What Is Fat Acceptance and How Does It Work?
It is the acceptance of one’s own body in its whole, regardless of its form or size, especially when it is greater in proportion.
Those who support this movement seek to enhance the quality of life for obese individuals while also combating prejudice against them in fields such as healthcare, fashion, and the workplace. Advocates for fat acceptance have sometimes been referred to as “fat rights” or “fat liberation” campaigners.
Fat acceptance has a long history that goes back decades1. Learn more about the history of this movement by looking at its roots, legal battles against fat discrimination, and the obstacles that overweight people still have to overcome.
Acceptance of One’s Body Fat
Overweight acceptance is a sort of activism that emerged as a result of the political movements of the 1960s and seeks to highlight and combat the social obstacles that fat people experience.
The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing fat acceptance.
According to the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), in terms of fat acceptance, “we envisage a society in which all fat people are emancipated from every type of oppression, celebrated, and celebrated in their own way.”
Fat people endure institutional discrimination in the same way as people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, low-income people, and people with disabilities do. For overweight persons who are members of various disadvantaged groups, it is not unusual for a variety of discriminatory practices to be practiced against them simultaneously. Dietary fat people, sometimes referred to as “people of size,” are the target of the NAAFA’s efforts to preserve their rights.
It is not the same as “body positivity,” despite the fact that fat acceptance is often used as a synonym. In contrast to the body positivity movement, which does not overtly combat anti-fat prejudice in society, the political foundations of the movement separate it from the latter.
The body positivity movement aims to inspire individuals to love and accept their bodies, and this covers bodies of all sizes and weights, as well as issues such as scars, cellulite, stretch marks, facial features, height, and other physical characteristics. This kind of behavior is not always associated with being overweight.
Furthermore, the body positivity movement has been aggressively marketed by fashion and beauty firms, with the hashtag #bopo often being used on social media to allude to the movement and to promote the message.
Fatty acceptance, on the other hand, has remained predominantly a political movement, with campaigners launching legal challenges to battle anti-fat prejudice.
Proponents of body neutrality, on the other hand, are more concerned with how the body performs than with how it looks. It is possible for these people to show thankfulness for their bodies for allowing them to migrate from one location to another, produce children, or survive a terrible disease. This movement, like body positivity, does not have the same political origins as fat acceptance.
When it comes to our bodies, we may either be positive or neutral.
Accepting One’s Body Image Throughout History
In 1967, 500 individuals gathered in Central Park in New York City for a “fat-in,” with some being overweight and others being underweight.
5 In addition to “Fat Power” and “Think Fat,” they also carried banners that said “Buddha Was Fat.” Diet books and an image of Twiggy, a supermodel from the 1960s who was noted for her extreme thinness, were also set ablaze by the protestors.
He weighed up to 250 pounds and stood 5 feet and 11 inches tall, according to Steve Post, the event’s organizer and local radio celebrity. As a result of his stature, he felt humiliated, he said.
Post believes that big individuals should be pleased and proud of their bodies, rather than feeling ashamed of their weight. Obviously, this is in direct conflict with the way society instructs us to see bigger bodies.
Following that, Llewelyn Louderback published an essay in which he urged people to reject diet, or weight reduction, culture. This provided a significant boost to the fat acceptance movement. Because they had watched their wives being subjected to size prejudice, Louderback and Bill Fabrey created the National Association for the Advancement of Feminine Athletes in 1969.
Fat Power: Whatever You Weigh is Right was written by Louderback in order to further the cause (published in 1970).
The organization also used the news media, schools, and workplaces to preach its message of tolerance and inclusion.
Others, on the other hand, wanted to see tangible effects from the fat-shaming campaign. Because of this, NAAFA members Judy Freespirit and Sarah Fishman launched a feminist campaign known as the Fat Underground to combat fatphobia in research, notably in the healthcare business.
These ladies discovered how common anti-fat prejudice was in medicine after doing an investigation of medical publications…A group of doctors and nurses have also accused the medical system of not providing enough treatment to singer Cass Elliot, who died from heart failure in 1974 at the age of 32 after a lengthy and well publicized battle with her weight.
