Thin privilege is being able to feel safe and comfortable following your family members on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I acknowledge that not every thin person will have this privilege, due to other privilege/oppression dynamics such as ethnicity, race, disability, mental health, or differences in economic class/religion/political views - I run into difficulty with many of those issues with my extended family as well… But it is thin privilege to know and take for granted that your cousins or grandparents will never share and post things they think are funny or strange which attack people with your body type and make gross assumptions about what is “wrong” with people of your size and “how you got this way.”

My cousin posted a picture of an enormous novelty candy bar with some comments about how shocked she was it existed and the hashtag “obesity epidemic” across all of her social media accounts. Because obviously I and anyone shaped like me am/is fat because we eat a metric fuckton of candy everyday and don’t realize it’s bad for us. Except, oh wait, I don’t eat candy. Or desserts. Or put anything in my coffee. I simply have different genes than she does and I’ve always been shaped this way. You can look at pictures from our infancy and see that we had vastly different builds even at 18 months old. My grandmother chimed in with the comment that when she was “bad” [my quotes] she would have eaten something like this, because apparently food choices and size are related to morality…

I have a choice in these moments to stand up for reality and challenge these kinds of comments, but I don’t want to have to be an activist on my personal Facebook. I don’t want to use the platform where I share happy pictures of my child and post about my academic accomplishments to have to be another battleground in the ridiculous war our culture wants to wage against my perfectly normal and healthy body.

Thin privilege is not feeling personally attacked and shamed by casual throwaway posts from relatives on social media. Thin privilege is not having to be wary of connecting with loved ones for fear it will wind up feeling unsafe and shaming. Thin privilege is not missing out on important or lovely updates from family because you’ve hidden their feed or unfollowed them entirely after they share moronic fatshaming posts.