Fat Acceptance Shifts Strategy
Published on 3.11.2025: This current piece was inspired by this article, which I found at the Graphically Alex YouTube channel. Graphically Alex's video appeared on January 5th, and I have watched it, so I know what his thoughts are about it. Basically, the concept that Fat Activism is switching strategies comes directly from Alex. I don't want to summarize his video though, but I do think that people should go watch it. He speaks fairly slowly, and I tend to watch at 1.5 speed, just FYI.
The article is published at the The New Statesman, which is a United Kingdom site, and which only allows a certain number of articles to be read each month before they ask you to subscribe. The article itself is about how body positivity has changed due to its co-option by brands.
According to the article, and fat acceptance folk have noted their opinion here too, Body Positivity is now about thinness. I don't actually think that's true to be honest, I think Fat Acceptance has tried to grab the term back. Dove is the brand that I most remember trying to adopt a more "body positive" message, and they were skewered for it. Basically, larger bodies that still had an hour glass figure were featured, genuinely fat women (with their weight in their bellies) were not.
The notion that weight is not related to weight is where the movement failed in my opinion, because weight IS related to health. All parts of the body are related to health, even excess or overfilled fat cells.
The author invokes "heroin chic" and I admit that I don't see it. What I do see is that new weight loss drugs (Glucagon-like Peptide 1 or GLP-1) have shifted the discussion, because now weight loss for many IS possible. If they stay on the drugs. I saw an article (that I'm not going to link to because it was on my phone) that claimed that many people stop taking the drugs due to price. A situation that isn't going to get better given the political situation in the US currently. But that's a rabbit hole I'm never going down…
The pandemic gets a mention, because many people put on weight in the lock down, but the fact of the matter is that being obese made getting the disease more deadly. The one person I know that died of Covid-19 was morbidly obese. A great guy and tremendous father, but he never, ever got his weight under control. Her point, however, is that people came out of the pandemic wanting to be healthier, which in many cases means thinner. Is that pro-skinny or anti-obese? If you don't accept that weight relates to health, I suppose it means pro-skinny.
I didn't realize some of the things that the author points to. I did not realize that women of "normal" weight were touting using GLP-1s as a feminist decision. And excuse me, by using the term "normal weight" aren't you suggesting that morbid obesity is not normal? I'm not saying the author is lying… but in large measure she's complaining about articles that typical in women's magazines… though I suppose if you were hoping that Body Positivity would alter the culture then those are examples that it has not.
Patriarchy is blamed, though women are enforcing this too per the author. Not sure that my wanting to be thinner is "due to the male gaze" as much as it reflects my desire to have lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure. In the end, she announces that 2024 is when the Body Positivity movement ended.
I think it ended as soon as fat people demanded that Body Positivity become FAT Body Positivity (which I like to abbreviate FaBoPo). Once only certain types of bodies were permitted, most of the rest of the people left or began to ignore the "movement." Fat acceptance tried to play the race card, but that didn't work. So they need to have a new strategy. Blaming the patriarchy may work better.
The article is published at the The New Statesman, which is a United Kingdom site, and which only allows a certain number of articles to be read each month before they ask you to subscribe. The article itself is about how body positivity has changed due to its co-option by brands.
According to the article, and fat acceptance folk have noted their opinion here too, Body Positivity is now about thinness. I don't actually think that's true to be honest, I think Fat Acceptance has tried to grab the term back. Dove is the brand that I most remember trying to adopt a more "body positive" message, and they were skewered for it. Basically, larger bodies that still had an hour glass figure were featured, genuinely fat women (with their weight in their bellies) were not.
The notion that weight is not related to weight is where the movement failed in my opinion, because weight IS related to health. All parts of the body are related to health, even excess or overfilled fat cells.
The author invokes "heroin chic" and I admit that I don't see it. What I do see is that new weight loss drugs (Glucagon-like Peptide 1 or GLP-1) have shifted the discussion, because now weight loss for many IS possible. If they stay on the drugs. I saw an article (that I'm not going to link to because it was on my phone) that claimed that many people stop taking the drugs due to price. A situation that isn't going to get better given the political situation in the US currently. But that's a rabbit hole I'm never going down…
The pandemic gets a mention, because many people put on weight in the lock down, but the fact of the matter is that being obese made getting the disease more deadly. The one person I know that died of Covid-19 was morbidly obese. A great guy and tremendous father, but he never, ever got his weight under control. Her point, however, is that people came out of the pandemic wanting to be healthier, which in many cases means thinner. Is that pro-skinny or anti-obese? If you don't accept that weight relates to health, I suppose it means pro-skinny.
I didn't realize some of the things that the author points to. I did not realize that women of "normal" weight were touting using GLP-1s as a feminist decision. And excuse me, by using the term "normal weight" aren't you suggesting that morbid obesity is not normal? I'm not saying the author is lying… but in large measure she's complaining about articles that typical in women's magazines… though I suppose if you were hoping that Body Positivity would alter the culture then those are examples that it has not.
Patriarchy is blamed, though women are enforcing this too per the author. Not sure that my wanting to be thinner is "due to the male gaze" as much as it reflects my desire to have lower cholesterol and lower blood pressure. In the end, she announces that 2024 is when the Body Positivity movement ended.
I think it ended as soon as fat people demanded that Body Positivity become FAT Body Positivity (which I like to abbreviate FaBoPo). Once only certain types of bodies were permitted, most of the rest of the people left or began to ignore the "movement." Fat acceptance tried to play the race card, but that didn't work. So they need to have a new strategy. Blaming the patriarchy may work better.