Recently, The Renfrew Center drew fatphobia in eating disorders treatment into sharp relief with a horribly fatphobic article in their summer newsletter. Sadly, the article was only one example of the fatphobia that exist within eating disorders treatment centers.
In my latest piece for The Mighty I explore the issues with the Renfrew article and three other ways that fatphobia surfaces in eating disorders treatment programs.
You can read the full piece here!
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Excellent explanation of how fatphobia and prejudice do so much harm, especially for people with eating disorders.
Two questions:
1. Why did I track down and read the original article that you, for very good reason, did not link to?
2. What do I have to do to my hippocampus to wipe it from my memory?
Seriously, if you’ve ever heard the phrase “said the quiet part out loud,” this article felt like the author channeled every Good Cop ever and said literally all the quiet parts out loud at once. Remember, next time you see some smiling Good Cop talking about how they’re against weight stigma and want to help People Suffering from Obesity, this is what they’re really thinking – that you’re fat because you can’t control your animal appetites like they, the true human, can; that as the true human, it is their noblesse oblige to take the reins of your life in their kind but firm thin hands and steer you down the morally, mentally purifying path of CICO dieting; and that if you at any point object that they are wrong, this is taken as more proof you’re too degenerate to be trusted with your own fate, because any reasonable person would agree that they are Right and their actions are Right, so you are clearly not a reasonable person.
AGAIN:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis
Excellent quote! *HUGS* Go look at cute animal pics.
Great advice! I found a bat eating a banana.
Woot!
They’ll kill us all and expect us to dance on our own graves with them… I think we are dealing with a mental illness level hang up here, literally, not “You so crazy” funny haha. A real mental defect based on fixing thing In others, others are not interested in fixing, or see as broken…