April 11, 2025 • 27 mins
Ninna talks about the history of fat activism, fat liberation, fat positivity and body neutrality. She considers all the aims that all these movements share. For the newbies, Ninna talks about some of the lingo used in the fat community and the terms she hates people using (spoiler alert: avoid overweight, plus size... and most definitely ban "morbidly obese"). She delves into research that demonstrate the discrimination faced by fat people, how we are perceived and the income gap we face. She calls us all to be activists, because there is hope that fat bias can be reduced and hopefully eliminated.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:04):
Hi, I am Nina Makrinov. I am a psychologist and yes I am fat. I am The Fat Psychologist.
Join me to decode well-being research so it can have a real impact on our lives.
Let's make decisions based on information we understand and question, not on what others say
we should think of ourselves. In this series I explore how we can be happy at any size.
(00:31):
Today we're talking about why did I call my podcast The Fat Psychologist?
And when a lot of people would go, "oh don't say fat, don't call yourself fat."
To me, there's nothing wrong with that word fat, it is just a descriptor. No one would look
(00:53):
weirdly at me if I said, "oh don't call yourself thin" or don't call yourself fit or other things.
So why is fat so full of negative connotations I suppose is the word I'm looking for
That's something that I would like to explore today. The first thing that I think is important
(01:17):
for us to think about and this is something that I've started discussing with my guests in the
previous episode is the difference between all of these keywords that people use.
So you might have come across the idea of fat activism, fat liberation, fat acceptance,
(01:37):
body positivity or body neutrality. And although they're kind of related they do have different
histories. And I think it's important to know that if you want to be an ally of you want to start being
part of this impressive movement. And to be honest this is something I'm learning as I go along
(01:58):
because although I have been fat or considered fat most of my life I have never identified with any
of these groups before. First ones I suppose the most popular things that you will see on social media
are the body positivity movement where you see a lot of people who are going actually whatever you
(02:20):
look like your body is beautiful and that's a really nice message. It also has some
problems because when we're focusing on beautiful then what's happening in reality is that rather
than saying everybody should be accepted whatever we look like is that the social media that's
(02:45):
been related to these tends to have people who are traditionally beautiful if fat. So young, white,
there's a lot of people who show that they can still exercise when they're fat and that's brilliant
there's nothing against it. The query is then how are others included or not when we do that.
(03:10):
So that's something we need to think of. So potentially and this is something I read in an article
that I'll put on the show notes later by Mary West on "Metical News Today" so a really simple article
but there might be some benefits but also some drawbacks on this idea of body positivity. So another
potential way of thinking about this is body neutrality which means it doesn't matter how your body is
(03:37):
it's important that you have a body which functions in a way that allows you to connect to the world
and I think there's some benefits there too because we're saying (03:43):
okay great we all need to have our
bodies we communicate to the world with bodies and whatever body looks like, and it again not
specifically in that case with weight it could be again raised it could be disabilities it could be
scarring whatever it is our, bodies are so great because they allow us to be whatever we are.
(04:10):
They should there obviously is that then we're not focusing on fat and what we know from a
lot of research on different kinds of discrimination is that we need to focus specifically on that
aspect if we want it to be seen. Hence it's important that we focus on, in this case the fact that I'm
(04:34):
interested in, fat. And the two big movements there that again we will have come across is this idea
of fat activism, fat liberation or fat acceptance. Sorry for the history lesson if that's not
really interesting to you but I think it's really important as we start this podcast to understand
these issues and I love this story. Fat acceptance was born through an association called
(04:58):
NAAFA it's the I think American National Association for the acceptance of fat. It's a really lovely
story of the power of activists too, because it was a movement that was partly started by a man
who wanted to protect or support his wife who was fat and he saw how badly she was treated
long time ago in the 60s again in the states. There was another big group called Fat Underground
(05:24):
which talked about fat liberation which was a lot more activist than this just I don't just want to be
accepted I want to be able to do more and currently NAAFA is still working and they have this vision
that I love which is a world where all fat people are free, celebrated and liberated from every
(05:44):
form of oppression. So I suppose that's something that all of us were interested in. All of these
movements and I'm getting a bit academic here but all of the movements have certain things that are
appearing in all of them. Davidson and Gruver have an article that again I will link on
the show notes that I read in another article by Oswald, again will be on the show notes
(06:05):
and they said that there's five things that this movement share and I am going to read them
because I think they're really important one is that they critique social medical claims about fatness
and its relationship to health. What does that mean? Is that discrimination towards fat people
(06:27):
has been accepted because we have this strong belief that fat is unhealthy. Hence we're doing people
a favour by always telling us or telling them we need to lose weight. There's quite a lot of critique
on the literature and they're going to go in that here I would suggest if you're interested in these
there's two really important podcasts that I would go for in the UK The Fat Doctor, does a really
(06:51):
good work on this, and in the US Maintenance Phase... and there's also a movie about Maintenance
Phase I would super super recommend; I would love to have a screening in the UK so we could watch it
together so hopefully I'll organize that at some point. Now the second aspect is challenging the
socio-political and material conditions of fat people, there is huge discrimination against fat people
(07:14):
I'll go back to that later and we want to challenge that. The third one is refuting claims that
link fatness to immorality; when people see a fat person they make a judgment or not every person
obviously not not all people do this but many people when they see a fat person they make a moral
judgment (07:33):
it's bad to be fat, it's also lazy, people who are fat her certain characteristics.
