Yesterday a Facebook friend of mine posted a video of a fat woman doing some seriously difficult workouts, including box jumps (standing in one place and then jumping up onto a box – remember this, it will become important in the near future.) I’m not going to post the video here because it was posted by her trainer and I don’t know the situation with permission.  Just trust me that she was fat AF and she was killing those workouts!

As always, and I don’t care if people get sick of my saying/typing it, nobody of any size is obligated to participate in fitness. Fitness/exercise/movement/health/body size are not obligations, barometers of worthiness, entirely within our control, or guaranteed under any circumstances. Running a marathon and having a Netflix marathon are morally equivalent activities. The Good Fatty/Bad Fatty dichotomy needs to die.

That said, there are a couple of interesting things I noticed right away. First of all, nothing in the video or the description said anything about weight loss. (The video was posted by the woman’s trainer and the caption was simply “Negative comments will be blocked from all my posts!“)  But sweet fluffy lord the comments. 

There were plenty of positive comments, which was nice. No negative comments (in my experience that means that her trainer has been doing the deleting he promised to do, so good for him.) But despite the fact that none of us know what her goal is, SO MANY people assumed that it was weight loss.
So. Many. People. 

People were assuring her that she would lose the weight (some seeming to suggest that it was ordained by god?) People actually asked for before and after pictures. We are so brainwashed by fatphobia that many of us literally can’t imagine a fat person working out for any other reason than to lose weight. People can accept that a thin person might workout to gain strength, stamina, and/or flexibility, to improve at an activity they enjoy, to reach a fitness goal, fatphobia tells us that if a fat person is at the gym, they could only be trying to manipulate their body size,

But that’s not all, because fatphobia also tells thin people that a fat body is a sign that the fat person occupying it needs to be given a heaping helping of paternalism and unsolicited advice. On my friend’s FB page, one of the first comments said something like “but at her size, isn’t jumping up on the box bad for her knees.” (I’m paraphrasing because the comment has since been deleted and I neglected to screen shot.)

I replied something like “I know you mean well [Of course I don’t know that, but I try to give the benefit of the doubt] but please don’t do this. A fat body is not a sign that someone needs paternalism, fat people and the trainers we choose are perfectly capable of making decisions for our knees.” The comment, and my reply to it, have been deleted, but I’m not sure if it was by the OP or the author of the comment. Either way I am grateful. (If you’re curious about fat people’s knees, I wrote about that here.)

It’s one of the ways that people maintain their fatphobia, even when fat people are participating in “good fatty” behaviors. Since they can’t say “That fat person needs to exercise” (and, of course, that fat person does not need to exercise) instead they say: “Fat people need to exercise…but not like that!”

But it’s not just among fat athletes. Everywhere a fat person goes, they are likely to experience this kind of paternalism and concern trolling. Sometimes it’s comments on food “You know, if you order that sandwich wrapped in Kale leaves it saves blahbbity blah calories.” As if most fat people haven’t been subjected to constant, harmful diet culture our whole lives and don’t know how to count calories faster than your fancy app.

Sometimes it’s about clothes – people trying to “help” us by insisting that the focus of dressing ourselves should be creating some kind of optical illusion that we are thinner/differently shaped (aka “flattering.”

Regardless of the subject, fat bodies are not a representation of failures, sins, or mistakes. Fat bodies do not exist to be the subject of public discussion, debate or judgment. Fat bodies are not a signal that we need help or input to make decisions about our health, or lives, (or knees!) Our fat bodies are the constant companions that help us do everything that we do every second of every day and they deserve respect and admiration. If you are incapable of that, then at the very least please keep your thoughts to yourself and those who have actually asked to hear them.

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

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Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve said before that I consider the number of trolls I have help to demonstrate why the work I do is important, and how effective I am at it. And much like, as Helen Lewis first stated in Lewis’ Law, “Comments on any articleabout feminism justify feminism,” comments on articles about size acceptance justify size acceptance. Recently a troll went out of their way to prove it.

