One time when I was in the ninth grade, one of my classes did an activity of choosing an issue from a list that was given to us, and then write about what can be done to stop it. We were supposed to choose four issues that we thought were the most serious, but only write about one. The issues on this list were things like homelessness, drug addiction, AIDS, child abuse, etc. However, one of the issues on this list was obesity.

This disgusts me. How can you compare the existence of fat people to a child being abused, being homeless, or dying from AIDS? However, back then, I didn’t know that thin privilege existed (I was also, and still am, thin) so I didn’t think much about it. But a couple of my classmates spoke up about it. They asked how obesity could even compare to the other things on the list.

They were shot down, and made fun of. And my teacher did nothing, to let us “discuss”. Some people tried to apply logic to it. One person said that obesity is almost as bad as AIDS because you can die from obesity too. Yeah. Great job, public school system.

And yes, a couple kids chose obesity as the worst.



Thin privilege is not having your body be compared to being abused, having AIDS, having a drug addiction, or being homeless, and then having some say that it’s even worse than any of those.