And this is something that we strongly rebut. Four, it says critiquing epistemic practices which are
erase or obscure fat knowledges. That means that in the way we live about knowledge there's
(07:55):
certain people who are validated as knowledgeable others who are not and fat people have been under
represented in research and in the creation of knowledge in the world, so we want that to be
challenged to. And finally five countering thinness culture and rejecting appearance aesthetics as a
basis for the value of human lives. To me that goes beyond fatness and not only to me because most of
(08:20):
the fat activism movements are intersectional so that's really important we know that this is only one
aspect there are many others potentially others that people have more discrimination than we have
as fat people but obviously we are just talking about this not because we forgot about everything else,
(08:42):
but because just the focus we're taking now. (music)
The academic in me coming far too much, so I'll need to go for a different aspect now so I will be
a bit less academic. We already talked in the previous episode about another term Health
at Every Size which is again brilliant and it's about the need for every person to have access
(09:09):
to healthcare and that's because there's huge discrimination in healthcare as well. That's where
I picked the title for this series which is called Happiness at Every Size. To me being happy at
every size or being happy in every body I would say requires me to question the beliefs that society
has given me about who I am, who I can be, and who others are as well. But it goes beyond that.
(09:36):
I'm an organisational psychologist by background, and we need to change the world to fit every person
not just some and that will come across again actually when we think about some of the lingo, some of
the language that people are using, which are things that I've just recently learned and I actually
(09:56):
have learned some in Spanish as well because I'm from Chile, so I need to join my Chilean friends and
have a conversation in Spanish about this because I think it's super interesting. In the fat community
people talk about categories of fatness there's a post on a blog that went viral by Linda who goes by
(10:19):
Fluffy Kitten Party... and she wrote this blog called Understanding the Fat Spectrum. What Linda
explains there, and I actually didn't know this until very recently, is that in the fat community
they use labels to describe where we are in this spectrum. People who are not fat might be referred
(10:41):
as straight-sized people. Then there are people who are a little bit fat who are called small fat.
There are people then who are mid-fat which is where I would be classed. So I am mid-fat is what I would
say if I was in a community that understood this language. And what this means is that I'm starting
(11:03):
to experience, because of my size, limitations from the world much more... I mean at every level of fatness
there's discrimination, but it starts becoming more obvious so for example I've started not being
able to feed in chairs because they have the sides and they're not designed for big people
(11:26):
or I need to ask for an extension in the plane for the seat or I need to check before I go to a cinema
or to a show if the seats are big enough or I need to ask for adjustments to get a chair in the back
so I can fit and that can be really shaming, particularly if you have to ask, and especially
(11:50):
because for many people it's not an easy yes adjustment... it's just like oh you should not be
this fat. But obviously for people who are even bigger than I am this is even harder
hence there's also this bigger fat people called... that they are referred to as large fat
(12:15):
and then super fat and infinifat where the levels of discrimination are huge and it's really
complex and not even getting into a car so there's different issues there and I would encourage
reading again that if you want to know more. And then we also talk about fatphobia which is
this discrimination and almost kind of irrational thoughts that if you're around fat people then
(12:45):
we catch or that because it's immoral it's not good to you. So you might come across those when you're
talking about this. I also want to talk about some of the lingo and terms I hate which actually
I have seen many people in the fat communities hate as well. So I would prefer if when you're
(13:07):
talking about me you avoid using terms such as overweight and the reason for that is that overweight
assumes that there's an ideal weight that you can be over or under . I's very ruling it's like (13:16):
oh
you need to be these and anything else is bad. So I don't like it I prefer the descriptor fat
because we're fighting against that now our one we absolutely hate and if you read the
(13:37):
literature from the community you'll notice they would not even use it but I am going to use it
today, because I mean this kind of assuming that many people who are listening in are not fat people
or if they are they're not involved in the movement so this is new to us... so it was new to me recently.