Regular readers may remember that last year I finished my second marathon, setting the Guinness World Record for heaviest woman to complete a marathon. I used the information and experience I had gleaned to write a piece for the Better Humans platform called “Your Slow, Fat Marathon – How to complete a marathon regardless of your size or speed”

Before we go any farther, a reminder that nobody of any size is obligated to participate in fitness of any kind, participating in fitness doesn’t make someone better than those who choose to do something else with their time – running a marathon and having a Netflix marathon are morally equivalent activities. My point is that everybody of every size who wants to participate should be welcome, and I wrote the article for those who may want to participate.

The piece received a really great reception and, of course, some concern troll comments, but there was one in particular that I found both hilarious, and illustrative of the pervasive nature of fatphobia and thin privilege:

As someone training for their first marathon, the advice here is terrible. Author was lucky not to seriously injure themselves! Don’t run a marathon if you’re seriously overweight and not willing to train properly.

Start with something at your skill level and build up to it. You wouldn’t hang a highschool student’s art in the louvre!

Let’s take this bit by bit.

As someone training for their first marathon, the advice here is terrible

This person, who has never toed the starting line of a marathon, let along crossed the finish line, feels that they know more than someone who has trained for and completed two. So much so that they actually chose to start their comment by proudly declaring that they have never completed a marathon. This is one of the ways that fatphobia is so insidious, the idea that being thinner than someone else makes someone more of an expert, regardless of experience or knowledge.

The article I wrote gives advice on a wide variety of topics from deciding if marathoning is for you, to choosing a race, training plan, clothes, and what do to on race day. While this commenter dismisses the advice as “terrible” they don’t address any of the actual advice. What about my advice is terrible? Do they think you should train wearing all cotton clothes? Do they think it’s a good idea to train on pancake flat paved trails and then do a trail marathon in the Rocky Mountains? Do they think you should start out your marathon with a wild sprint? For all we know, this person is two training runs into their marathon program which is fine, but does not an expert make.

Author was lucky not to seriously injure themselves!

This is a version of the VFHT (Vague Future Health Threat,) except instead of trying to use the specter of future health issues to enforce fatphobia (which is also healthist) to try to control the decisions of fat people, this person is using what could have happened to try to control the decisions of fat people. While it wasn’t a serious injury, I tore a ligament in my second marathon owing to the fact that it was much hillier than I expected and I had trained on pancake flat trails (a mistake I made that I talk about in the article.)

While I certainly hope they don’t, for all we know, this commenter will get injured if they ever actually do a marathon. Plenty of people have ligament tears and other injuries while training for and completing marathons, but – as usual – when it happens in thin people it’s seen as an acceptable risk, when it happens in fat people it’s seen as a reason that we shouldn’t participate. That’s bullshit.

Don’t run a marathon if you’re seriously overweight and not willing to train properly.

Let’s be clear that “seriously overweight” is not a thing. Over what weight? Should people who are “seriously over-tall” also take a pass? People come in lots of different sizes for lots of different reasons, all of us get to choose what we want to do with our bodies.

Can you imagine having never done something but still feeling like you can and should definitively tell others whether or not they should do it? This person will just have to hope that a seriously over-exaggerated sense of self-importance doesn’t cause leg cramps if they want to get through their race.

I also can’t tell you how many thin people I’ve heard brag to each other about completing marathons despite not having trained properly, and absolutely nobody – let alone someone who hadn’t ever completed a marathon – jumped in to tell them that they shouldn’t have done it. Yet another big, fat double standard.

Start with something at your skill level and build up to it. You wouldn’t hang a highschool student’s art in the louvre!

Apparently, this person is also an expert on art? Ignoring the fact that you would hang a high school student’s art in the Louvre if it was good enough, this last bit shows just how little this person understands about marathoning.

A marathon is not the Louvre. A marathon is a distance that thousands of people of varying sizes, ages, and abilities decide to travel for almost as many reasons as there are participants. I’m willing to bet that this person – should they ever actually complete a marathon (and good luck to them!) – will not come close to winning, but will feel that they deserve to participate in a marathon, while those who are slower and or heavier should start with something at their “skill level.”

