person became fat they were still suffering from the effects of fatphobia. Thin people also get under-diagnosed until a medical issue has gotten too severe to ignore because the flip side of "fat is inherently unhealthy" is "if you're thin you probably don't have serious health issues." Thin people also suffer discomfort and indignity from airlines stuffing planes full of seats too small for the average person with no leg room just to get more ticket sales per flight. Thin people also suffer the psychological damage of only seeing people within a narrow range of body types depicted as normal and attractive.

Just like sexism, homophobia, and transphobia all also hurt people outside of the targeted group, so too does fatphobia hurt thin people.

Do you think fat people who used to be thin have a place in fat lib? Is it possible to actually “become” oppressed by this system of oppression when you’ve benefited from it your whole life? Is being mistreated for becoming fat the same as being oppressed for it?

why the hell wouldn’t they? they’re fat people. many groups of people shift from privileged to marginalized identities. you can become disabled at any time. your gender can transition at any time. if you take on a marginalized identity (regardless of how or why), yes, you face the oppression that comes with it. i’m sorry but this logic is just ridiculous to me.

[ineffablefool]

Hi!

Love your work and your page and just you on general.

I'm having some inner turmoily feelings lately.

I am fat, I know this isnt a bad thing and that I'm not a bad person for this.

I also know it Is not unattractive nor am i unattractive for it.

I argue with fatphobes, educate on fatphobia, spread body positivity as much as possible.

I need to lose *some* weight. I am starting to have pain in my feet, knees, I have trouble bending and kneeling for my job. I get extremely hot and humid in the summer heats and it gets miserable.

I want to/need to lose *some* weight.

But it makes me feel like by doing so I'll be eating any of the good words/things I've spread about body positivity and weight.

My spouse is wanting us to do a weight loss shake/regime again that we did it previously (and it worked until we stopped using it).

It would work great but it feeds into the diet industry stuff I hate.

I just feel so mixed up about all of it and I know you're safe.

Hope you're doing well darling.

First of all, here are some hearts. 💜💜💜💜

Second of all... thank you for trusting me to be safe. It makes sense to me that you feel mixed up about this, because you have competing messages/priorities coming from different sides. There isn't any perfect answer, I don't think, because this universe has a number of design flaws. But I can throw another perspective in and see whether that can provide a little clarity.  (While doing my best to keep being safe, because that’s more of a constant action than an achieved quality.)

I honestly take a lot of the fat-positive stuff I say on here from Ragen Chastain's blog -- I don't read it regularly anymore because at some point I stopped almost all my regular readings at once, but I checked just now and she's still blogging. It can be a hard read sometimes, because it'll tell you about instances of public fatphobia that you had previously been blissfully unaware of, but it's also crammed full o'resources. And there are topics which she comes back to repeatedly, because it's become relevant again or there's new information or just because it's been a while and there will be new people who haven't seen it yet; and one of those repeats is the question of whether any given health concern or bodily discomfort needs to be solved with weight loss.

When thin people have painful joints, they can seek physical therapy. The secret is that PT works for fat people, too. Thin people might have difficulty standing or walking for too long, and need to exercise to increase muscle or physical endurance -- and that works for fat people, too. Thin people can find ways to increase their flexibility through things like yoga, and... ...well. There is a pattern here.

A weight-first health paradigm, only for fat people, can convince us that all those other tools just... don't exist. Alternately, maybe they're just not for us, not until we can turn ourselves from fat people to thin people... except something like a half-century of science says there is no reliable safe way to make that thing happen. (Also, they had damn well better be for us too, because I don't think I need to explain how disgusting it is to withhold entire classes of medical intervention from one statistically-speaking-immutable demographic group but give it freely to a contrasting demographic.)

Which doesn't mean I'm telling you that physical therapy or yoga or a gentle program of endurance-increasing activities will solve all your problems. I want to make sure they're in your toolkit, though. Maybe someone took out all your hammers and replaced them with screwdrivers. Well, here's some hammers back. Can you just decide to use a screwdriver anyway? Sure you can. Whatever's the right tool for the job.

(Tbh I don't know what to do about the heat. I am a baby about heat. If it's more than about 70 degrees I start complaining.)

As for the shake regime... it doesn’t surprise me that it worked while you were on it.  Replace enough actual nutritious food with whatever-the-hell those are made of, and you can probably do all sorts of exciting things to your body.  But like you said, it works until you stop using it, and once you go back to actual food (y’know, what's generally considered best when it's local, farm-to-table, fresh, minimally processed, all the stuff that’s apparently just great for thin people but we fat people need to consume nothing but diet shakes and super-processed prepackaged dinners because Health)... well, then it stops working.

