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Maybe it's all the love for fat bear week that's got me thinking about this. Maybe it's my ongoing struggle to find good tank tops to box in, or rain pants or other technical gear. But I'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't limited to more field-based, outdoorsy disciplines. But in my experiences, being in an outdoorsy field exacerbates fat-phobic attitudes.
It's hard to navigate a world designed around a subset of body sizes and shapes, from classroom desks to chest waders, and I've often struggled to get the things I need to do my fieldwork safely. But what'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'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's lots and lots of research on this). These attitudes are unscientific as well as bigoted.
I lift, I box, I'm flexible, and I'm strong. But to the people who decided I wasn't hirable because of my weight, or shouldn't be featured on a documentary because of my size, what I look like mattered more than what I can do. My CV wasn't as relevant as my pants size.
Fat-phobic discrimination is largely acceptable. It'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's size, either as a joke or as concern-trolling, don't be a silent bystander. Shut it down. Don't let size be a justification for exclusion. Interrogate your own biases. Stop equating size with health. Stop equating health with worth.
Let'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.
(Muting this thread now, so I'm sorry if I miss your supportive or validating comments or personal stories. The "but your heaaaaaaalth" people have arrived, and I don't want to clutter my mentions.)
