When I first encountered Aubrey Gordon, it was under the pseudonym “Your Fat Friend.” Her experiences, knowledge, and ability to write about fatness resonated deeply with me and many other readers, who viewed her as a confidante, a researcher, a social justice advocate. More people felt seen for the first time. In much of Aubrey’s work, she breaks down society’s commonly held beliefs about fat people while challenging us all to rethink ideas around bodies and what it means to be “healthy.” In the essay below, which challenges the belief that “fat people shouldn’t call themselves fat,” Aubrey shows us that language matters. She challenges us to think about why we accept certain words like “fat” as good or bad, nice or mean, healthy or unhealthy and shows how a culture of anti-fatness has informed those associations.
Thank you to the intrepid community of booksellers for introducing a wider audience to this paradigm shifting and life changing work and to the PNBA for recognizing the contribution “You Just Need to Lose Weight” makes to much needed ongoing conversations around fatness.
–Joanna Green
Executive Editor and Director of YA Development
Beacon Press
Aubrey Gordon, her editor, and her publisher generously share this excerpt from “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths about Fat People with our readers:
Myth 15: “Fat People shouldn’t Call themselves Fat.”
I am at the airport security checkpoint when I hear a small and tender seedling of a voice behind me. “Look at that fat lady!”
I turn around, meet the bright eyes of a three-year-old, and smile. Her mother’s face is stormy, voice sharp. “Don’t call her that.” “It’s okay,” I offer. At 340 pounds, my size is undeniable. “She’s right. I am fat.”
“No, she’s not. That’s not nice.”
“Some people don’t like to be called fat, but I really don’t mind.” I look to the girl. “You’re right—I’m a fat lady,” I say, puffing up my cheeks.
The child smiles tentatively before her mother cuts in again, her angular voice coming out in jagged shards. “Don’t ever say that word. It’s a bad word, and I never want to hear you say it again, do you understand me?”
The child bursts into tears. Her mother shoots me a serrated glance. She is a knife; I am her steel.
“Now look what you’ve done.”
As a fat person, I have found this has become a regular feature of my life: trying to convince people who don’t wear plus sizes that I am not deeply wounded by the word fat
When I refer to my own body as fat, I’m met with a knee-jerk, syrupy insistence that you’re not fat! When children observe plainly that my body is fat, their straight-size parents reliably make a scene, sharply disciplining them, insisting fat means pain, and that fat bodies are not to be seen, discussed, observed, or embraced. In so doing, they redact fat bodies from their children’s worldview. And, even with the best of intentions, they create powerful sense memories for children who dare to say the unspeakable name of bodies like mine. Instead of learning that fat is a body type, to be named neutrally and normally as any other, they associate naming fatness with their own deep embarrassment, confusion, and a sense that they’ve broken a rule they only just learned existed. I try, and almost uniformly fail, to convince thin people that I do not mind the word fat—that I strongly prefer it to kid-glove euphemisms like “curvy” or “fluffy” or stigmatizing medical terms like “obese.”
I am fat, yes. I am also tall, blonde, and thirty-eight years old. These are simple facts of my body, none more insulting to me than another. But what I call my body does not seem to matter to the majority of straight-size people I meet. They cannot seem to stand the thought that I describe myself as fat, so they run between my body and the word that describes it like a bodyguard taking a bullet. When I talk to other very fat people, they often feel similarly.
The hurt doesn’t come in naming our bodies for what they are—it comes in the harm that is visited upon us for being visibly fat. It comes from the street harassment, the pervasive medical discrimination, and the reliable silence of thin people when we are bullied. But when I talk to thin people about the word fat, I find myself an unwitting archaeologist, excavating deep histories of fear and hurt, frozen in amber. The fat people I know don’t mind being called fat, in large part because we are—what’s the use in denying it? But straight-size people are disproportionately mortified, unable or un- willing to neutralize one of the harshest words they know. For those straight-size people so deeply wounded, the pain of being called fat seems to lie in its inaccuracy. I am the word’s target, and they are its collateral damage.
