Sep. 4, 2012 at 9:12am with 2 notes

Anonymous asked: Are you fat? I'm fat, and, I don't want to sound super sensitive or anything, but I kind of consider that to be a slur. Like, I saw you're description for a picture of a fat comedian and it didn't sit well with me. I mean, if you are fat, I am completely sorry for trying to step over you, but if you're not...I feel like you would understand.

Yep. I am fat. It says so in the “Basic Facts” link on my Tumblr page.

As a big fat fatty myself, I don’t consider “fat” a slur. Indeed, I want to reclaim it, and I never want it to reach that status. Especially when the history of the word “fat” (at least in the English language) is not the same as other words that DEFINITELY are slurs. 

I use that word in image descriptions to describe fat people because I don’t want to erase them, and because I want it to become a normal part of describing someone, a neutral part. As neutral as (in most contexts) the color of their shirt. 

Fat is just fine. And there’s no reason to hide it or not talk about it or not use the word. 

I want fat, in essence, to mean what it means. A person who is large sized. Which is just fine. As a fat person, I don’t want people going around pretending they don’t see that I’m a big woman. I don’t want people to pretend like I’m just the same as a woman who half my size or less. 

I just want them to be able to see that aspect of me and not have them make moral, personal, or other judgements about me. So, by all means, use the word fat (as far as I’m concerned), but make sure that it’s used neutrally and that it only describes what it is only able to describe: my size. 

Because that’s all you can tell about a fat person by their size: their size. Their health, their morality, their beauty, their worthiness as a person, their dietary habits, their sexuality, etc is all a different question and can’t be determined simply by knowing someone’s size. 

  1. madamethursday posted this