Let’s Talk About Privilege

A few weeks ago, I posted on instagram about diet culture being a manifestation of white supremacy, and, only after did I realize that it was like throwing some people into the pool before they learned how to swim, especially because I casually mentioned white privilege, in passing, and many people responded saying they were white but did NOT have privilege.

And I realized: ah, I did not, take Maria Von Trapp’s advice to start from the very beginning, the very good place to start.

So I want to give my overview on privilege and intersectionality: what it is, how to look at it, and how privileges can overlap and intersect.

So first:

WHAT IS INTERSECTIONALITY:

Intersectionality is a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social identities can combine to create unique modes of discrimination.

Intersectionality identifies injustices that are felt by people due to a combination of factors. (Thank you Wikipedia)

Some different factors and identities that can overlap:

body size

race

sexual orientation

gender: male vs woman

gender expression cis vs trans or nonbinary

class or financial situation you’re born into, or make it into

and even beauty, or fitting into eurocentric beauty standards, (that is a facet of white supremacy, which we will talk about more later

FAT PHOBIA AND THIN PRIVILEGE

We are starting here, because this is the piece I usually talk about as it relates DIRECTLY to dieting and weight loss.

We live in a fat phobic world, a world that idolizes, fetishizes, and prioritizes thinner, leaner bodies, which means people who are naturally in thinner bodies have luck - privilege, to naturally exist in the thinner body, and fit in with ease, whereas people in bigger bodies are marginalized and stigmatized.

The trickier thing about fatphobia and thin privilege, is because we can diet and exercises and change our bodies (to a certain extent), lots of people think that body size is NOT privilege, we think it’s actually a good measurer of character and responsibility and hard work. But that is ignoring our body’s overall ability to fight back, though, because it fights back over a longer period of time, it isn’t as immediately obvious to us. When it fights back, we assume that’s just us losing our willpower.

Naturally thinner people who spend a lot of time working out or thinking about that they eat, think that their body is ALL because of “dedication” and “hard work,” which ignores the fact that at least a big chunk of it, is the fact that their body is meant to be thinner and they don’t happen to be fighting against the body size they are meant to be. They have thin privilege, but chalk it all up to their “no excuses” lifestyle.

It’s also ignoring the fact that a lot of people who do successfully keep their weight low, or even lower than their body wants, may have an eating disorder or disordered eating, that happens to be socially acceptable, praised, and admired. (eek!)

And it’s ignoring the fact that some people truly are meant to be in bigger bodies, genetically or otherwise, and forcing themselves to be smaller in order to fit in and experience some thin privilege, can be really bad for them mentally and physically.

We live in a world where thinness is seen as superior, even morally superior to fatness.

And like most privileges, there’s a spectrum, so even someone who doesn’t think of themselves as thin, may have some thin privilege. Even "small fat" people have thin privilege compared to people in super-fat or infinifat bodies.

Understanding the Fat Spectrum

And, the way OVERLAPPING privileges work, is that even someone who doesn’t have any other p...