Not to mention that assuming that fat people’s skill level doesn’t include a marathon, assuming that fat people who are attempting a marathon haven’t done shorter races, and comparing completing a marathon to having your art hung in one of the most prestigious galleries in the world all clearly demonstrate that, even if this person had ever managed to complete a marathon, they are no kind of expert.

I do want to thank this commenter for, however inadvertently, helping me demonstrate the need for the article I wrote. For those of us who are fat, or slow, or fat and slow, walkers, runners, and rollers who want to participate in events from 5Ks to marathons, the sad truth is that we may have to deal with people like this. The good news is that we don’t have to listen to them.

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

 Wellness for All Bodies Program: A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!
Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

19-year-old Vega Blossom was food shamed as she waited in line to buy cupcakes behind a particularly slow customer while the person behind her loudly complained. As Vega stepped up to the counter to make her purchase, she heard the woman behind her say, “Thank god, now let’s hope this fat bitch doesn’t buy all the cupcakes.”

In an epic move, Blossom decided to clap back — by buying all the cupcakesin the store.

“Hopefully, this was a lesson in treating others kindly and maybe a lesson in karma as well,” Blossom said.

Food shaming as a form of fat shaming has happened to every fat person I know, including me. Fatphobes comment on our food at a restaurant, our snacks at work, and our grocery carts — even though they are often at the same place eating/buying the same food. When this happens to us we usually think of the perfect thing to say — ten minutes after the situation is over. Sometimes this is done on a grand scale.

Remember when Geoffrey Miller, an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology (and member of several college admission committees) tweeted out “Dear Obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation #truth”? (Pro tip — this is not even close to #truth, let alone truth, but the fact that fatphobes sit on admission committees can and does stop fat people’s progress in academia.) Well, in response the always brilliant Cat Pausé started Fuck Yeah! Fat PhDs, which now has 18 glorious pages celebrating amazing people and showing just how wrong old Geoffrey is.

Click here for some excellent clap-backs from fed-up folks

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

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Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

I often hear people say that they disagree with Size Acceptance – meaning that either they want to try to manipulate their body size, or they support other people in trying to manipulate their body size. While our personal practice of Size Acceptance is certainly a part of it, that’s not actually the main point of Size Acceptance.

Size Acceptance is a civil rights movement that asserts that fat people have the right to exist in fat bodies (regardless of why we are fat, what the so-called “consequences” of being fat might be, or if we could become thin,) without shame, stigma, bullying, or oppression. Size Acceptance says that the rights to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and basic human respect are NOT size dependent.

You either agree with that, or you are wrong. Those are the only two choices. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to practice Size Acceptance for your own body. People are allowed to do whatever they want with their own bodies – try to manipulate their size, amputate their stomach, whatever. To be clear, making the choice to be involved in diet culture doesn’t happen in a vacuum and the idea that fat people can/should lose weight is harmful to fat people, and thus, so is the decision to engage in diet culture. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t still do it.

Size Acceptance doesn’t require someone to stop trying to manipulate their size, keep their digestive system intact, take a pass on swallowing a deadly balloon, decline dangerous diet drugs that could kill them, or abandon their internalized oppression (though if they do choose to participate in diet culture then they aren’t practicing Size Acceptance in their own lives and they, rightly, will not be welcome in many Size Acceptance spaces.)

When it comes to Size Acceptance, you don’t have to practice it for yourself, but you do have to practice it towards others.

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

 Wellness for All Bodies Program: A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!
Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Five years ago, Disney and Barney’s announced a partnership for the Barney’s holiday window in which they would dramatically alter Minnie Mouse’s body — making her a 5’11, size zero in order to “look good” in a Lanvin dress. There was an uproar, the result of which was that Disney and Barneys changed the campaign, making it a “dream sequence” with Minnie eventually waking up wearing the dress on her actual body.

However, when Disney announced the changes in a press release, they claimed they had planned to do it the whole time and added: “We are saddened that activists have repeatedly tried to distort a lighthearted holiday project in order to draw media attention to themselves.”

They were talking about me. I was one of the attention seeking activists.

