Fat Acceptance

Fat acceptance, also known as size acceptance, fights discrimination based on weight, works to improve the self-esteem of heavy people, counters negative media stereotypes, strives to change limited notions of what body types are considered attractive, and encourages doctors to provide care focused on health rather than weight.

Weight Discrimination

Weight discrimination is widespread in our culture. Prospective employers often refuse to hire large-size people, especially in physical jobs or jobs where employees interact with the public. Size acceptance advocates argue that skills and performance should be the only criteria for evaluating applicants and employees. Large people are subject to harassment by their employers, are kept in jobs beneath their abilities, and are often demoted or fired because of weight prejudice. They are systematically denied health and life insurance or forced to pay higher premiums, and are often turned down as applicants to educational institutions.

Fat acceptance advocates suggest that discrimination based on weight should be eliminated.

Public facilities are inaccessible to many large people because of turnstiles, narrow armchairs, and small bathrooms. Airplanes, trains, and buses often have seating that is uncomfortably tight for larger-than-average people. Plus-size people suffer bullying, harassment, and derision from strangers, and insults, criticism, and more subtle forms of disrespect from friends and family. The size acceptance movement encourages fat people to stand up for themselves, and works toward laws that protect people from discrimination based on weight.

Health Issues

Much of the bias against fat people is based on the idea that weight is within a person's control. Size acceptance advocates counter this misconception by pointing to the long-term ineffectiveness of all currently known methods of weight loss. The vast majority of dieters will regain the weight they lost over time, so it is rational to conclude that the diet is failing, not the people following the diet. The size acceptance movement also questions the premises that being heavy is always unhealthy and that weight loss always makes you healthier.

Some of the health risks of overweight, advocates say, are due to the stress of prejudice. Biased attitudes on the part of healthcare practitioners also contribute to health problems, especially when plus-size people delay care for their medical problems out of fear of diet lectures and judgment. Medical offices often lack armless chairs, larger gowns, bigger blood pressure cuffs, and other equipment that would make the facility size friendly. In addition, larger patients are often unable to obtain diagnostic tests such as magnetic resonance images (MRIs), computerized tomography (CAT) scans, X-rays, and bone density scans because few facilities have the necessary medical equipment to fit larger bodies or accommodate higher weights.

Advocates teach people to communicate with their doctors and to insist on respectful, weight-neutral healthcare. The fat acceptance movement also joins with the health at every size movement to support a nondiet approach to health and healthcare, advocating eating according to internal cues of hunger and satiety, finding forms of physical movement that are pleasurable, and working for health improvement without focusing on weight loss.

Media Images

The size acceptance movement works to change societal attitudes about body image and attractiveness. The movement celebrates size diversity, noting that ideal body type is a concept that changes over time and across cultures. In many cultures, a woman's desirability increases with her weight. Artists such as Auguste Renoir, Gaston Lachaise, and Fernando Botero chose heavy women as their models. Lillian Russell, who weighed 240 pounds, was considered the most beautiful woman in the world at the turn of the 19th century.

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