“Do I Judge Others for Being Fat?” and that “Fat but Fit Is a Myth” Garbage Article

by Arielle Juliette. Approx. 5 min read, or 3 min read and 5 min video

This month, I wanted to share a really powerful video I found on Instagram by one of my favorite content creators, @JerVae. In it, they answer a follower’s question entitled, “Do I Judge Others for Being Fat?”

This reading on anti-fat bias and how we are all deserving of love in the bodies we have now AND the bodies we may have in the future really touched me. I’ve listened to it five times now and I’m crying by the end every time! I filmed a reaction video here, where you can watch it with me. You can also find this video on JerVae’s page, look for the clip that looks like the picture for this blog post!

I highly recommend listening to this one if you can, as it doesn’t come across quite the same in writing. However, if you aren’t in a position to listen to the video, I created a transcript at the end of this article. Don’t forget to go follow JerVae, sign up for their Patreon, and support all the wonderful work they are doing!

Next, some of you may have seen the recent article that came out proclaiming that “Fat but Fit Is a Myth”. I’m sure you’ll be heartily unsurprised to hear that I think it’s a crock of bullshit and the fact that this research was talked about at all by the media is trash; in fact, it’s been a point of recent discussion in many of my body liberation groups! Here’s a couple of articles if you’d like to read some opinions by people much more knowledgeable than me on this topic:

This article in Scientific American talks about how in ob*sity research, fatphobia is always the X factor. “The term ‘obesity paradox’ is a prime example of weight stigma in the scientific literature,” Jeffrey Hunger, an assistant professor of social psychology at Miami University of Ohio…. “Think about it: A paradox is something contradictory or seemingly absurd. This term came about because it was considered absurd that fat people could actually be healthy.”

This article by dietitian Christy Harrison states, “First of all, since the research hasn't been peer-reviewed and published, it's extremely irresponsible for these media outlets to run stories about it. There's always a chance that when peer review and publication are complete, the researchers' conclusions won't look nearly as clear-cut as they're making them out to be.

I also highly doubt the researchers controlled for weight cycling, which is associated with greater disease risk and which we KNOW larger-bodied people are more likely to have gone through.

That's to say nothing of internalized weight stigma--I'm willing to bet the researchers didn't control for that--which again has been associated with higher disease risks. So there could be many reasons for their findings that have nothing to do with the people's actual size, but with how people of size are *treated* in Western society, which we know is badly.”

Questions I like to ask when I see reports like the “fat but fit is a myth” articles is, who did the research? Have they displayed any biases in previous work (because everyone has biases)? Who funded the research, and what findings would they have wanted to see to make said funding worth it? How long was the research done? How many people did they get data from? How heterogeneous was that sample of humans? How many people dropped out? Why did they drop out? What have other studies on similar topics said? Have there been any metanalyses on this topic before?

In the case of this article published by CNN, this just doesn’t pass the muster. In the words of Nancy Ellis-Ordway, LCSW, PhD, “If we rely on the general press to tell us about {the science of health and body size}, they don’t always get it right. They aren’t in the business of teaching us science, they’re in the business of selling a publication.”

And you know what sells? Fear mongering around body size. 🤷 What are your thoughts on all of this?

Thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing from you! Keep reading below if you’d like the transcript of JerVae’s video.

-Arielle Juliette

If you have any questions about this article, or a question/topic for the next blog post you'd like to see covered, please don't hesitate to write me and let me know!

A transcript of “Do I Judge Others for Being Fat?” by Jervae

Do I judge others for being fat since I have such a fear of it? If you judge yourself for doing things that might make you fat, you judge others for doing things that might make them fat, and you judge others for being fat. This is a judgment of fatness. This is fatphobia. How you treat people is a direct reflection of how you treat yourself. If you believe that there is a condition that your body could be in that would make you less worthy of love, then that belief is also applied to the world around you.

You can perform fat acceptance by withholding overtly fatphobic commentary. You can also try to hide overtly anti-fat behavior, but you are more than what you present to the world. You are also the you that lives within yourself, and that's the authentic you. That's the more powerful you. Just because you don't say something out loud doesn't mean that you're not saying it to yourself, and meditations on fatphobia make room for it to live and control you. Implicit bias, unchecked and uninvestigated, will always be in control.

Fatphobia, and more specifically, sizeism, manifests in a lot of ways that most people cannot see because fatphobia hides behind what the ruling class has established as normal and acceptable. We live in a world that justifies abuse. Fatphobia justifies the abuse of fat people. Fatphobia justifies the glorification of thinness. Fatphobia offers conditional love for a perfectionism. White supremacy created perfectionism. White supremacy created perfectionism, and in its image condemned the rest of the world to a hell it created, uses every tool it has to convince us that everything is okay.

If you want to be good to fat people, it's useful to be good to yourself because you too, are people. You cannot exclude yourself because we are all connected. Remove the conditions that qualify you for love; this is why self-empathy is the root of empathy for others. I believe a more effective way of being an ally to fat people, and a more sustainable strategy for moving away from fatphobia, is bringing your full self into integrity with fat acceptance.

Fat people are worthy of love, and if and when I become fat or fatter, I will be worthy of love, too.

Being fat phobic is not evidence of failure; it's evidence of indoctrination, it's evidence of white supremacy, and it's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be aware of, and it's something to take action against.

Do I judge others for being fat since I have such a fear of it? My question for you is, do you judge yourself? Because you too deserve unconditional love. You too deserve radical acceptance. You too deserve to move through the world without a fear of unworthiness. If it's true, then it applies to you, too. You deserve every good thing. Thank you so much for being here.