I had started a petition against the campaign that garnered over 140,000 signatures (including actors, models, and Walt Disney’s granddaughter) and drew international media attention.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been called an “attention seeking activist” by a person or company I had called out for oppressive behavior. When activists point out the bad behavior of a company, the response is often to attack the activist. One of the most common ways that activists are attacked is by being labeled as “attention seeking.”   Sadly, it can be a successful strategy. Often, people are uncomfortable with change and activism, so they are all too happy to roll their eyes at these rather than engage with the real issues.

Knowing this, I wanted to write an open love letter to any activist who has ever been called “attention seeking.”

To read the letter, just click here!

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

 Wellness for All Bodies Program: A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!
Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

If you’ve watched How To Get Away With Murder or Orange is the New Black, you’ve seen the work of actor Matt McGorry. If you follow him on Facebook you saw him do some serious ally work for Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance, even giving shouts out to people in HAES community:

This one is an important read. “Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight” by Lindo Bacon.
#
I wish that all people, and especially health care providers, fitness industry professionals, and nutritionists would read this book.
#
Like most people in our society, you’ve probably been on a diet aimed at losing weight. In fact, you’ve probably been on a diet MANY times. And when you inevitably “fall off” of the diet, you most likely blame yourself for not having enough willpower. You hope that next time will be different. But how many times has this happened? And should you really have to make yourself miserable with overly-restrictive eating and exercise plans in order to look a way that can make you feel worthy and valued? How is it that nearly everyone in our society constantly goes through this and yet we have grown to see it as “normal”?
#
Health and body fat are not inextricably linked, despite what most of society believes and teaches us. This book breaks it down with studies and shows that the conflation of these 2 things is actually hugely damaging to health (mental and physical). It IS possible to be fat (or soft, or chubby, etc) and be healthy. Everyone deserves to live free of size-based discrimination.
#
The more times and the more harshly we diet the more it makes our metabolism efficient at storing body fat as well as causing a host of health issues. Not the least of which is A WORLD WHERE JUST ABOUT EVERYONE IS CONSTANTLY DISSATISFIED WITH THE WAY THEIR BODY LOOKS. Many people hate the way their body looks. And women, of course, face greater pressures here than man due to societal expectations. For women of size, even more so.
#
If you’re ready to accept (or at least learn about) how you didn’t fail your New Years resolution, but your New Years resolution (and societal expectations and lessons about weight) has failed YOU…then I highly recommend this book.
#
This book and learning from many of the amazing people I follow (specifically women and folks such as @fyeahmfabello & @bodyposipanda who have personally helped me process ) in the Body Positivity movement has set me on my own journey to self acceptance and pursuing a happy and healthier life without obsessive eating and exercise tendencies. Moving from the extraordinarily restrictive behaviors of competitive powerlifting and bodybuilding to the pressures of the film and TV industry, and the current realization that my body is beautiful the way it is. Something that I know intellectually, but am on the continuous journey of working on accepting in my everyday life. It’s time to try something different.
#
I have a great deal of privilege in regards to my body. I am a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cis-gender, and famous man. And even in spite of these privileges that make my body much more accepted than others, I am often compelled to hide the way my body looks. Even if this is the norm… this shit ain’t normal!
#
#LindaBacon #HealthAtEverySize
#McGReads

There’s a lot of great work that thin folks can do around HAES and Size Acceptance, and the good news is that a world without fatshaming helps people of all sizes.  If you want more ideas for how to be a thin ally, check out this post!

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

 Wellness for All Bodies Program: A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!
Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Let’s start with the fact that I’m a fan of Drew Barrymore – I recently went on a kick and watched a bunch of her movies (the song from the end of The Wedding Singer is still in my head.)

I also want to acknowledge that she is not typically “Hollywood thin” and her weight has fluctuated throughout her career, which means that she’s had to deal with all kinds of body shaming nonsense, and that’s total bullshit. Based on a recent People Magazine interview, it seems that she may have bought into diet culture in a way that illustrates the problems that many of us have, or have had that I think are worth acknowledging. Discussing her eating habits around her show Santa Clarita Diet she says:

“Let’s face it, I hate it, I would much rather eat fettuccine alfredo all day long…When I first started the show [Santa Clarita Diet], I was 145 lbs. and my life was kind of falling apart,” she said. “And I said, ‘Victor [Fresco, the show’s executive producer], can I lose 20 lbs. over the course of the show, and change my eyebrows and the height of my shoes and the body language and attitude and go from someone who’s kind of naïve and unhappy to someone who’s empowered and alive?’ And he said yes, and so I got to make that transformation.”

