Hi friend,
I'm wrapping up a lovely week of rest and healing, so please enjoy a popular thought from my newsletter archives. Regular newsletter content will resume next Monday.
A new friend and I were talking about my Instagram post from a few days ago regarding thin privilege and technical gear. I mentioned that Old Navy makes the only athletic pants that fit me well, and I love them (though I won't buy anything else from ON due to their awfulness about plus size pricing and availability), and if they ever stop making those pants I'll cry for a week.
My new friend said, "Why not riot instead?" And without pause, I replied, "I can't riot if I don't have any pants on."
I was joking, but there's an underlying truth here. When fat people are forced to spend all their time and energy trying to navigate a world that was deliberately designed to exclude them, we don't have any time to demand better pay or treatment. When we're constantly forced to prove our worth, eventually we stop believing we have any.
When we live in an entire culture that believes fat people have poor morals and are lazy and physically unpleasant to be around, many of us are going to quite reasonably internalize that, with the result that we won't even want to be around or cooperate with each other -- nonetheless expecting thin people to.
When all the clothing that physically will go on our bodies is designed to invite ridicule, we can't be taken seriously.
We can't riot if we don't have any pants.