So obese, in general nana... particularly morbidly obese. It sounds so horrible, like... I am classed
(14:04):
as morbidly obese and I'm not morbid, I'm just me, you know. And it just doesn't sound nice.
Same with plus size, related to overweight so it's that idea that I'm over any size there should be.
And then I also hate the word fluffy, although I know there's a lot of fat people who refer to
themselves as fluffy. But I'm like (14:24):
I'm not fluffy, I'm quite fit or not or whatever but yeah... I mean
there's parts of me that are fluffy but not the whole of me. In terms of experience I've been
called all these things for my life, so again doctors it's really hard because in the medical
profession is super common to use obesity as a measure.
(14:52):
Body mass index or BMI as a measure and again there's there's a huge discourse on this so
I will probably do a different episode with the health aspects and the kind of why we
reject this idea so much. What I really would like us all to do is to challenge and learn that there
(15:15):
is these levels of discrimination for fat people. (music)
The final thing I wanted to talk to you about today has to do with that. What do we know about
discrimination of fat people? Called in different ways so you might see either fat or obese
(15:39):
discrimination or stigma are common words that are used out there. Because I'm a bit of an
academic I am going to talk about academic things that I've written but hopefully I'm talking
about them in a language that makes sense to you. So I really really liked reading recently an article
(16:00):
by Oswald. ( I need to learn their names it doesn't sound right to use the academic thing, so
I first action for me in the future use first names as well). This was in the US which again a lot
of the studies are in the US so we don't know so much about other areas. But they
(16:21):
did a study looking at how people who are at all levels of the spectrum so from a straight
body to infinifat perceive fat activism in particular. Although what they found is that for
more people they actually perceived these movements are accurate or at least positive.
(16:46):
Some had a really negative perceptions of activism and people who are doing this work.
So when we put ourselves out there there will be, we know, some who would think we're doing
something wrong. For example 5% of those who, or 5% of the comments said that
(17:09):
activists were excusing unhealthy behavior or promoting fatness as healthy so it's like we wanted
everyone to be fat. That's not the point we want everyone whatever their size is to be accepted
for who we are as humans who have value. And actually that takes me to another thing there's a
(17:30):
issue I am aware that there's a huge issue with people who are all for thin as well so that can also
be a problem. And so I'm not and I also know that this is cultural so this is very much the West
and there are other regions in the world we're being fat a great thing and we've discussed that
again in the first episode So go back if you haven't seen it yet. Now they also, this this is much
(17:53):
lower but some people... this is 2% in the study of over a thousand people, in the survey
thought that it was forcing others to accommodate and one example taking specifically from what
someone said said "they do it to get special privileges like two seats for the price of one on an
airplane". Which I think it's really sad, because that's not the idea, If the seats on planes were a bit bigger
(18:20):
we wouldn't need two seats. I mean yeah or bigger people wouldn't need two seats.
