On Being A Skinny Girl: My Experience with Body Image and Thin Privilege

As a woman, I face a lot of stress about the way that I look, particularly how much I weigh. I’ve been trained from an early age to feel like most of my value comes from being thin and pretty, and even though I’ve spent a lot of time intentionally unlearning those kinds of thoughts I still feel haunted by the feeling that I’m not good enough if I’m not skinny enough. Most women are made to feel like they should take up as little space as possible, and that the best way to gain attention from men and respect from women is to be thin. However, even though much of my concern with being thin comes from the oppression of sexism, many of those feelings also come from my privilege as a thin person. I’m terrified to gain weight because there are very real societal and interpersonal privileges I’ve always had as a thin person. I’ve always been thin, but I recently lost significant weight and became skinny. It’s hard for me to admit this, but I’ve been scared to gain any of it back because I don’t want to face how people would think of me and treat me if I became fat- I recently realized that that fear is how I know that thin privilege exists. (The term “fat” is preferred by many fat activists over “overweight” because it furthers the fat acceptance movement by “normalizing the neutrality and/or positivity of ‘fat’”.)

As a social justice activist, I understand the emotional, psychological, physical, and economic injustice that fat folks face on a daily basis, but I’ve only recently started to acknowledge my privilege as a thin person and to hold myself accountable for my own oppression of fat folks. My perpetuation of fat phobia comes from my own insecurity and body image issues as a woman. For example, I remember an instance when I was skimming through photos online of a guy I had just started dating, and when I found pictures of him and his ex-girlfriend I started comparing myself to her. (Disclaimer: I’m way not proud.) In response to my anxiety, my friend said something about how I didn’t have to worry about her because she looked fat and I was way skinnier and prettier than her. I knew it was a super out of line thing for her to say and that she was being fat phobic in an effort to make me feel better, but the thing is, it did make me feel better. I know that I have power from being thin, and I chose to use that power in this situation to make myself feel more secure about my new relationship. This power brought itself to my attention again recently: I gained some temporary weight quickly a couple months ago when I was prescribed steroids for a sinus infection, and I was so afraid of feeling unattractive that I started asking my boyfriend multiple times a day if I looked fat, desperately hoping that the answer was “no”. I did these things to hold onto my privilege because it’s been so ingrained in me that I’m worth more skinny than I am fat. 

I wanted to write this article on fat phobia because, as a social justice educator, I think that it’s important for me to explore the difference in oppression that fat and thin women face. I started to write from a very academic stand point- I honestly haven’t learned very much about fat phobia throughout my activist career, so I read articles written by fat activists to try to understand the systemic, institutional, and personal oppression that fat folks face in our society. However, I have come to realize that, at this point, I personally understand fat phobia best through my own perpetuation of it. Thin privilege is a very real thing that I benefit from, and until I and other people who hold that power acknowledge our privilege and hold ourselves accountable to think about it, fat phobia will continue to exist. My thinness means that I’m perceived as being fit, healthy, beautiful, and normal, because those are the qualities associated with thinness in our culture. A quick flip through the pages of pretty much any magazine confirms that ultra-thin women receive respect and admiration for their bodies, while fat women are meanwhile shamed mercilessly for their weight. Since the list of ways in which thin folks are benefited by thin privilege is way too long to cover here, I found this article helpful in understanding more ways that my thin privilege benefits me.

Although it’s not my (or any one person’s) fault that fat phobia is so prevalent and harmful in our society, it is my responsibility as a thin person and as an aspiring ally to acknowledge my privilege and the ways in which I continue to oppress fat folks around me. It’s not only unsupportive but actively oppressive that I’ve used my thinness to feel superior to other women, and I feel that acknowledging this shortsightedness is the first step in becoming more accountable in the social justice revolution. This is a super complicated issue; it’s unacceptable in our society that I, as a woman, feel like I have power based on my thinness/attractiveness rather than my talent, intelligence, or other parts of my character. But it’s still more desirable to have that influence at all rather than to face the oppression of fat phobia. I’m still learning about fat politics and how to intentionally include fat phobia when teaching and learning about privilege and oppression, and I hope to keep up these conversations and accountability with other thin folks.

This article is reposted from Julia’s own blog, quiotgrrrl.com. Check it out!