Making fun of someone for their weight isn’t nice, but it’s the farthest thing from racism. The intersectional minds (who clearly have their wires crossed) at a popular feminist website have, however, found a way to tie these things together.
The site that brought us the argument that “smaller fat” people are crowding fat acceptance spaces now argues that fat stigma is racism. Writing for the site, Caleb Luna says that being visibly obese made him feel unwelcome a party centered around “queer people of color” because despite being non-white.
“Even though there were no white folks present, it was still apparent that those who looked whitest were still the in-crowd,” he wrote. “It was still the light-skinned ones, the thin folks, the masculine people, the ones without any visible disabilities.”
So clearly, his lack of popularity was the result of both racism and sexism.
Luna goes on to state that the negative experience opened his eyes to white supremacy and how it “manifests in subtle ways” in activist spaces, and accuses his fellow social justice warriors of perpetuating white supremacy by ignoring fatter, presumably more annoying people like him in their safe spaces.
“White supremacy no longer needs white people to maintain its status,” he says.
Drawing upon the tenets of intersectional feminism, Luna tries to explain how fat stigma (or what he perceives as such) is a form of white supremacy and offers six solutions. The second solution offers that activists must “remember that thinness can’t be separated from whiteness.”
Luna cites the creator of the Body Mass Index, Lambert Quetelet, as an example of a white supremacy in action. Quetelet, he says, used the bodies of adult white people for his study—and so “racialized bodies” are incomparable, citing recent research about racial bias in obesity measurement.
However, the effectiveness of BMI only comes into question with individuals with higher-than-normal percentages of muscle mass and lower body fat. It says nothing of obese individuals like Luna who are hundreds of pounds overweight—who would be regarded as morbidly obese regardless of the BMI’s statistical flaws.
“By recognizing the white origins of the worshiping of thinness, we can begin to think about where, exactly, our personal and cultural distaste for fatness comes from,” says Luna.
Perhaps, contrary to Luna, society does not worship thinness, but rather celebrates fitness. Unquestionably, obesity poses significant health risks, much like cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption.
Luna says that there’s nothing wrong with being unhealthy, and argues that the concept of disability is “steeped in Westernized concepts of impairment,” and that “folks of color” have always taken care of their disabled.
There’s a vast difference between taking care of the old and the infirm versus having unhealthy eating habits that force society to cater to your needs. While the former is altruistic, the latter is steeped in selfishness and a willful disregard of those around you.
It is one thing to not shame a person for being overweight, but “embracing body diversity” as an alternative, healthy lifestyle is delusional at best, and suicidal at worst.
Beyond that, race has next-to-nothing to do with an opposition to unhealthy eating habits—and trying to shame people as “racists” for promoting a healthier lifestyle is beyond the pale.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