So it's like the space that it's not designed for us that is the real problem. And then when they were
thinking about what activists in this area want to do they were saying that they wanted to
(18:44):
enable an healthiness, and that was 8.5% which is really really high I think, or that activists were
lazy people or those who do not want to lose weight. A particular, directly from a quote "lazy, fat,
liberal people" and that's 4% of the answers. So again, not great is it? This is what people think
(19:08):
about activists. What do people who whatever their views are are their activists or not even if they're
trying to lose weight, which again I discussed that and how that can be very dangerous in other
episodes, but what happens then with this? And actually there's a lot of evidence out there that
there's huge discrimination against fat people in many countries. Again I don't want to overgeneralize
(19:36):
here, but again an article in the US very recent one we've over 1,500 people who considered themselves
overweight, they looked at how fat discrimination had affected them or what's related to... because this is
(20:00):
a correlation study all mature at the same time. So they found that fat discrimination
(and apologies, there is a dog barking in the background, that's my dog which who also appeared on the first episode)
so they found that fat discrimination, identification has being fat - so when I say I am fat -,
and stress, and unhealthy eating are all related. But we don't really know is how that relationship
(20:28):
works does it mean that because I'm unhealthily eating then I get fat and that makes me stress or
other ways we don't know. However what these authors proposed a second conclusion was that
the fact that people face fat... fat discrimination, the fact that we are already discriminated against
(20:50):
whatever we do makes us then identify as fat. Which is actually really interesting; when it's other
characteristics research shows that identifying with your group it's a protector but in the case of
weight it is not. I suppose that self-judgment comes in as well, that's how I would believe that to happen.
(21:13):
That impacts on higher levels of stress and then that leads to unhealthy eating. And then that will be
happening again and again so again we need to be really careful with that. And then the ones that
I really want to talk about because this brings to be back this is again very personal. There's a
researcher called Sofia Bajorek, Zofia Bajorek actually. Sofia does a lot of work currently on stigma
(21:40):
of obesity at work or she has been doing this work. And why I'm saying this makes me happy because
long time ago this was like 20 years ago when I was working at the University of Nottingham
Sofia was doing her masters and she does so well she's completed a PhD and she's one of the most
renown researchers in the UK on many aspects of work and health, which I think is super amazing.
(22:04):
What is also interesting about Sofia's work is that she's been working with different countries.
There are various articles that are coming from that but I want to pick some of the things that
were found. So in the UK Sofia and her team found that weight-based stigma is evident
in recruitment and selection in jobs, so they're they're looking at work. This relates to some employers
(22:29):
arguing that appearance is very important for their customers. So again that resonates a lot
with my life so being told directly and I... that I'm... not in the UK so I've in the UK I've never felt
this way but in Chile and in Mexico that I could not do a job because I was a bad example because of
(22:54):
the way I look. HR professionals have the same stigma and then this has an impact on earnings for
example so in different countries and we can see they've done a study in Spain and one in
the Netherlands as well. In average women who are, fat particularly women, earn around 8 to 10% less
(23:18):
than those who are not fat and apparently according to this report this can be as large as 20% lower.
These could be up to around actually 10 billion wage penalty for women for being fat.
So it's not only that, oh we're wimps, it's also we're earning less which means we will have less
(23:43):
income on retirement, which also means that probably we can not afford the same kind of food because
healthy food tends to be more expensive. So there are all of these issues and work as well
that are having a huge impact on fat people in the community.
And this again is the same in Spain, it's the same in the Netherlands and it tends to be many places in
(24:07):
the West I suppose all that I wanted to say today leads to this, so what is it that I want to do?
And this is what I am doing so I've decided that I own the fat. I am fat and that's okay
the word to me doesn't cause me pain anymore. Only causes me pain when I go
(24:31):
back to people who are telling me these things to my face that I should lose weight that I should be
different. So please don't do that if you can. And there are things we can all do so I'll leave us with
a positive message. First I would super recommend that weight and generally looks because again there's
(24:51):
other issues with other discrimination areas where I worry, but weight should be included as a protected
characteristic. And that I think is super super important because sadly what we're seeing in the UK
is that there's great work or they's starting to be great work in equality, diversity, inclusion
and work in particular but that's very much linked to what's protected and if anything's not
(25:16):
protected no one does anything about it. That leads me to the next one which is inform ourselves.
Learn about these things, even for me who have been I have been fat for a very long time this is many of
these things are new. So I don't expect anyone to know but let's do our work and find it out.
And again, super positive there's evidence as well that if we learn we can reduce weight
(25:43):
discrimination. So Kelly and colleagues did a study just in 2024 where they found that workplace
training can reduce weight discrimination so actually let's include this in our work in our
environment and let's have these conversations with other people we know. Because if you've
(26:06):
never been fat or if you haven't had fat friends you might not be aware of all these issues.
So I just call as all to be activists, to be allies. So thanks for listening it's been lovely to have you around (music)
This series was produced by Manish Verma, this episode was presented and recorded by Ninna Makrinov.