We have to let go of this idea that becoming thinner is the same as becoming more empowered and alive. For that matter, we should let go of the ideas that performing femininity in a way that brings us closer to a stereotype of beauty that reinforces things like racism, sizeism, ableism, healthism, cissexism, and heteronormaitivity, is the same thing as being empowered and alive.

She continued:

“When I’m doing the show I’m a vegan and I barely eat anything, and I workout every day, and it’s so healthy,” she said. “It gets to be euphoric, and then it’s like food poisoning, you feel like you’ll never eat again, and then before you know it you’re pigging out with the feed bag strapped to your face. And I’m a foodie, and love food and I travel the world for food, so I get heavy again between the show.”

“I heard Denzel Washington does this and I don’t know because I just want to believe it, I don’t want to know it’s not true. But he just enjoys his life and then pulls himself back together when he’s doing movies and looks amazing,” Barrymore said. “So I’m giving it the full ‘Denzel,’ even if that exists or not, and I let myself go.”

Holy shitballs. I’ve never heard anything that so clearly and accurately described disordered eating. Of course Drew Barrymore is allowed to do whatever she wants with her body, but let’s be clear that any competent healthcare provider would see this as red flag behavior for an eating disorder. This doesn’t have to be what’s normal. We can have a relationship with food that takes into account hunger, satiety, enjoyment, the social aspect of food etc. and does not involve severe restriction of food types and amount. Talented actors should not have to put their bodies through this kind of dangerous starvation cycle just to do their jobs.

If we would stop equating thinness with attractiveness, talent, morality, and being empowered and alive, then we could choose our actors based on their ability to act rather than their ability to approximate an impossible standard of beauty, and the characters they play could be whatever size the actor happens to be (including if they are a zombie on a high protein diet, since there are fat people on high protein diets in real life.)

For now I hope that Drew Barrymore’s disordered eating doesn’t escalate, and I hope that her casual discussion of it doesn’t lead anyone else to try it. And I continue to be a fan of a very talented woman who, it would seem, has been deeply affected by an extremely toxic diet culture.

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

 Wellness for All Bodies Program: A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!
Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

In case you are not familiar, Geneen Roth rose to prominence by writing about eating disorders. She has developed a sizable mailing list, to whom she sent the following e-mail (Trigger warning for fatphobia, eating disorder trigger.)

“It’s uncomfortable to walk around in a body that is uncomfortable. It’s hard to let innate brilliance or power express itself when you are schlepping around twenty or fifty extra pounds. It’s not impossible, just more difficult. And since there is already so much inherent difficulty in being alive, what with people getting sick, raising kids, dying, and the earth on the verge of destruction, why not make life easier on yourself? Why not make the effort to discover what enhances your aliveness and vitality? Because when you do, you become less and less fascinated with those foods, activities, and people that don’t. The only best reason to do this is that there, in that vast space, we find love itself, flagrant, unstinting, give-it-all-away love. Not just for our spouses or children or particular community, but for arms and legs and nights and fog, love for the mornings, floors, caterpillars, and trees. Love for the sounds your foot makes on the sidewalk, for traffic and honking horns, for the earth itself. Nothing is left out. Zen teachers call it discovering “your original face.” We do whatever it takes to keep the channel open because when we don’t, it hurts, and when we do, it doesn’t. Also, there is nothing better to do with a life. — This Messy Magnificent Life”
~Geneen Roth

Let’s start with the obvious fact that this is fatphobic bullshit. The belief that fat bodies are “uncomfortable” to live in rests on a foundation of weight-based oppression. It’s uncomfortable to live in a world where space isn’t made for you, where clothes aren’t made for you, where people are constantly comparing your body to other bodies and finding you lacking, where people are actually so brainwashed by sizeism that they believe that weight has anything to do with innate brilliance and power, where the government spends billions of dollars trying to recruit everyone you’ll ever meet to fight a war against you, and where the mailing list that you signed up for to support you in your eating disorder recovery sends you fatphobic drivel instead. I’m not “suffering from obesity,” but I am made to suffer by this kind of fatphobia.