Most of us have been called fat at one point or another. Sometimes it’s said with malice. Sometimes contempt. At other times, it drips with pity or sags with emotion. But whoever we are, being called fat is often a feature of our lives. It’s no wonder we’ve become so afraid of being called fat. Most of us have felt the word’s sting, sharp enough to break the skin. Fat is a term that holds a great deal of power for a great number of people. It is hurled as a weapon, a ruthless mace tearing through too many of us. We respond with Pavlovian fear, overtaken by our own instincts to self-preserve. For some, being called fat just once is enough to trigger the onset or relapse of an eating disorder. For others, it leads to body dysmorphic disorder, in which the affected person obsesses endlessly over perceived flaws in their appearance, usually something minor or imperceptible to others.1 For such a small word, the hurt it can cause is great.
Too often, fat is shorthand for being seen as unlovable, undesirable, unwanted, excluded. So many of us learn to distance ourselves from fatness and, by extension, fat people. We learn to eliminate words like fat so that we can forget the heavy judgments we make fat people shoulder. When others describe themselves as fat, we learn to dissuade them, assuming theirs is a statement of self-hatred, rather than a neutral descriptor of their bodies. And we learn quips like “you are not fat, you have fat,” as if fat people can be divided from our own skin, like Solomon splitting a child. We find comfort in denying our skin, insisting there’s some essential us that exists outside of the rolls, wrinkles, and perceived flaws so many of us long to eschew. It is easier to distance ourselves from our bodies than to embrace what we’ve so long been taught to disdain. So we find discomfort with the word fat and decide to quarantine it.
But disproportionately, we focus on the harm being called fat can cause people who haven’t been fat. Even in talking about the word fat, we push actual fat people to the side, opting instead to center “fat shaming” aimed at people who aren’t fat. Celebrities like Tyra Banks and Jessica Simpson are defended against fat shaming, not because appearance-based public humiliation is unacceptable or part of an infrastructure that seeks to sideline fat people at every turn but because they simply weren’t fat. Banks and Simpson had drifted from an extremely restrictive thin ideal, yes, but neither wore plus sizes.
Their fat shaming wasn’t wrong because fat shaming is fundamentally wrong; it was wrong because they weren’t fat. The implication, then, is that if they had been fat, such public humiliation would’ve been warranted. And that implication is borne out among the treatment of plus-size celebrities like Lizzo, Chrissy Metz, and Gabourey Sidibe, all of whom are regularly pilloried in the press and social media for being fat, with precious few thin people rushing to their defense. The logic of “fat shaming” then reveals itself: it’s wrong to publicly humiliate someone for being fat only if they aren’t actually fat.
The outrage around the word fat that comes from people who haven’t been fat, however, comes from a different place than fat people’s experiences with the word. In many thin folks’ imaginations, being called fat seems to be among the worst size-related experiences a person can have. But nearly all of us have been called fat at one point or another. And for those of us who are undeniably fat, being called fat is just the beginning. We aren’t just called fat; we’re treated differently by individuals and institutions alike. Employers refuse to hire or promote us and frequently pay us less than our thin counterparts. Airlines won’t transport us, and other passengers happily scapegoat us for policies that already target us. Restaurants won’t seat us, and health-care providers refuse to care for us.
All of that discrimination happens, overwhelmingly, without any solidarity from the very thin people who object to the fat shaming of thin people. Theirs isn’t an objection in solidarity; it’s a defense of their privilege as thin people. And at the end of all that differential treatment, we’re told “You’re not fat; you’re beautiful!” or “You’re not fat; you have fat!” Our discrimination and harassment are sanctioned by thin people, who then insist we aren’t fat, quietly cleaving us from our own bodies.
Those around me make it clear at every turn that I don’t have fat; I am fat. Remarkably, unforgivably fat. I don’t define myself by my fat body, but nearly everyone else seems to. And too often, their perceptions turn meeting my most basic needs into a minefield.