(26:43):
If you like my podcast follow me wherever you listen and a visit my website at thefatpsychologist.com
where you can also buy me a coffee. If you want to take part as a guest or invite me to participate in
your podcast please contact me. See you next time.
[Music]
(00:04):
Hi, I am Nina Makrinov. I am a psychologist and yes I am fat. I am The Fat Psychologist.
Join me to decode well-being research so it can have a real impact on our lives.
Let's make decisions based on information we understand and question, not on what others say
we should think of ourselves. In this series I explore how we can be happy at any size.
(00:31):
Today we're talking about why did I call my podcast The Fat Psychologist?
And when a lot of people would go, "oh don't say fat, don't call yourself fat."
To me, there's nothing wrong with that word fat, it is just a descriptor. No one would look
(00:53):
weirdly at me if I said, "oh don't call yourself thin" or don't call yourself fit or other things.
So why is fat so full of negative connotations I suppose is the word I'm looking for
That's something that I would like to explore today. The first thing that I think is important
(01:17):
for us to think about and this is something that I've started discussing with my guests in the
previous episode is the difference between all of these keywords that people use.
So you might have come across the idea of fat activism, fat liberation, fat acceptance,
(01:37):
body positivity or body neutrality. And although they're kind of related they do have different
histories. And I think it's important to know that if you want to be an ally of you want to start being
part of this impressive movement. And to be honest this is something I'm learning as I go along
(01:58):
because although I have been fat or considered fat most of my life I have never identified with any
of these groups before. First ones I suppose the most popular things that you will see on social media
are the body positivity movement where you see a lot of people who are going actually whatever you
(02:20):
look like your body is beautiful and that's a really nice message. It also has some
problems because when we're focusing on beautiful then what's happening in reality is that rather
than saying everybody should be accepted whatever we look like is that the social media that's
(02:45):
been related to these tends to have people who are traditionally beautiful if fat. So young, white,
there's a lot of people who show that they can still exercise when they're fat and that's brilliant
there's nothing against it. The query is then how are others included or not when we do that.
(03:10):
So that's something we need to think of. So potentially and this is something I read in an article
that I'll put on the show notes later by Mary West on "Metical News Today" so a really simple article
but there might be some benefits but also some drawbacks on this idea of body positivity. So another
potential way of thinking about this is body neutrality which means it doesn't matter how your body is
(03:37):
it's important that you have a body which functions in a way that allows you to connect to the world
and I think there's some benefits there too because we're saying (03:43):
okay great we all need to have our
bodies we communicate to the world with bodies and whatever body looks like, and it again not
specifically in that case with weight it could be again raised it could be disabilities it could be
scarring whatever it is our, bodies are so great because they allow us to be whatever we are.
(04:10):
They should there obviously is that then we're not focusing on fat and what we know from a
lot of research on different kinds of discrimination is that we need to focus specifically on that
aspect if we want it to be seen. Hence it's important that we focus on, in this case the fact that I'm
(04:34):
interested in, fat. And the two big movements there that again we will have come across is this idea
of fat activism, fat liberation or fat acceptance. Sorry for the history lesson if that's not
really interesting to you but I think it's really important as we start this podcast to understand
these issues and I love this story. Fat acceptance was born through an association called
(04:58):
NAAFA it's the I think American National Association for the acceptance of fat. It's a really lovely
story of the power of activists too, because it was a movement that was partly started by a man
who wanted to protect or support his wife who was fat and he saw how badly she was treated
long time ago in the 60s again in the states. There was another big group called Fat Underground
(05:24):
which talked about fat liberation which was a lot more activist than this just I don't just want to be
accepted I want to be able to do more and currently NAAFA is still working and they have this vision
that I love which is a world where all fat people are free, celebrated and liberated from every
(05:44):
form of oppression. So I suppose that's something that all of us were interested in. All of these
movements and I'm getting a bit academic here but all of the movements have certain things that are
appearing in all of them. Davidson and Gruver have an article that again I will link on
the show notes that I read in another article by Oswald, again will be on the show notes
(06:05):
and they said that there's five things that this movement share and I am going to read them
because I think they're really important one is that they critique social medical claims about fatness
and its relationship to health. What does that mean? Is that discrimination towards fat people
(06:27):
has been accepted because we have this strong belief that fat is unhealthy. Hence we're doing people
a favour by always telling us or telling them we need to lose weight. There's quite a lot of critique
on the literature and they're going to go in that here I would suggest if you're interested in these
there's two really important podcasts that I would go for in the UK The Fat Doctor, does a really
(06:51):
good work on this, and in the US Maintenance Phase... and there's also a movie about Maintenance
Phase I would super super recommend; I would love to have a screening in the UK so we could watch it
together so hopefully I'll organize that at some point. Now the second aspect is challenging the
socio-political and material conditions of fat people, there is huge discrimination against fat people
(07:14):
I'll go back to that later and we want to challenge that. The third one is refuting claims that
link fatness to immorality; when people see a fat person they make a judgment or not every person
obviously not not all people do this but many people when they see a fat person they make a moral
judgment (07:33):
it's bad to be fat, it's also lazy, people who are fat her certain characteristics.
