For Pete’s sake, folks.

There are a few kinds of submissions and asks (other than the hate) we get pretty regularly. Just having had a couple of these in the inbox today, I want to mention a few things.

This is not the place to talk about weight loss, and it is not appropriate to ask us for permission to lose weight (or want to). We are not the High Holy Arbiters of Fat Acceptance. We can’t tell you it’s ok to lose weight. Lots of FA people think you can do whatever the fuck you want with your body as long as you don’t treat other people like shit, and lots of people think it’s anti-FA to want to lose weight. Our permission is not going to change anyone else’s mind. You don’t get to use our words to try to justify yourself to other FA people, any more than you get to use Your Gay Best Friend saying it’s ok to use the words faggot and dyke to tell me I shouldn’t have a problem with straight people saying those words. Fuck you if you try.

Personally, I just think people should understand that weight loss doesn’t work for the vast majority of people, and that it doesn’t necessarily convey any of the benefits it’s claimed to, even in the event that you’re one of the special few who can pull it off. Which is what I’m always going to tell people who ask me. I don’t give a fuck why you want to lose weight, and I don’t think it has any bearing on whether or not it affects your FA cred.

Please stop asking us whether or not it’s ok for you to lose weight.

Another one we get a lot is “Here’s a link to this thing. What do you think about it?”

If it’s fat hate, it’s bad. If it’s not, whatever.

Again, we are not the High Holy Arbiters of FA. Nor are we Empresses of Fat. Nor anything else. You are all perfectly capable of figuring out for yourselves if something is fatphobic, and further capable of deciding whether or not you like it anyway.

We’ve answered this one before, repeatedly.

This is not actually a fat acceptance blog. It is a fat activism blog, in the sense that it exists to make people aware of thin privilege in the hopes that they will then address it. But we are not here to validate that thing you like, or give you permission to lose weight, or tell you whether or not something is bad. We’re just people, like you, spouting our opinions on the internet. Like you.