Most people honestly and genuinely do not want fat people to be healthy*.

*Note: “health” in this context is defined in exclusionary and status-oriented ways right from the get-go. This version of health is focussed narrowly around feats of physical strength, evidence of biochemical normality, longevity, and performative, class-signalling health behaviours that sometimes but not always improve actual health. It does not take into account having a meaningful life, fair and decent living conditions, equitable participation in society, autonomy, or biodiversity.



Here’s how it works: In this society, health* gives you status, and status gives you power.

If fat people can be stereotyped as automatically “unhealthy,” and especially if fat people do actually experience physical impairments or are disabled, they have less status and less power.

People who hate fat people, who find them inherently disgusting and less worthy, do not want fat people to access anything that could give them status or power. They don’t want us to be conventionally beautiful (“glorifying obesity!!!”), and they definitely don’t want us to display or perform health*, or even the surrogate markers of health* that confer social status.

Not while still being fat, anyway.

Thus, gyms and gym culture are often unwelcoming to fat people. Thus, exercise equipment does not accommodate our bodies. Thus, fat people are shamed for buying groceries, making the drive-thru an emotionally safer, if not always more nourishing or appealing, option. Thus, it is difficult to find exercise clothing, or even to go for a walk on the street as a fat person without fearing harassment. Thus, even if all of your biochemistry appears normal, you will be subjected to vague future health threats. Thus, it is difficult to find a doctor who will genuinely work with you rather than dictating that you do the impossible as a prerequisite to receiving basic medical care.

They do not want us to be healthy* because they do not want us to access the status that health*, and associated behaviours, bring. Those things are reserved only for thin people or formerly-fat people. Try doing them as a currently-fat, not-losing-weight person and you will encounter pushback. Because those things are not for you.

If people wanted us to be healthy, even just by the narrow, status-oriented definition of health* we are working from here, there would be more accommodations for fat people in society to do the things we associate with health* rather than an unspoken requirement that you meet a certain weight or size requirement before you are even allowed to perform health*.

And if people wanted us to be genuinely healthy, using a fuller definition that includes not only physical functioning but living conditions and social participation and equality, they wouldn’t waste their time trying to scold us into not existing. Instead, they’d get busy making sure the world was accessible and respectful to everyone, and not just fat people, in whatever body they have.