There’s also the drum I just keep on beatin’, which is that sustained significant weight loss, statistically speaking, is not possible.  There are many, many scientific studies whose data shows that you are just as likely (sometimes more likely, depending on the study) to end up fatter than when you started.  So if the goal is “weigh less”, then, again statistically speaking, intentional weight loss attempts will not result in success.  (Don’t go by the study’s conclusion, go by the results.  It’d take me forever to find it, but there was a study where the data-driven results section backed up exactly what I’m saying, but in the unsourced conclusion section, they still wrote that they recommend attempted intentional weight loss.  Science(TM)!)

If your spouse is the type to be swayed by an appeal to logic, then you could do worse than to start here.  It’s a plain-language summation of various research, including two specific studies referenced at the bottom.  One of those studies is a huge synthesis of, if I am counting correctly, over three hundred different papers (the other is also a synthesis but I didn’t count references there).  Just to steal half of one paragraph from the synthesis study,

At the individual level, many weight loss studies demonstrate short-term success at reducing weight. However, critics argue that such studies generally suffer from a range of methodological problems including small sample sizes, underrepresentation of men, limited generalizability, a lack of blinded ascertainment of the outcome, a lack of data on adherence to assigned diets, and a large loss to follow-up (Simons-Morton, Obarzanek, & Cutler, 2006). Furthermore, critics argue that most weight loss trials do not have long-term follow-up, and so the results over the subsequent 2 to 5 years, when weight gain is most likely to occur, are largely unreported (Robison & Carrier, 2004). Where these results have been reported, weight loss programs have a long-term (2 to 5 years) failure rate of up to 95% (Gaesser, 2000; Mann et al., 2007). Weight loss is not only almost impossible for most people to maintain, but attempted weight loss strongly predicts weight gain (Lowe et al., 2006; Neumark-Sztainer, Wall, Story, & Standish, 2012; Pankevich, Teegarden, Hedin, Jensen, & Bale, 2010; Pietilainen, Saarni, Kaprio, & Rissanen, 2012; Stice, Presnell, Shaw, & Rohde, 2005). Between one third and two thirds of people who lose a substantial amount of weight on a dietary-based weight loss program will regain all the lost weight and more within 5 years (Mann et al., 2007)

The two of you can absolutely try this regime again, or another one.  It might be that this time, you are among the lucky few for whom it works -- because yes, in rare cases, intentional weight loss attempts do work.  They mostly don’t, though.  And you can search in the studies linked from that page I linked earlier for “weight cycling” to see just how healthy it is to keep trying in the hopes that this time, this time, you’ll be the lucky one.

Golly that was long.  I also don’t know how useful it was, wonderful anon, but I do know that I wish you a very good rest of your week.

[bio-fluorescence]

so much art i see is like. *sees a person wearing shapewear* ah yes the natural state of the body. motionless. perfect.

like. not even just as a fatphobia thing (tho thats obv the primary reason why this happens) but like. this idea that. ugh this is so hard to articulate. that around our skeletons is a generally fairly thin layer of flesh, which doesnt/shouldnt move on its own.

this is a phenomenon that has been like. impossible for me to explain but deeply rooted in my brain since i was in high school and i can only think to associate it w "skinnyness" which i think, again, is correct. but its also like. deliberateness and tidyness? like moving deliberately or "correctly" or like. being in control of ur own body? being "perfect" or "graceful" or not having a hair out of place?

i think cartoon/anime/etc styles can suffer from this the most as they create a styleized/simplified human form that is treated like a doll- one solid, firm mass of plastic or tightly packed filler that is moved in deliberate ways (either based on real human motion or in exxaggerated and interesting directions). its beyond the erasure of the reality of the body thru stylization because it involves movement, at which point the illusion has become something beyond actual presense or physical law

but these "dolls" are created based on what is considered beautiful/aesthetically appealing/good. so they are thin and sharp and cold.

so when people attempt to turn these "dolls" into more realistic depictions thru adding fat, they have already failed. because the "doll" wasn't even a thin person. they were made of ceramic or wood or glass. they were one material to the core, maybe with a coat of paint or a layer of fabric.

we would rather look at people whose only motion is the arrangement of their bones, maybe the twitch of muscle, than someone without hairspray, wearing clothes too tight, whose body moves in ways that were not specifically intended in their bespoke walk.

where is the beauty in holding hands if the bones arent close to touching? that palm muscle with its ligaments shot through and layer of cushioning and warmth... the folds and wrinkles of skin that even the thinnest of people will get when a flat plane folds to give tender care to another.... how can i really touch another person with all this body in the way of our bones

[thegoodomensdumpster]

(1) I'm fat and I fucking love the crumbs, it's such a bummer that they won't be around anymore. Besides, stereotype or not, some fat people (like myself) are messy and gross and some aren't and that's okay. I liked seeing myself represented in Aziraphale here, and it sucks that it's now being cencored. I'm fat and I'm messy and the fact that people want to hide that that's a thing makes me feel more ashamed about who I am than I wouldn have been if it was just left alone.

