Skinny Shaming Is Not the Same as Fat Phobia

Last summer, I sat at an outside cafe with a friend, sipping coconut iced teas and swapping stories about our weeks, when something astounding happened: A complete stranger walked up to our table, grabbed my friend’s drink, and threw it on the ground, glass shattering across the sidewalk.

“Gain some weight! Eat something!” the stranger screamed, before stalking away, steaming angrily.

My friend and I were stunned; it was one of the most terrifying displays of public harassment that either of us had ever had to navigate. We were shaking.

You see, this friend is very petite—to the point that she’s complained to me in the past about the feeling of being in her mid-twenties and having people joke that she’s the size of a child. And for whatever reason, the sight of my friend’s small body caused immense anger to stir in this stranger—and they acted out violently.

For what felt like hours, my friend and I unpacked this event, desperately trying to rationalize what had unfolded. “I know that I have thin privilege,” my friend said, “and that this kind of thing happens to fat people all the time, but that was unacceptable.”

I was impressed that in such a horrifying moment, she was able to acknowledge several facts: (1) that body shaming is always wrong; (2) that she still held privilege in a thin body; and (3) that fat people experience more of this violence regularly.

It is hard to see all sides of a situation when we’ve been victimized. And that might be why, in conversations around fat shaming, it’s not uncommon for someone to bring up skinny shaming (sometimes with an anecdote just as traumatic as what my friend experienced) and assert that it’s essentially the same thing. The problem is, it’s not.

I understand, terribly and irreparably, how devastating body shaming can be when wielded against any body, including a thin one like mine. Ten years ago, I developed an eating disorder after enduring constant body shaming from an abusive partner, so I unfortunately know first-hand how painful and consequential it can be. It undoubtedly ruined my life.

Body shaming against any person, for any reason, is wrong. The harm that you cause when you wage war against a person’s physicality is psychologically jarring and can even trigger responses that are physically damaging, like disordered eating behaviors.

Yet despite that irrefutable truth, we also must all come to this understanding: Not all kinds of oppression or stigma are interchangeable, especially when considering the greater context in which that stigma exists and the very real consequences of it. We cannot claim that one experience is equal to another—even if they’re both harmful.

That is to say: Yes, body shaming in any form is damaging. But no, skinny shaming is not the same as fat shaming.

Someone in a thin body—particularly a woman—may be teased, bullied, or discriminated against for not possessing a certain body type historically associated with femininity and the male gaze. Thin women are disgustingly told that “only dogs want bones,” and that their lack of curves is unattractive. Thin women may also be food policed: chided for their rightful choice to order a salad, or screamed at, even by strangers, to “eat a cheeseburger.” They are assumed to have eating disorders, as if anorexia and bulimia are body types. This treatment is inarguably unacceptable.

It also isn’t the same as the structural and far-reaching bias that we know exists against fat bodies.

Fat shaming, unlike skinny shaming, says, “You deserve to be treated with disrespect and as unworthy, to have simple comforts (from fitting into airplane seats to receiving appropriate medical care) made inaccessible to you, because you did this to yourself.”

Society has created lies about fat people that we constantly fall for in our day-to-day interactions: Fat people possess no self-control; they’re slothful and gluttonous, they are at fault for their unruly bodies and therefore deserving of the ridicule they receive.

These stereotypes are grounded in a myth that assumes the unlimited controllability of our shapes and sizes.

Fat bias goes above and beyond social interactions; fat bias is embedded in our culture in a dangerous way that removes access to resources, opportunities, and dignity for fat people. There is evidence of fat bias in medical settings, in hiring practices, and in courtrooms. There are consequences to this stigma experienced every day in fat people’s lives that thin people simply do not experience.

As Sonya Renee Taylor, author of the new release The Body Is Not an Apology, explained to SELF, “While someone may tease a thin person, thin people are not disproportionately misdiagnosed as a result of medical fatphobia. Collectively, people are not paid less, hired less, or systemically harmed and discriminated against for being thin.”

Fat stigma, like sexism and racism, is another oppressive cultural, institutional system—one that degrades people of size to the advantage of people who live in more socially accepted (read: thin) bodies.

“[Fat stigma] normalizes hierarchy,” Virgie Tovar, whose new book You Have the Right to Remain Fat comes out in August, tells SELF. “It allows people to have a permissible target of aggression; it solidifies the individual-driven bootstrapping mentality that is a core American tenet—and because everyone knows that fat people are treated poorly, this creates a constant reminder of why conformity [to thinness] is the safer option.”

As such, while body shaming absolutely is something that people in thin bodies deal with (and shouldn’t have to), and while the effects of that can be devastating, thin people do not experience weight-based oppression in the same way as fat people.

To pretend that these two experiences are equally disadvantaging is flat-out wrong—and harmful. “There simply is no systemic equivalent between skinny shaming and our society's promotion of fat hatred,” Taylor says.

Conversations about bodies, especially when it comes to size (as well as race, ability, and any other attribute that is marginalized in our culture), are difficult and deserve special care.

When discussions about weight revolve around fat experiences, we thin folks can come up against some incredibly painful emotions when, in a move to share our pain in community, we are asked not to interrupt. When we are attempting solidarity by contributing our stories, we can feel that fat people are being divisive by leaving us out—or minimizing our very legitimate trauma.

But when we claim that skinny shaming is on par with fat shaming, or interject our (legitimately awful) stories into conversations about fat oppression, we’re crossing a line. We’re suggesting that this nuance—that fat people experience the world with more difficulty than we do in thin bodies—doesn’t exist.

Indeed, we’re furthering fat stigma by diminishing it.

“It’s understandable that thin folks want to participate in this discussion,” Jes Baker, author of the recently released memoir Landwhale, tells SELF. “But it’s important to realize that even skinny shaming stems from damaging, dangerous, and oppressive fatphobia.”

As such, first and foremost, “We must work on destigmatizing fatness and its intersections as a whole if we want to see criticism about all sizes disappear—skinny shaming included,” Baker says.

Consider this: When we navigate conversations about fat experience back to us, we are doing the very thing that we feel hurt by. We are hurting feelings, circumventing responsibility, and— worse—contributing to the very oppression that we claim to want to eradicate.

So, fellow thin people, and especially fellow thin people who have stories to tell about the ways in which our bodies have been attacked, I implore you: First, let’s listen.

Melissa A. Fabello, Ph.D., is a feminist writer and speaker who covers issues related to body politics and beauty culture. She received her Ph.D. from Widener University’s Human Sexuality Studies program, where her research looks at how women with anorexia nervosa make meaning of their experiences with sensuality. Learn more about her work on her website, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @fyeahmfabello.