And this is something that we strongly rebut. Four, it says critiquing epistemic practices which are
erase or obscure fat knowledges. That means that in the way we live about knowledge there's
(07:55):
certain people who are validated as knowledgeable others who are not and fat people have been under
represented in research and in the creation of knowledge in the world, so we want that to be
challenged to. And finally five countering thinness culture and rejecting appearance aesthetics as a
basis for the value of human lives. To me that goes beyond fatness and not only to me because most of
(08:20):
the fat activism movements are intersectional so that's really important we know that this is only one
aspect there are many others potentially others that people have more discrimination than we have
as fat people but obviously we are just talking about this not because we forgot about everything else,
(08:42):
but because just the focus we're taking now. (music)
The academic in me coming far too much, so I'll need to go for a different aspect now so I will be
a bit less academic. We already talked in the previous episode about another term Health
at Every Size which is again brilliant and it's about the need for every person to have access
(09:09):
to healthcare and that's because there's huge discrimination in healthcare as well. That's where
I picked the title for this series which is called Happiness at Every Size. To me being happy at
every size or being happy in every body I would say requires me to question the beliefs that society
has given me about who I am, who I can be, and who others are as well. But it goes beyond that.
(09:36):
I'm an organisational psychologist by background, and we need to change the world to fit every person
not just some and that will come across again actually when we think about some of the lingo, some of
the language that people are using, which are things that I've just recently learned and I actually
(09:56):
have learned some in Spanish as well because I'm from Chile, so I need to join my Chilean friends and
have a conversation in Spanish about this because I think it's super interesting. In the fat community
people talk about categories of fatness there's a post on a blog that went viral by Linda who goes by
(10:19):
Fluffy Kitten Party... and she wrote this blog called Understanding the Fat Spectrum. What Linda
explains there, and I actually didn't know this until very recently, is that in the fat community
they use labels to describe where we are in this spectrum. People who are not fat might be referred
(10:41):
as straight-sized people. Then there are people who are a little bit fat who are called small fat.
There are people then who are mid-fat which is where I would be classed. So I am mid-fat is what I would
say if I was in a community that understood this language. And what this means is that I'm starting
(11:03):
to experience, because of my size, limitations from the world much more... I mean at every level of fatness
there's discrimination, but it starts becoming more obvious so for example I've started not being
able to feed in chairs because they have the sides and they're not designed for big people
(11:26):
or I need to ask for an extension in the plane for the seat or I need to check before I go to a cinema
or to a show if the seats are big enough or I need to ask for adjustments to get a chair in the back
so I can fit and that can be really shaming, particularly if you have to ask, and especially
(11:50):
because for many people it's not an easy yes adjustment... it's just like oh you should not be
this fat. But obviously for people who are even bigger than I am this is even harder
hence there's also this bigger fat people called... that they are referred to as large fat
(12:15):
and then super fat and infinifat where the levels of discrimination are huge and it's really
complex and not even getting into a car so there's different issues there and I would encourage
reading again that if you want to know more. And then we also talk about fatphobia which is
this discrimination and almost kind of irrational thoughts that if you're around fat people then
(12:45):
we catch or that because it's immoral it's not good to you. So you might come across those when you're
talking about this. I also want to talk about some of the lingo and terms I hate which actually
I have seen many people in the fat communities hate as well. So I would prefer if when you're
(13:07):
talking about me you avoid using terms such as overweight and the reason for that is that overweight
assumes that there's an ideal weight that you can be over or under . I's very ruling it's like (13:16):
oh
you need to be these and anything else is bad. So I don't like it I prefer the descriptor fat
because we're fighting against that now our one we absolutely hate and if you read the
(13:37):
literature from the community you'll notice they would not even use it but I am going to use it
today, because I mean this kind of assuming that many people who are listening in are not fat people
or if they are they're not involved in the movement so this is new to us... so it was new to me recently.