(2) I'm sick of the trope that fat people have to always be pristine and constantly ON AIR just to be given the same respect that a thin person would have, even if they themselves were also messy. I loved your crummy Aziraphale, he made me feel like I was still worth something and capable of great things and worthy of a dedicated love. He made a lot of people feel like that. Art shouldn't be cencored. This asks breaks my heart a little, because... I’m not the authority on validating people of course, but in case anyone needs to read that: OF COURSE you are worthy of love and respect and just being a human if you are messy, if you are fat, if you are messy and fat, or if you happen to fit a stereotype that mainstream media have rendered harmful. Because you are people, not fictional characters, and you exist beyond these stereotypes boundaries. You are complex, and alive, and your existence matters.

More under the cut for discussion on character design, stereotypes, tumblrfoolery, and my own incapacity to know what to do. The most important bit is above, but if you guys want to take part into a bigger conversation with me, either by replying to this post or MPing me, I’m welcoming you with open arms. It got a bit long, but hopefully it isn’t too confused.

(Also, quick side note: I’m not deleting any of the crumb jokes previously made, so if you miss them, you can still find them in the archive of this blog under the crumb omens hashtag.)

My opinion on character design is actually this one: there is no inherently harmful trait for a certain type of people, it is all a question of context and quantity. In the case of a character that is fat and messy, if it just happens that, among other fat people, one of them is messy, then it’s not a stereotype, and it’s not harmful. However, in our current media landscape, those two attributes happen to be associated way too often, enough that it leads to essentialisation of fat people ( aka: if you’re fat, you’re necessary messy, lazy, etc... these reductive associations are almost systematic ).

In the context of my blog and my work at large, if you’re familiar with it, I think it’s safe to say that I, personally, don’t use the fat and messy character as a stereotype, because I also depict other fat characters as non messy characters. Thats for my context. That’s also probably why, when I made all the crumb jokes, I didn’t even think about this stereotype.

But the thing is, I don’t post my fanarts in a vacuum. Especially on Tumblr where posts tend to have a life of their own when they get reblogged. They get cut from their context, hence only showing the tip of the iceberg, which is what I consider to be a harmful stereotype. And even within their context, it might still come as insensitive and hurt people who have been badly affected by this stereotype. And this has nothing to do with my original intentions.

This would lead to the consideration of how much of a private / public venture exactly a blog is, and to what extent should we take mainstream depictions into account when we design characters ourselves, and how much can we expect people to take things into the context of the OP’s work, or the OP’s blog, or the website it was posted on... This is something I’m scratching my head over, I’m not sure I have an answer to that. I’m not even sure there is an answer to that. But what I know is that this specific blog, though it still is MY blog, also has a following big enough that I cannot fully consider it as private ( although, I never consider any internet space to be really private ...).

However, I one hundred percent agree that there is a huge issue in, as a reaction to these harmful strereotypes, not allowing minorities and oppressed group as appearing any less than perfect. This is a terrible response, a terrible pressure, and it’s as much dehumanizing as only seeing people through the prism of stereotypes. And I know I can not satisfy everyone when I make a choice, but I do try to make the choices that hurt the less, or at least the ones that won’t hurt the group of people I care about (and by that I mean: I would not hesitate to make fatshamers feel ill at ease, but I do not want to hurt fat people over fatphobia).

So, yeah, it does feel like I fell into another trap that ends up guilt tripping people. But I don’t know how to react, I don’t where to stand, because I don’t know which reaction would bring the less suffering. It seems that there is no perfect answer, and fat people might get hurt either way. I just know that, since I’ve been made aware of the kind of hurt the crumb jokes could do, I’m feeling uncomfortable myself continuing them. So, this is not strictly censorship. Because, at least right now, I don’t feel like I want to continue them either. Maybe my mind will change, I don’t know, but I have the feeling that maybe my issue is mostly based on the media (aka: a tumblr post) rather than the joke itself. Because if, for instance, I had one messy fat character in a comic book where you can see other fat characters in all their diversity and complexity, then it wouldn’t feel like I’m tapping into a stereotype, and therefore I doubt it would make a lot of fat people ill at ease. Because that one messy fat character could hardly be cut from the context of its book. But with a tumblr post that can escape its context or directly be surrounded in a tumblr search on my blog by other similar post declining the same messy joke with the same fat character... I don’t know. 

