Oof been reading a lot of “health psych“ papers on weight/body size/interventions to ultimately reduce weight and it’s... a lot to take in. The stigma doesn’t disappear in the scholarly literature, it just hides in jargon and “objectivity”

Friends, some things:

1) not all fat people want to lose weight (which is fortunate; since 95% of attempts to lose weight are unsuccessful). I know this is mind blowing.

2) disordered eating and fatness are not the same thing. Also mind blowing.

3) you don’t know *anything* about a specific person’s health by knowing just their weight. You just don’t. I promise. How otherwise good scientists can constantly overlook this is... beyond me

4) if any of you want a fat friend to read your papers before you submit them, I am happy to do it! I obvs don’t speak for all fat people but I’ve gotten a lot better at identifying fatphobia in myself and others

5) I’m planning content analysis work on weight stigma in the health psych literature and I’m excited about it and also dreading it, because it’s hard to constantly be pinged with suggestions that I am Less Than ... from scholars

6) you might not notice these things as a thin person. I didn’t notice these things as a not-thin person for ... decades. I just bought into it. So I’m still learning and will make mistakes myself.

7) I don’t buy into it any more, which brings me to the point that People* on the Internet seem to bristle most at: I am happy with or neutral about how I look, pretty much all the time. Mostly happy.

*a certain type of man

These are mostly hot takes after an afternoon of reading Really Problematic Papers written by entirely well-intentioned folks; which honestly just makes me feel worse.

I can handle incels shouting at me from cars when I go for a run but... something about experiencing a subtle version of it in the literature is a gross and disheartening experience.

Also I am NOT talking about the weight stigma literature. I am talking about the “healthy choices” literature. The weight stigma literature is largely a breath of nontoxic fresh air. @drhunger — this for you

I am not providing specific examples of the bad stuff on purpose because I don’t want to drag anyone.. it’s a systemic issue. I’ve done some unpublished work in the past that was just as bad.

Just please if/when you are writing these papers and designing these studies, think about how you’re saying things and what assumptions and inappropriate causal inferences you’re making related to body size