Stop Bringing Up ‘Skinny Shaming’ Whenever Anti-Fat Bias Is Being Discussed

We didn’t get that far or that deep. Somehow, in that moment, we were both too frustrated too quickly to talk it through, so we left the conversation unresolved. In the days ahead, I turn the conversation over in my mind, reconfiguring it like a Rubik’s cube.

It wasn’t the invocation of “skinny shaming” that bothered me, but its specific use to end a conversation about fatness and fat people—and often, its use to deflect responsibility and shirk accountability for anti-fat behaviors. It was an experience I’d had before: talking about fatness in the presence of some thin people called up a deep defensiveness and a sudden, hard rejection. They responded as if discussions of fatness somehow detracted from their own experiences. It wasn’t just talking to a friend about differing experiences—it was somehow a zero-sum game, as if supporting me meant sacrificing themselves.

When my friend invoked “skinny shaming,” what she was saying was that her experience mattered, too. And she was right. Of course it mattered, and of course I knew that.

But it was also a red herring. I hadn’t said her experience didn’t matter, and I wouldn’t. She was my friend; I loved her. I wanted to support her, and I wanted to feel the reciprocity of that support. But something about just talking about an experience she didn’t share had led to a near-complete shutdown. We both left the conversation frustrated and resentful: she at being expected to set aside her experience in order to discuss mine, and me at having a much-needed conversation so thoroughly derailed.

“Skinny shaming isn’t any better.”

She was right. Body shaming someone—that is, denigrating a person based on their body—is wholly wrong. No one should be judged or mocked because of their size, shape, appearance, or ability. Our bodies are not public property, and they are no one’s to comment on, in judgment or in praise.

But judgment is different from systemic exclusion. No, thin people shouldn’t be told to eat a sandwich, nor should the fact of their bodies be described as anorexic. Those individual aggressions are harmful and inexcusable. But those individual, interpersonal instances are different than being denied the ability to meet even your most basic needs. Being told to eat something is jarring and unkind, the kind of unbidden comment that can stay with you for days, weeks, months, years. It is a different problem than a court ruling that it’s not illegal to fire someone for gaining weight. Or judges commenting that an “overweight” survivor of sexual assault would have been a “bit flattered” by their alleged abuser’s advances. In that way, shaming thin people is an individual aggression, not a systemic one. It is different than requiring job applicants to meet or fall below a certain BMI. Studies and reviews have found evidence for weight-based discrimination in employment at just about every stage of the employment process from selection to compensation, promotion, discipline, and firing. In other words, fat workers may not be hired or promoted, or may be fired simply because they are fat—a phenomenon that simply hasn’t been documented at scale amongst thin workers. And skinny shaming is different than being the target of a lengthy and grueling war on obesity.

No, thin people shouldn’t be shamed. Nor should fat people be systemically excluded from our most basic needs: employment, health care, housing, etc. But too many thin voices fall silent when it comes to tackling that institutional exclusion of fat people. In that way, my friend was an exemplar. “Skinny shaming isn’t any better” was a rejoinder to end the conversation.

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