Rotundlr

An example of what I was talking about last night re: spaces for larger fats

rawkabilly said: I feel the same exact way Size 12 isn’t even considered plus size in most stores, yet I still get looks from people and snide comments about my body. You know what? I don’t care what it sounds like, I wanna play toooooooo! :(

This was a reply to this post, which I am totally into (I think it’s great to talk about all of this stuff from all perspectives). And I just… I saw it last night and you know what?

I appreciate that a person who is a size 12 gets shit for their body - we live in a world that has built a hugely profitable business on making women feel like they will never have acceptable bodies. That manifests in how fat people are treated, it manifests in how queer people are treated, it manifests in how people of alternative styles are treated. It’s a load of TERRIBLE TERRIBLE BULLSHIT. It’s why people say Jessica Simpson is fat. And so on.

But that does not mean Jessica Simpson and I have the same experience of body hatred.

Now, I’ll sit down with Jessica Simpson any day and talk about how damaging oppressive body standards are for EVERYONE. Because they are. But if I’m trying to have a conversation with other people who are similar to my size, Jessica Simpson does not get to be a part of that.

It IS exclusionary. But the beauty of the internet, and of the larger *heh* fat acceptance community as a whole, is that there is room for everyone in a big general group AND there is room for a few places dedicated to specific conversations.

I am 5’4”. My hips, last time someone measured them, were 62 inches. Let me parse that out for you real specific - my circumference is 2 inches smaller than my overall height. I’m not saying that out of any sort of complaining - it’s just an interesting fact of notational information. But it’s one of the things that shapes my life, everyday, walking around and interacting with a world that is not really designed to accommodate me. Again, not complaining, just saying - while there are definitely things in common that both I and a size 12 woman will experience, there are things we will each uniquely experience, challenges that are different.

One of the things that started to really goddamn annoy me last night is just how often we have this conversation. Smaller fats are fat, too. No, not all fat experience is the same. I feel like, at least once every three or four months, I spend a lot of effort on reassuring smaller fats that they are welcome at the party and no one is trying to take their identity away from them.

What I wind up thinking this morning is: Why is that the job of larger fats? Why is it my responsibility to make smaller fats feel more welcome in fat acceptance when smaller fats, or so it would seem (and there are definitely smaller fats who don’t participate in this), are the ones most likely to get involved in “line of acceptable fat” conversations and who “wanna play toooooooo!” even in spaces that are EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO BE SAFER SPACES FOR LARGER BODIES?

I will never stop defending the position of smaller fats within the fat acceptance community. But I’ll also never force my middle-class ass into a group that is meant to be a place for people living at the poverty line. I won’t be all “why won’t the people of color let me into their community??? I wanna play toooooooooooooo!”. I’ll play in the fucking spaces where we are all gathered to have these conversations, goddamnit.

The more I write about this, the more I realize I am incredibly angry that people a) keep trying to erase the differences of my experience (and those experiences of people larger than me) in pursuit of validating their own experiences and b) can’t respect issues of privilege enough to go, “hey, you know what? Yeah, I will let you have this space”. What the shit is that?

Ugh, incoherent rant is incoherent. This is why I rarely post angry.

And because I am, at heart, always and forever concerned about making people feel unwelcome - this is not a post saying smaller fats should not participate in fat acceptance communities. This is not a post saying smaller fats are not fat or are not fat enough to ride the fat parade rides. It’s just saying that there is something incredibly powerful about being in a space where the bodies all look like yours and when you insist on being part of every single fat space as a smaller fat, you are denying me that experience in service of your own inclusion in everything.