So obese, in general nana... particularly morbidly obese. It sounds so horrible, like... I am classed
(14:04):
as morbidly obese and I'm not morbid, I'm just me, you know. And it just doesn't sound nice.
Same with plus size, related to overweight so it's that idea that I'm over any size there should be.
And then I also hate the word fluffy, although I know there's a lot of fat people who refer to
themselves as fluffy. But I'm like (14:24):
I'm not fluffy, I'm quite fit or not or whatever but yeah... I mean
there's parts of me that are fluffy but not the whole of me. In terms of experience I've been
called all these things for my life, so again doctors it's really hard because in the medical
profession is super common to use obesity as a measure.
(14:52):
Body mass index or BMI as a measure and again there's there's a huge discourse on this so
I will probably do a different episode with the health aspects and the kind of why we
reject this idea so much. What I really would like us all to do is to challenge and learn that there
(15:15):
is these levels of discrimination for fat people. (music)
The final thing I wanted to talk to you about today has to do with that. What do we know about
discrimination of fat people? Called in different ways so you might see either fat or obese
(15:39):
discrimination or stigma are common words that are used out there. Because I'm a bit of an
academic I am going to talk about academic things that I've written but hopefully I'm talking
about them in a language that makes sense to you. So I really really liked reading recently an article
(16:00):
by Oswald. ( I need to learn their names it doesn't sound right to use the academic thing, so
I first action for me in the future use first names as well). This was in the US which again a lot
of the studies are in the US so we don't know so much about other areas. But they
(16:21):
did a study looking at how people who are at all levels of the spectrum so from a straight
body to infinifat perceive fat activism in particular. Although what they found is that for
more people they actually perceived these movements are accurate or at least positive.
(16:46):
Some had a really negative perceptions of activism and people who are doing this work.
So when we put ourselves out there there will be, we know, some who would think we're doing
something wrong. For example 5% of those who, or 5% of the comments said that
(17:09):
activists were excusing unhealthy behavior or promoting fatness as healthy so it's like we wanted
everyone to be fat. That's not the point we want everyone whatever their size is to be accepted
for who we are as humans who have value. And actually that takes me to another thing there's a
(17:30):
issue I am aware that there's a huge issue with people who are all for thin as well so that can also
be a problem. And so I'm not and I also know that this is cultural so this is very much the West
and there are other regions in the world we're being fat a great thing and we've discussed that
again in the first episode So go back if you haven't seen it yet. Now they also, this this is much
(17:53):
lower but some people... this is 2% in the study of over a thousand people, in the survey
thought that it was forcing others to accommodate and one example taking specifically from what
someone said said "they do it to get special privileges like two seats for the price of one on an
airplane". Which I think it's really sad, because that's not the idea, If the seats on planes were a bit bigger
(18:20):
we wouldn't need two seats. I mean yeah or bigger people wouldn't need two seats.
So it's like the space that it's not designed for us that is the real problem. And then when they were
thinking about what activists in this area want to do they were saying that they wanted to
(18:44):
enable an healthiness, and that was 8.5% which is really really high I think, or that activists were
lazy people or those who do not want to lose weight. A particular, directly from a quote "lazy, fat,
liberal people" and that's 4% of the answers. So again, not great is it? This is what people think
(19:08):
about activists. What do people who whatever their views are are their activists or not even if they're
trying to lose weight, which again I discussed that and how that can be very dangerous in other
episodes, but what happens then with this? And actually there's a lot of evidence out there that
there's huge discrimination against fat people in many countries. Again I don't want to overgeneralize
(19:36):
here, but again an article in the US very recent one we've over 1,500 people who considered themselves
overweight, they looked at how fat discrimination had affected them or what's related to... because this is
(20:00):
a correlation study all mature at the same time. So they found that fat discrimination
(and apologies, there is a dog barking in the background, that's my dog which who also appeared on the first episode)
so they found that fat discrimination, identification has being fat - so when I say I am fat -,
and stress, and unhealthy eating are all related. But we don't really know is how that relationship
(20:28):
works does it mean that because I'm unhealthily eating then I get fat and that makes me stress or
other ways we don't know. However what these authors proposed a second conclusion was that
the fact that people face fat... fat discrimination, the fact that we are already discriminated against
(20:50):
whatever we do makes us then identify as fat. Which is actually really interesting; when it's other
characteristics research shows that identifying with your group it's a protector but in the case of
weight it is not. I suppose that self-judgment comes in as well, that's how I would believe that to happen.