Denying that some of us are fat may feel comforting, especially for those who aren’t universally regarded as fat. But to me, it feels like a denial of a fundamental life experience that has significantly impacted me. It’s not just a denial of my size but a denial of the biased attitudes and overt discrimination fat people contend with all too often.
Saying that I am “not fat” or that I simply “have fat” lands as a refusal to believe a core part of my life experience. But acknowledging that anti-fat bias exists and hurts their fatter friends would require thinner people to grapple with the ways in which they have upheld and perpetuated that bias. It would require them to assess and explain their actions to the fat people they have harmed—work for which many are wholly unprepared. It would call up an earthquake that would shake their sense of self as good friends and egalitarians. It’s hard to face the ways in which we may have hurt the ones we love. So instead of taking on that larger task, many thinner friends default to reassuring me that I “have fat.”
But “you aren’t fat, you have fat” doesn’t just sting because of its refusal to acknowledge the all-too-real and all-too-prevalent anti- fat bias. It stings because it quietly encourages leaving that bias intact. This rhetorical reframe proposes that it’s just fine to leave our prejudice unchallenged because we aren’t fat people, not like them. Keep treating fat people however you want. It’s okay. You can rest assured that you’re not one of them. It’s a quiet and troubling kind of gaslighting, albeit unintentional: repeating to fat people that our bodies, the most observable and surveilled parts of us, aren’t actually who we are.
For the most part, I am not called fat as an insult by other fat people. I am called “fat pig” by a thin server under her breath at a buffet, even before eating. I am called “huge fucking heifer” by a muscular man leering out his car window. I am called “fat c***” by men I reject. And I am called “fat bitch” by a middle-aged woman shouting at me on the street. These moments strike me sometimes as laughable, other times as cutting. Either way, these moments pass.
Thin people are often surprised to learn that those are not the instances that hurt me. The moments that hurt most are when thin people use euphemisms while they harm me. A physician assistant says, “We don’t usually have such sturdy patients,” when she tells me she doesn’t have a blood pressure cuff that will fit my arm. Unprompted, a stranger at a bus stop tells me, Don’t worry, a lot of men like a curvy girl In a waiting room, a stranger tells me, Big girls shouldn’t wear belts. They look disgusting.
This, then, is what so many straight-size people fear: not a changing body but a subjugation to the thin person they once were, a thin person who readily passed judgments on fat people or who let others’ judgments go uninterrogated and uninterrupted. The fear of being fat is the fear of joining an underclass that you have so readily dismissed, looked down on, looked past, or found yourself grateful not to be a part of. It is a fear of being seen as slothful, gluttonous, greedy, unambitious, unwanted, and, worst of all, unlovable. Fat has largely been weaponized by straight-size people—the very people it seems to hurt most deeply. And ultimately, thin people are terrified of being treated the way they have so often seen fat people treated or even the way they’ve treated fat people themselves.
In that way, thinness isn’t just a matter of health or beauty or happiness. It is a cultural structure of power and dominance. And being called fat cuts so deeply because it hints at a dystopian future in which a thin person might lose their cultural upper hand.
Arguably, the greatest trick of anti-fat bias is its insistence that, regardless of health, genetics, environment, disability, or any other factors, thinness and weight loss are universal accomplishments. Even for thin people with disabilities or chronic health issues. Even for thin people who struggle to put on weight. Even for the thin people who can “eat whatever I want and never gain a pound ” Even for cancer patients and others struggling with illness, who are told, “On the bright side, you look thinner than ever.”
I have never known that sense of bodily accomplishment or the pride that comes with it. It must be excruciating to think of losing it. I have gingerly shared this theory with thin friends whose faces reliably sink when they hear it. Some insist that they have never treated fat people poorly, even as they stare at my rolling stomach or give me tips on how to lose weight they never carried. Others concede, sure, some thin people treat fat people badly, but they don’t take part. But not remembering treating fat people badly isn’t necessarily a sign of having treated fat people well—it’s just as likely a sign of having so deeply normalized poor treatment of fat people that we don’t even remember when we’ve done it. After all, ignoring the abuse of fat people isn’t an exception or the actions of a vocal minority; it is the status quo.
