Book 2 Post 2

 Anti-fat sentiment is a rampant plague in our society. Yet until just recently, it was not something I was very aware of. I have heard about fat shaming and the misrepresentation in fashion, but I never understood the gravity. Aubrey Gordon's book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat highlights the inequalities that fat people must face. First getting into this book, I was surprised at how explicit she wrote. Each chapter was a short essay detailing an experience of living fat. Each story encompassed a differing aspect of fat inequality and made it apparent how different they are in society. People being denied access to certain parts solely due to their weight. However, as I read on, there was one more thing she made clear. This was not a book just about loving yourself, but pushing it further to represent the society at large and the assumptions and access that comes with being fat.

One of the parts I found most interesting was the sheer amount of data and numbers Gordon presents. Almost daily, we hear about how women are making less, minorities are being rejected, and white men dominate professional environments. Anti-fat bias is one I have never heard of or talked about. Just as easy it would be to discriminate a man from a women, fat people are being constantly compared against their skinny counterpart. A study by Tessa Charlesworth at Harvard aimed to measure how our unconscious bias affects our decisions and perceptions. Overall, the study was a success. Although there was still unconscious bias, it has decreased when talking about race, gender, and sexuality. However, in the same study anti-fat bias saw a rise of 40%, demonstrating that every 4 out of 5 people have an unconscious bias against fat people. This was just the tip of the problem. This bias caused decreased wages and employment struggles. Sadly, it didn't stop there. Unlike other biases, weight had levels to it. The more "fat" people were, the greater the effects of bias. They earned even less, were thought to be inherently lazy, and even had different perceptions in a court room. 

So far this  book has been an eye opener to me. Before, this I was reading American Like Me, which highlighted cultural struggles and integration in society. Although they also face discrimination and inequality, it is a more widely covered topic and is currently seeing reform. Anti-fat bias is almost never talked about and quickly shot down as something that can be changed. However, this is the wrong way to look at the struggles that fat people must face everyday. Rather than telling them to accept the body they have and love their curves, direct action must be taken to alter cultural attitudes and breakdown systems that oppress people due to their weight.