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Can We Please Stop Saying ‘I Feel Fat’ Already?

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Another way of thinking about it is where you fall on the spectrum of clothing size. People who wear sizes 14 to 18 typically have fewer problems fitting comfortably in seating, but can have a hard time finding clothes in a standard store. Someone in the size 20 to 26 range likely struggles with seating that has arms, and with finding clothes anywhere other than a specialty store like Torrid or Lane Bryant. (Stores like Old Navy and Target have expanded their offerings of late to include more options for mid-fat people, but, in my experience, it’s hit or miss among the few pieces available in extended sizing.) A person who is a size 28 to 30 can only shop in specialty stores at the top of their sizing, and seating with arms can cause bruising on thighs and hips. People sizes 32 and up can only find clothing online or must make their own, and finding accommodating seating can be extremely difficult.

Beyond comfortable seating and clothing access, there are much more serious realities to being actually fat. Anti-fat bias in health care can lead to poor treatment from doctors, or even flat-out rejection of care. People are regularly denied health care including joint replacement surgery (even though research shows weight shouldn’t be a deterrent for these surgeries) and fertility treatments because of their BMI (also not backed by science), and life-saving tools like MRIs and CTs are inaccessible to a lot of fat people due to weight and size limits. All of these barriers are not matters of how people feel about their bodies, but of how they’re tasked with moving through a discriminatory world.

What should you say instead of “I feel fat”?

Since fatness is about accessibility and not feelings, rather than using “fat” as a shorthand for negativity, use it neutrally and accurately. Fat? Great! Say whatever you like about your size and shape, but try to do it with acceptance and self-compassion. If you “feel fat” but aren’t in a fat body, it’s worth asking yourself what you mean by that. On a practical level, maybe you’re just bloated and can reframe that as a very normal part of digestion and, say, change into comfier pants to feel better. Or maybe you’re unhappy with your body shape since it doesn’t match up with our culture’s relentless and impossible beauty standards, or you feel like your size is keeping you from a loving romantic relationship; these realizations might help you start to unpack the diet-culture roots of these negative body thoughts. From there, maybe you can then work on being more accepting of your body and realize that it is, in fact, good enough and entirely lovable.

All of us can benefit from identifying what we’re actually feeling. Once you have an accurate picture of what’s really going on, you can process and respond to those specific things, rather than the vague, derogatory negative feelings that “fat” has stood in for.

Additionally, we can all use whatever privilege we have (size, race, gender, class) to press for more just and inclusive access and dignified treatment for fat people in all areas of life, not just when it comes to clothing, seating, and health care. We can do that by shutting down fat jokes and other anti-fat comments, by challenging weight discrimination in the workplace, and by accepting our own bodies, just as they are today.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that the purpose of our bodies is to meet impossible beauty standards but I want to offer an alternative: The purpose of our bodies is to help us move through the world, form meaningful relationships with others, and accept, prioritize, and care for ourselves. Your body at any size, no matter how you’re feeling about it today, is already doing its job.

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Source: Self

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