The notion that some people’s entire body deserves to be “schlepped” around, but for others of us, only part of us is worthy of “schlepping” is patently ridiculous and offensive, Roth is one of these charlatans who sell the idea that “‘When people begin respecting themselves, and treating themselves well, it just so happens that weight loss becomes a side benefit.” That’s bullshit and Geneen doesn’t have any kind of evidence to back up the idea that she can help people produce long-term significant weight loss (she has this in common with literally everyone, because there is no method of weight loss that has been shown to work for more than a tiny fraction of people.)

She is also one of these dangerously misinformed so-called eating disorder experts who forwards the notion, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that if someone is fat they are a compulsive eater who must be treated with paternalism and cannot be trusted as a witness to their own experience.”   (“…if someone weighs 22st…even though they will tell me outright that they are eating only for physical hunger – it’s safe to say there’s probably a reason for that compulsive eating.”) This alone should discredit her completely.

But it’s more than just fatphobic and misinformed paternalism, she is literally perpetuating eating disorders by trying to sell weight loss through sizeism. By telling people to be afraid of being heavier lest they have difficulty expressing their brilliance and power, (and, in an utterly ableist argument, have difficulty moving their body,) what Geneen is saying to everyone on her mailing list who may be developing, struggling with, or recovering from an eating disorder (especially those struggling with the accompanying weight gain) is: “the fears that perpetuated your eating disorder, and that help it keep its grip on you, are completely justified. Whatever you do, don’t get fat.”

Which says to someone with an eating disorder, that the (disordered) behaviors that are currently keeping them “thin” are a good idea. When she suggests that weight loss and maintaining thinness is a good idea, including and especially in eating disorder community, she supports the dangerous idea that we should recommend and prescribe to fat people that which we diagnose and treat in thin people.

Like so many before her, Geneen’s attempt to find ways to get a piece of the $60 Billion a year weight loss industry for herself is harming countless people of all sizes.

I recently had the honor of giving a keynote address at the MEDA (Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association) National Conference.  The organization’s leadership – including Beth Mayer, Rachel Monroe, Michelle Pierce and others – has been amazing in embracing intersectional social justice, including Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size as part of their work with eating disorders. (Sadly, that’ s not the case in all of eating disorder community.)

My talk was called Size Acceptance and Eating Disorders – A Critical, Crucial, Core Conversation. The premise was simple and obvious – if we truly want to prevent eating disorders, and allow those who suffer from them to experience complete recovery, then a Size Acceptance paradigm is the only option that makes sense.

Size Acceptance doesn’t just benefit fat people, it benefits people of all sizes, and especially those with body dysmorphia related to weight. The fear of being or becoming fat that drives so many eating disorders would be hard pressed to exist in a society where being fat wasn’t seen as a bad or negative thing.

It’s difficult to believe that your recovery is the most important thing when diet culture and a fatphobic world are telling you that the most important thing, by far, is being thin by any means necessary.

It’s difficult to let go of your fear of being fat/gaining weight/having an “imperfect” body if you can plainly see that you live in a culture where your fear is absolutely justified.

In a fatphobic world, rife with diet culture, where hating your body and being terrified of being or becoming fat or gaining weight is considered normal, preventing eating disorders, and making a full recovery can be completely impossible.

And that’s the kind of world that Geneen Roth is perpetuating with her ridiculous, harmful, irresponsible, blatantly fatphobic, ableist, and untrue e-mail. I call bullshit, and you should to.  She may not be intending to do harm, but harm is being done nonetheless. Here’s her contact page if you’d like to…a-hem…weigh in and help provide her with the education she needs to stop harming people. https://geneenroth.com/contact/

If you are looking for diverse eating disorder activists and providers, check out this list!

If you value my work, you can support my ability to do more of it with a  one-time contribution or by becoming a member.

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If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.