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Maybe it& #39;s all the love for fat bear week that& #39;s got me thinking about this. Maybe it& #39;s my ongoing struggle to find good tank tops to box in, or rain pants or other technical gear. But I& #39;d like to take a moment to talk about the prevalence of fat-phobic attitudes in academia.
My experiences are mostly in ecology and the geosciences, the two disciplines my work intersects with most, but these attitudes aren& #39;t limited to more field-based, outdoorsy disciplines. But in my experiences, being in an outdoorsy field exacerbates fat-phobic attitudes.
It& #39;s hard to navigate a world designed around a subset of body sizes and shapes, from classroom desks to chest waders, and I& #39;ve often struggled to get the things I need to do my fieldwork safely. But what& #39;s more insidious are the attitudes of my colleagues.
Navigating through the world as a fat woman carries a lot of baggage. Eating a snack in public is seen very differently among fat and thin people, for example. A marathon runner gets a pass on what they eat, while fat folks are blamed for climate change (really, look it up).
There are stereotypes that fat people are lazy or undisciplined, and a lot of moral judgements around fatness, so you can see how this might affect, say, decisions about prospective graduate students, or faculty candidates for a job.
I teach a field course with nine hours of outdoor labs each fall, and I do fieldwork on three continents, but I& #39;ve had peers express concern about my weight inhibiting my ability to do either of those things. They base this not on my CV, but on how I look.
We know thinness =! health, and obesity is an issue of moral panic more than a legit health concern, and fatphobia causes more harm than fatness when it comes to medical outcomes (there& #39;s lots and lots of research on this). These attitudes are unscientific as well as bigoted.
I lift, I box, I& #39;m flexible, and I& #39;m strong. But to the people who decided I wasn& #39;t hirable because of my weight, or shouldn& #39;t be featured on a documentary because of my size, what I look like mattered more than what I can do. My CV wasn& #39;t as relevant as my pants size.
Fat-phobic discrimination is largely acceptable. It& #39;s pervasive, insidious, and literally killing us, in addition to robbing us of happiness and opportunities. It is a persistent barrier to inclusion perpetuated even by people who think of themselves as supportive of inclusion.
Please, when you hear comments about someone& #39;s size, either as a joke or as concern-trolling, don& #39;t be a silent bystander. Shut it down. Don& #39;t let size be a justification for exclusion. Interrogate your own biases. Stop equating size with health. Stop equating health with worth.
Let& #39;s give our fellow humans the same grace and space to exist that we give to Fat Bears, chonky bois, fat ponies, and inanimate absolute units.
