Note-a-bear

Negative ‘Fat Talk’ is a recognised problem: so much so that there’s a ‘no fat talk week‘ happening right now. And I completely understand how, particularly amongst young women, engaging in social interactions based around body shame and diet talk is really damaging. But I don’t feel that eliminating talk about fat, erasing fat from our vocabulary, banning the labelling of bodies as fat, is the right path. Fat is not the worst thing that you can be. In implying that girls can harm themselves even by entertaining the thought that they might be fat, that they might be like me, proponents of the ‘fat talk’ ban simply reinforce the idea that there is something inherently bad about fatness. Instead of reifying the fear of fat in this way we should be changing the conversation. We should respond to ‘I feel fat today’ not by hastily switching the subject, but by talking about what that actually means. We need to talk frankly with young people about body shame and fat stigma. We need to talk in a way that acknowledges that some people really are fat and that that could possibly be okay. Because if I was a fat teenager in a programme telling me that ‘fat talk’ was psychologically harmful to my peers I’d probably feel as though my very existence was so shameful that it hurt people even to think about me. Not such a great boost for self esteem.