(21:13):
That impacts on higher levels of stress and then that leads to unhealthy eating. And then that will be
happening again and again so again we need to be really careful with that. And then the ones that
I really want to talk about because this brings to be back this is again very personal. There's a
researcher called Sofia Bajorek, Zofia Bajorek actually. Sofia does a lot of work currently on stigma
(21:40):
of obesity at work or she has been doing this work. And why I'm saying this makes me happy because
long time ago this was like 20 years ago when I was working at the University of Nottingham
Sofia was doing her masters and she does so well she's completed a PhD and she's one of the most
renown researchers in the UK on many aspects of work and health, which I think is super amazing.
(22:04):
What is also interesting about Sofia's work is that she's been working with different countries.
There are various articles that are coming from that but I want to pick some of the things that
were found. So in the UK Sofia and her team found that weight-based stigma is evident
in recruitment and selection in jobs, so they're they're looking at work. This relates to some employers
(22:29):
arguing that appearance is very important for their customers. So again that resonates a lot
with my life so being told directly and I... that I'm... not in the UK so I've in the UK I've never felt
this way but in Chile and in Mexico that I could not do a job because I was a bad example because of
(22:54):
the way I look. HR professionals have the same stigma and then this has an impact on earnings for
example so in different countries and we can see they've done a study in Spain and one in
the Netherlands as well. In average women who are, fat particularly women, earn around 8 to 10% less
(23:18):
than those who are not fat and apparently according to this report this can be as large as 20% lower.
These could be up to around actually 10 billion wage penalty for women for being fat.
So it's not only that, oh we're wimps, it's also we're earning less which means we will have less
(23:43):
income on retirement, which also means that probably we can not afford the same kind of food because
healthy food tends to be more expensive. So there are all of these issues and work as well
that are having a huge impact on fat people in the community.
And this again is the same in Spain, it's the same in the Netherlands and it tends to be many places in
(24:07):
the West I suppose all that I wanted to say today leads to this, so what is it that I want to do?
And this is what I am doing so I've decided that I own the fat. I am fat and that's okay
the word to me doesn't cause me pain anymore. Only causes me pain when I go
(24:31):
back to people who are telling me these things to my face that I should lose weight that I should be
different. So please don't do that if you can. And there are things we can all do so I'll leave us with
a positive message. First I would super recommend that weight and generally looks because again there's
(24:51):
other issues with other discrimination areas where I worry, but weight should be included as a protected
characteristic. And that I think is super super important because sadly what we're seeing in the UK
is that there's great work or they's starting to be great work in equality, diversity, inclusion
and work in particular but that's very much linked to what's protected and if anything's not
(25:16):
protected no one does anything about it. That leads me to the next one which is inform ourselves.
Learn about these things, even for me who have been I have been fat for a very long time this is many of
these things are new. So I don't expect anyone to know but let's do our work and find it out.
And again, super positive there's evidence as well that if we learn we can reduce weight
(25:43):
discrimination. So Kelly and colleagues did a study just in 2024 where they found that workplace
training can reduce weight discrimination so actually let's include this in our work in our
environment and let's have these conversations with other people we know. Because if you've
(26:06):
never been fat or if you haven't had fat friends you might not be aware of all these issues.
So I just call as all to be activists, to be allies. So thanks for listening it's been lovely to have you around (music)
This series was produced by Manish Verma, this episode was presented and recorded by Ninna Makrinov.
(26:43):
If you like my podcast follow me wherever you listen and a visit my website at thefatpsychologist.com
where you can also buy me a coffee. If you want to take part as a guest or invite me to participate in
your podcast please contact me. See you next time.
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