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Fat Studies

Glossary of Terms

Adapted from What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon.

White button reading "FAT Can Be Beautiful" in blue text.

 

"Fat Can Be Beautiful" by Hilda A. Hidalgo, PhD, is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Fat
A neutral descriptor for predominantly plus-size people. While fat is frequently used to insult people of all sizes, many fat activists—those of us who are undeniably, indubitably fat by any measure—reclaim the term as an objective adjective to describe our bodies, like tall or short. It is used accordingly in a matter-of-fact way throughout the pages ahead. Fat stands in contrast to an endless parade of euphemisms—fluffy, curvy, big guy, big girl, zaftig, big boned, husky, voluptuous, thick, heavy set, pleasantly plump, chubby, cuddly, more to love, overweight, obese—all of which just serve as a reminder of how terrified so many thin people are to see our bodies, name them, have them.

Fat hasn’t become a bad word because fatness is somehow inherently undesirable or bad—it has fallen out of public favor because of what we attach to it. We take fat to mean unlovable, unwanted, unattractive, unintelligent, unhealthy. But fatness itself is simply one aspect of our bodies—and a very small part of who each of us is. It deserves to be described as a simple and unimportant fact.

Smaller Fat People and Very Fat People

Different levels of fatness invite different experiences. Ash, the host of The Fat Lip podcast, has established a framework for understanding and pinpointing these important gradations, based on US women's clothing sizes:

Small fat: 1X-2X, sizes 18 and lower, Torrid 00 to 1. Find clothes that fit at mainstream brands and can shop in many stores.
Mid-fat: 2X-3X, sizes 20 to 24, Torrid 2 to 3. Shop at some mainstream brands, but mostly dedicated plus brands and online.
Superfat: 4X-5X, sizes 26-32 , Torrid 4 to 6. Wear the highest sizes at plus brands. Can often only shop online.
Infinifat: 6X and higher, sizes 34 and higher, some Torrid 6. Very difficult to find anything that fits, even online. Often require custom sizing.

These gradations are frequently used within fat spaces to help pinpoint the privileges we experience by virtue of our relative proximity to thinness.

Healthism
Closely linked to both anti-fatness and ableism, healthism posits that health is both a virtue and a moral imperative. Healthism as a framework often disregards the influence of social determinants of health, institutional policies, and oppression on individual health.

Many who shame fat people for our bodies, our food, and our movement rely on a logic of healthism that implies that we are duty-bound to appear healthy-that is, thin. Healthism is a pervasive system of social thinking that has harmful implications for disabled people, chronically ill people, mentally ill people, fat people, and others. Even in body positive spaces, healthism persists as a way to marginalize fat people through the frequent refrain I'm body positive as long as you're healthy.

Plus-Size Clothing
Clothing that cannot be reliably purchased in department stores and from mainstream clothing retailers and must be purchased from either a limited plus-size section or from specialty plus-size retailers, such as Torrid or Lane Bryant. In the US, this generally refers to women’s sizes 16 to 28. As of 2018, people who wear plus sizes have just 2.3 percent of the clothing options that thinner people have.

Extended Plus-Size Clothing
Clothing that cannot be purchased from mainstream retailers or from most plus-size retailers. In the US, women’s extended plus sizes are usually size 30 and up. Even basic essentials, such as jeans and blazers, are often unavailable in extended plus sizes. When extended plus-size clothing is available, it is almost exclusively available for purchase at exorbitant prices and only online. In some cases, extended plus-size clothing requires custom sizing or construction.

Straight-Size Clothing
A term from the fashion industry, straight size refers to clothing that can be purchased from nearly any clothing retailer. US straight sizes are usually sizes 00 to 14 and are available at almost every store in a given shopping mall. Straight size is a way of referring to people with relative size privilege, instead of using value-laden terms such as “normal” or “regular” or inaccurate terms like “average” (in the US, the average size is plus size).

A black and white illustrated advertisement showing men of various figures in tailored suits.

" ["Advertisement for True Fit Shirts, Proportioned sizes", showing 8 men in fashionable dress] [graphic]. c1870. " by Library of Congress is in the Public Domain

Obese and Overweight
Weight classification determined by the BMI as being fat enough to present health risks. The term “obese” is derived from the Latin obesus, meaning “having eaten oneself fat,” inherently blaming fat people for their bodies. The term “overweight” implies that there is an objectively correct weight for every body. A growing number of fat activists consider obese to be a slur. Both terms are derived from a medical model that considers fat bodies as deviations that must be corrected.

Diet Culture
Diet culture is a system of beliefs and practices that elevates thin bodies above all others, often interpreting thinness as a sign of both health and virtue. It mandates weight loss as a way of increasing social status, strengthening character, and accessing social privilege. Christy Harrison, a registered dietitian and MPH, adds that diet culture “demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hypervigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.” Diet culture disproportionately benefits people whose bodies are naturally predisposed to be thin and people with the wealth and privilege to pay the high prices of customized diet foods, personal trainers, weight-loss surgery, and more. Even as “wellness” gains popularity as a way to talk about weight loss, it bears a striking resemblance to diet culture.

 


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