After years of increasing popularity, the Fat Underground was forced to close its doors in 1982. In the fat-rights movement, the NAAFA and its members have been acknowledged with playing crucial roles, and the NAAFA and its members continue to exist today.
Rhode Island v. Bonnie Cook, No.
A notable legal win for the fat acceptance movement was achieved in 1993, when Bonnie Cook was awarded a victory in a weight discrimination case brought before the United States Court of Appeals. A state-run Rhode Island facility for persons with impairments turned Cook down for a position despite her height and weight of 5 feet 2 inches and 350 pounds, Cook said.
The state of Rhode Island denied Cook’s application for a paramedic license based on the argument that her weight would prevent her from evacuating patients in an emergency and would make her more susceptible to developing major health issues. Cook has a documented track record in the field. Cook claimed that she was being discriminated against as a result of a “handicap”.
After much deliberation, it was decided that fat alone was not a handicap by the three judges who heard the case. Their argument was that the state discriminated against Cook because her obesity impeded her activities at work, or because there was a perception that her weight was limiting, regardless of whether or not it truly was. Cook lost her case in court.
Fat People Face a Number of Obstacles to Advancement
As a result of the probability that they would be humiliated over their weight in court, it was uncertain if other persons in comparable circumstances would follow Bonnie Cook’s lead and file a lawsuit.
4 Individuals who are overweight or obese are more vocal about the prejudice they face, and academics are doing extensive study on fatphobia in this century. 1
Fatter women are more likely than slimmer women to incur harsher criminal sentences7, earn lower wages8, and are less likely to be accepted to universities.
Patients with obesity are denied treatment by physicians because of fatphobia, which is a worldwide issue in healthcare practice.
When it comes to healthcare, the perception that obese individuals are just too lethargic or too indulgent persists. Many facilities also lack enough furniture, instruments, and gear to provide adequate care to patients with bigger bodies. 11
Furthermore, obese patients claim that their valid health concerns are dismissed on a regular basis by physicians, who attribute any problems they may be experiencing to their excess fat. These microaggressions may cause persons of bigger stature to avoid going to the doctor until an emergency develops, which can be dangerous.
A growing number of health care practitioners and fat acceptance campaigners are urging the medical community to adopt a more nuanced approach to the influence of a person’s weight on his or her health. They call into question the validity of the widely used body mass index (BMI), which is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared to determine whether or not they are underweight, normal weight, overweight, or obese, depending on their height and weight categories.
According to critics, BMI leads to inaccurate diagnoses from healthcare practitioners since it does not take into consideration muscle mass, ethnicity, and other characteristics that influence health. Furthermore, they claim that having a BMI that is within the normal range does not always imply that a person is in good physical health. Individuals with a high BMI, on the other hand, may be otherwise healthy in all other respects.
After reports surfaced indicating persons who were obese were more likely to die or experience major consequences from the coronavirus, the COVID-19 pandemic brought additional attention to body mass index (BMI) measurements. A number of fat activists have expressed concern about the exploitation of such studies to further stigmatize the bodies of obese individuals.
Beyond the doctor’s office, fat individuals are subjected to prejudice. Those who engage in ordinary activities such as shopping for clothing at popular businesses that provide goods in just a few sizes, for example, may suffer prejudice. As a result, heavy individuals must shop at niche plus-size businesses rather than at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target.
However, despite the fact that the plus-size apparel industry has risen in recent years, some retailers have generated controversy by charging consumers more money for bigger sizes than they do for smaller ones. “Fat tax,” argue many who oppose this measure. 14 Beyond apparel shops, overweight individuals have met this levy wherever they go, from nail salons to aircraft, where they are required to pay more money for services than slimmer people do.
Even more than 50 years after the fat acceptance movement got its start, obese individuals continue to confront a variety of social obstacles, which is a major reason why the movement is still going strong in the twenty-first century.
