Hi friend,
Here's part 2 of our series on body-positive business practices.
I’m white. I have hair that falls into gentle waves with little to no styling. I’m very fat, but the way I carry my weight makes me look smaller than I am. My skin is mostly clear. I had braces as a teen, so my teeth are mostly straight. I can fit into the top sizes of brick-and-mortar plus-size clothing stores, sometimes.
These are my body privileges. They’re not things I need to be either proud or ashamed of. They just exist, and that’s okay. We all have some level of privilege in our lives. People with smaller bodies than mine have more thin privilege than I do, and I have more thin privilege than bodies larger than mine.
(Here’s a
good resource for further reading on thin privilege and how it affects the world.)
I need to stay aware of that as I move in the world and interact with other people. For example, just because I can still fit into the top sizes at plus-size stores on a good day doesn’t mean all fat people can.
If I assume that, say, restaurant booths work for all bodies and plan an event at a restaurant that only offers booths, I’m excluding people whose bodies are too large for those booths (and some people with disabilities or illnesses that affect how they sit).
Not only would my planning that event at a restaurant that excludes some bodies be inconsiderate (or even
career-damaging, depending on the situation), it would then require anyone who still wants to attend and whose body has been excluded to do the labor of bringing the exclusion to my attention, and for all they know, I might not react well.
Quick Fix: The next time you plan an event, ask the largest person who might attend what kind of physical or logistical setup would work for their body. Then, bring your event plans as close to that as you can manage.