And ultimately, that is in itself a kind of marginalization. Insistently avoiding the word fat continues to stigmatize my body and insist that describing my skin must be an insult. And correcting me for calling myself fat is a seemingly kind way of snatching my identity and my body away from me. It is dominance in action. You clearly can’t care for your wretched body, and you certainly can’t describe it. And ultimately, avoiding the word fat preserves its power and pain, regardless of its use, context, or speaker.
For me, and for many other fat people, reclaiming the word fat is about reclaiming our very bodies, starting with the right to name them. Fat isn’t a negative aspect of one’s body any more than tall or short. It can, and should, be a neutral descriptor. We can, and should, treat it as such. That’s what many fat people are trying to do, only to be interrupted or usurped by thinner people.
But whether you subscribe to body positivity or body neutrality, eating disorder recovery or fat activism, none of us can build movements or healing spaces for our bodies without acknowledging two key things. First, we must situate our own struggles in relation to who they’re designed to harm. Yes, thin people can be deeply wounded by being called fat. But the reason the insult lands is that, on some level, straight-size people know how fat people are treated, and they long to hold onto the privileges of their proximity to thinness. Being called fat may hurt, but it only hurts because of how we publicly exclude, hurt, and harm people who are actually fat. And second, none of these movements can exist without body autonomy, including the right to name our own bodies and the experiences that spring from them.
Yes, fat is a term with baggage, especially with straight-size people. But while it may feel loaded to those straight-size people, it is a key step in the healing and liberation of many fat people. Thin people’s discomfort with a word that has hurt them shouldn’t stand in the way of the liberation of actual fat people.
So let us name our own bodies. Like anyone, fat people are just trying to exist in a body in this world—and thin people’s insistence that they know what’s best for us is too often a barrier to accomplishing that simple, onerous task.
Instead of opting for the tempting work of reassuring ourselves and those around us that we aren’t fat, let’s look at the root cause: how we think of, and treat, people who are fat It’s time to do better by ourselves and the fat people we love by not distancing ourselves from anti-fat bias but by dismantling it.
Reflection questions
✦ How do you feel when you say the word fat? What, if anything, does that word bring up for you? What personal experiences are those feelings tied to?
✦ Often, we assume others will be offended or hurt by the same terms we are, but it’s much rarer that we actually ask. Do you know how the fat people in your life feel about the word fat? Have you asked them?
✦ Notice when you describe other people’s size. Is their size relevant to your discussion of them? Why or why not? Do you know the words that person prefers to use for themself?
Opportunities For Action
✦ Practice saying and hearing the word fat neutrally If we believe that fat people aren’t inherently inferior to thin people, then our language can and should reflect that. And if we believe that our bodies are sovereign, our practices need to respect that sovereignty. So let yourself say fat Say it again and again. Say it until its blade dulls, until it can’t hurt you. Say it so you can stop hurting fat people.
✦ Ask fat people how we want to be described Get comfortable asking fat people what words we use to describe our own bodies and what our boundaries are around talking about size. If you don’t know someone well enough to have those conversations, don’t describe their body. If it’s unavoidable, mirror the language they use.
✦ Manage your own discomfort If you feel uncomfortable with the words someone else uses to describe their body, remind yourself that your body is yours to describe, and theirs should be their own. Remember that your discomfort is yours to carry, not to project onto others or ask them to hold.
Celebrate Aubrey Gordon and the other winners of 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Awards with the virtual event on Zoom Feb 8, 2024 at 6:00 PM Pacific Time. REGISTER NOW.
NWbooklovers posts original essays from this year’s award winners as featured posts in January and February. You can enjoy essays from past winners of the PNBA Book Award in our archive.