Health at Every Size (and much of the body posi movement) misses the point…

thepurpleglass:

mousferatu:

Let me explain:

A lot of proponents of HAES point out that it’s possible to be healthy even if you’re fat. While this is true and it’s INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to acknowledge that yes, fat people can indeed be healthy…

It misses the point that the health of a person doesn’t matter when it comes to how we treat them. Saying “well being fat isn’t unnecessisarilly unhealthy!” is all well and good, but what we really need to say is “no one owes you their health.” what we really need to say is “It doesn’t matter if a fat person is unhealthy, they are still deserving of respect and basic human decency”.

There’s a weird intersection of ableism and fatphobia when it concerns unhealthy fat people, especially disabled fat people – something that many body positivity and HAES proponents over look. Which includes the fact that:

1. Not Everyone Can Be Healthy (people with chronic illnesses, disabilities and mental illness will likely never achieve “true health” to imply that the reason we should respect the humanity of fat people is because “not all fat people are unhealthy!” is to leave out the disabled, chronically ill and mentally ill who cannot be and will likely never be “healthy” by any metric)
2. A person’s health has absolutely nothing to do with their worth as a human being, nothing to do with their morality. Being unhealthy doesn’t make a person bad, less moral or less human than a healthy person. The tie between health and morality in the eye of society MUST be severed because it’s used to deny many people (the disabled/chronically ill, mentally ill and addicts) their basic humanity.
3. That health is not the standard by which we determine who is deserving of basic human decency and respect. To imply this is absolutely fucking irresponsible. A person’s health does NOT define whether or not they’re deserving of kindness or respect.
4. That heatlh is a nebulous and ill-defined condept which is different for every human being and ever body.

Additionally, it’s not possible to be healthy at every size. Someone who is quite underweight is at the risk of organ failure, heart disease and all sorts of horrible health problems – solely due to their weight. But here’s the thing: they’re still deserving of basic human decency and I don’t think many would OPENLY deny that fact. However, there’s likely a good chance that they think of “unhealthy” people as less than the or somehow morally deficient – as if not being able to achieve “health” somehow proves that the person in question is “bad”.

This is tied into some really, really old societal ideas (such as, for example, the ancient Greek belief that beauty was literally a gift from the gods and that beautiful people were inherently more trustworthy and moral than not beautiful people because they are closer to godliness) where we tie someone’s attractiveness to their worthinesss and percieved morality as a person.

Which CONSCIOUSLY I’m sure you realize is absolute bullshit, but what our CONSCIOUSminds realize isn’t always the way our SUBCONSIOUS brains work. We all have internal/subconcious biases that are ingrained in us by a toxic society.

(this does NOT mean that we are not responsible for our actions because “society made me this way!” you have the responsibility yo overcome the effects of a negative/toxic society. Your actions because of a toxic scoiety may be “understandable” but that doesn’t make them RIGHT or OKAY.)

Our society puts down ANYONE who doesn’t fit into a very narrow box – which includes fat people, extremely underweight people, people who are sick/unhealthy or who have disabilities. It doesn’t matter if a fat person is unhealthy, you have no right to mock, deride or abuse them because their health is none of YOUR concern. It is the concern of that individual person and their doctor. No one else.

NO ONE owes you their health, no one has to conform to YOUR IDEAS of health OR attractiveness. You do for your own body what you want and let others do the same.

I honestly feel like fatphobia is tied intimately with the denial of people’s(especially women, queer people and POC) bodily autonomy. For some reason (probably because privileged people have it drilled into their head that they have the right to control the bodies of marginalized people), many thin people/fatphobes get this idea in their head that they are somehow responsible for the health of fat people but they are NOT. No one is responsible for the health of anyone but THEMSELVES. 

(I also find it “funny” that thin people aren’t regularly accused of being unhealthy even though I know quite a few thin people who have horribly ‘unhealthy’ diets – but no one comes out of the woodwork when THEY talk about it to scream “BUT THAT’S UNHEALTHY”. Which really, points out the reality: the abuse that fatphobes hurl at fat people has absolutely nothing to do with health but instead, to do with enforcing a rigid societal ideal by making life difficult and painful for anyone who dares to break that mold.)

tl;dr: Stop defending fat people by saying “well not all fat people are unhealthy!” because health isn’t the metric by which we should judge someone’s humanity. Start saying “it doesn’t matter if someone is unhealthy, they still deserve basic  human decency and respect. Their body is THEIR BODY and their health is absolutely none of your god damned business.”

@bigfatscience @fatphobiabusters @feminismandmedia @thisisthinprivilige 
I’d appreciate if y’all could give this a big boost for me! 

Oh man, I’ve thought this for years.

Trouble is some people will pull the “my taxes pay for health care so how dare anybody be unhealthy they’re stealing from me” bit, which (a) usually ignores unhealthy thin people and (b) arrogantly assumes they themselves will never become disabled due to illnesses or accident. I’m not sure how to convince them otherwise.