Please Normalize Weight

Please normalize depicting fat and heavy people, whether it be by supporting existing fat characters (and drawing/writing them as the weight they actually are), creating your own characters, appreciating/sharing selfies, or any other form (outside of fetishizing us).

Please normalize stretch marks and rolls and double chins, and just generally make us visible without villainizing us or honestly even commenting on our weight. This includes the entire spectrum of body weights that are considered “overweight” starting with people who are thin but have stretch marks, cellulite, flabby arms, big thighs, muffin tops, or anything else that a magazine would photoshop away– up to and including people who are very obese.

Please normalize bodies that have fat. Any amount of visible fat.

I’ve been realizing recently that when I try to think about the way I look I cannot get an accurate image to come to mind, because my mind either provides what a “normal human” (read: thin) would look like with my hair/face/clothes, or I remember that I’m overweight and a totally distorted caricature of a fat person comes to mind.

There are so few gentle, kind, honest depictions of fat/heavy people (especially/specifically heavy women and heavy dfab people) in any form that my brain honestly doesn’t even know how to accurately represent my own body to myself in my own mind.

The issue of weight affects pretty much everyone. Every adult woman I know, regardless of her weight, has struggled with trying to be thin. Every adult man where I know whether or not they have struggled with it, the answer has been yes. I knew so many dfab people with eating disorders and disordered eating as a teenager, regardless of their weight. Fat and thin people alike. As a fat person, the desperation with which thin people try not to look like me is genuinely harmful (and it’s hard not to resent them for perpetuating the overwhelming social hatred aimed at people like me), but thin people who’s entire lives and health are being controlled and destroyed by fatphobia are also clearly victims of fatphobia. When the only depictions of fat people anyone ever sees are villains, caricatures, and jokes, that harms everyone.

On the other hand, no one is harmed by normalizing depictions of fat people.



No one is harmed by normalizing weights that people already are. Studies have shown that fatshaming doesn’t actually help anybody lose weight; it just makes them stressed, self conscious, and hate how they look. You’re not going to make people more fat by just acknowledging that we exist and don’t have to hate ourselves on that fact alone.

If depictions of fat people make you uncomfortable, join the club. I’m fat, and I’m happy, and I like myself, but I still feel uncomfortable looking at photos of myself. I never used to be able to draw myself as my actual weight without hating it to the point of feeling nauseous, but the more I draw overweight characters– the more exposed I am to gentle, kind, honest depictions of what people like me look like– the more I’ve been able to come to terms with my appearance and draw myself honestly and hate photos of myself less.

We’re taught to feel averse to how fat people look. It isn’t natural, it’s taught. It’s social. Which means we can change it, and the way to do that is to normalize the depiction of fat people, even when it makes us squirmy inside at first. Unlearning thought patterns takes work, and one of the key elements of it is exposure.

Please, please, please normalize depictions of weight.

Representation matters.