I just, really, really don’t know.

I feel saddened by the hurt I’m doing to people either way, and I’ve received several messages of fat people telling me they liked the crumb jokes. But I cannot know if people who were actually hurt are just silent on this issue or if I’m just ... anticipating a hurt that wasn’t there to begin with ( because the original message that made me aware of this issue wasn’t actually written by someone who personnally felt ill at ease at that joke, it was just pointing it out as fatphobic, which I agreed to be an issue as well ). 

So, yeah. If you have any insight on this issue, absolutely feel free to contact me. This is an important conversation to have, or at least it is to me, and it touches on many important topics so it’s ... potentially long and convoluted and confusing. But I want to learn, I want to do better, and I want to help people feel good about themselves. This is possibly my number one goal as an artist. 

<3

[transmutationisms]

i actually don't find 'pro' to be that helpful of a label tbh (tho i do use it occasionally as shorthand). people's attitudes toward their eds vary widely, tho i would say usually clustered around a position along the lines of "in an ideal world i wouldn't be doing this, but recovery is too scary/inaccessible/intimidating right now, and i'm not pursuing it". often the eating disorder is valuable because it provides a lot of emotional blunting that makes otherwise intolerable life circumstances possible to survive. it's hard to give that up. what generally makes a space 'pro', then, is that, regardless of how sufferers individually feel about their disorders, the rules of the moderators (official position or not) don't demand that people endorse or pursue recovery. psychiatric discourse is generally unwilling to make any distinction between "not seeking recovery" and "pro-ed", so lots of different positions and philosophies get collapsed into these spaces and into the label of "pro". i would say most sufferers aren't pro in the sense of liking having an eating disorder, and will often explicitly discourage others from developing or worsening theirs, tho of course there is still a very competitive aspect of many of these spaces (body checks, sharing cal counts, etc) and for many people, merely being in a space where they and others are allowed to explicitly discuss behaviours can definitely be triggering in certain ways.

as to the fatphobia, yes, but also it's complicated. most people with eating disorders are not actually thin, tho many/most want to be. ed spaces online sometimes have subsections for fat sufferers to commiserate with one another (this is especially true on some of the old-school forums where site design encourages the formation of subcommunities rather than the mainstreaming of all content for advertiser benefit) and many ed sufferers are acutely aware of the social stigma directed at fat people, and view their eating disorders as promising an escape from this form of marginalisation. like i said above, the valorisation of thin bodies (specifically thin white abled bodies) is also a structuring force, and most of these spaces have an uneasy relationship to the idea of fatphobia: there's a baseline awareness that it exists and is harmful, with many participants identifying themselves as (current and/or former) victims of it, but at the same time, eating disorders also graft onto this logic and can both propagate and rely on it. again, attitudes vary, and different sites have different cultures, with some threads/subcommunities having further differentiation.

do you think that the notion that ppl w eds are able to make other ppl with eds "sicker" (esp in communities like edtwt/blr) holds true?

this is common in 'explanations' of eating disorder etiology that basically boil down to some variant of a social contagion theory. i've said before that i think it's a bit unserious to try to make a rigid distinction between 'behaviours that are learned and transmitted socially' and 'behaviours that are arrived at by pure individual discovery'—like, we're social beings; nothing about us is exempt from that. and it's certainly true that people who are already engaging in eating disordered behaviours can easily be triggered by one another, learn new behaviours from one another, &c, & that this can occur online as well as in person.

but when i hear a lot of people's fears about ed and 'pro' online spaces, there's often a pretty fundamental disregard for the fact that these are social settings a person has to seek out on purpose (the same cannot be said for, eg, an ed ward of a psych hospital, which is another major site of 'eating disorder contagion'!) and people in these spaces stay in them for a reason. it's worth noting there's often a parental fantasy here that a child's eating disorder can simply be 'cured' by removing the malign influence of such an online community—with little willingness on the parent's part to question how their own beliefs, eating habits, and general treatment of their child may be contributing to the child's need to engage in the disordered behaviours.

it's also true that there is a genuine harm reduction function of some parts of these online communities, much like many other patient / sufferer communities. in general, i would say the severity of a person's eating disorder depends on the circumstances of their life (access to food, access to fat liberationist politics, the stressors / anxieties that may have contributed to them engaging in the eating disorder behaviours in the first place) rather than on peer communities or social media. to me there are much more serious problems with online ed spaces, like the fact that they are white supremacist (because the valorisation of thinness is itself part of how whiteness has been constructed and bolstered) & trade on those aesthetics. or the ableism that is, again, a structuring force here. it's honestly a travesty that talking frankly about eating disorders is so dangerous for sufferers that it often gets relegated to these spaces.