Election 2024: Fat Resilience and Fat Resistance
[Image description: A photo of NAAFA Board Chair Amanda Cooper Amanda making a list on an easel pad. Notes on the pad read: “Size Freedom. All bodies are good bodies. Bodies of all sizes. Equal ri…” Amanda is a fat white woman with short hair. She is wearing green glasses and a blue striped sweater.]
By Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of NAAFA
Just days after the November election, I attended the Social Impact Summit, a gathering of non-profit leaders at East LA College. It was a diverse group of over 350 organization leaders, staff, and volunteers from a wide variety of causes. We came together on the theme of thriving. But for so many of our organizations, post-election realities will shift our focus away from thriving; simply surviving will be even more difficult for many of us and for many of the communities we serve.
Non-profits are bracing ourselves for how big changes in the government will affect our work when President-elect Trump takes office again. It’s already happening. There are big changes coming in the American public’s priorities, capacity, and attention. Many communities are directly threatened by the stated goals of the Trump administration and their supporters in the government and in our neighborhoods. There is a question that is directed at fat rights activists all the time – “Why should we focus on this when there are so many more urgent things to focus on?” That question is about to get much, much louder.
Trump’s first nominees for key roles in his administration are expected to implement policies that we know will endanger the most vulnerable people in this country. We know that fervor for Trump’s mass deportation promises will stir up hate and harm against immigrant communities regardless how the plans are actually carried out. We know that 2LGBTQIA+ rights will be reversed and that transgender people, in particular, will be in danger. We know that law and order policies that already disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities will be implemented in frightening ways. We know that reproductive rights are already eroding in many states. Across the government, at every level, we are likely to see safety nets unraveling and essential support diminishing for people in the most marginalized communities.
There are fat people in all of those communities.
On top of all of the life-threatening changes they will be facing, they will also be facing medical weight bias, anti-fat employment discrimination, and housing insecurity compounded by size discrimination. Racial stereotypes will be compounded by anti-fat stereotypes for the BIPOC communities that will certainly experience more violence. Reproductive health options will be limited by BMI cutoffs and ineffective products for higher-weight people. Fat people who are displaced will need extended size clothes. Fat people who are enduring food scarcity will be told they couldn’t possibly actually need food.
These concerns, and more, have always been present at the intersections of fat justice and other causes. So, when people ask why we should focus on fat activism when there are so many pressing things to worry about, here’s the answer: fat liberation is part of every urgent social justice issue.
Not only that, fat people are part of every solution. There is no resistance that is made up of only thin, able-bodied people. Even the far right knows this, with their “jokes” about fat girls leading protests and “tank divisions” of fat elders on scooters. We get mocked for being fat people doing social justice work because we are fat people doing social justice work. Not just for fat rights, as we do at NAAFA. But for all marginalized people.
As far as I could tell, I was the only person at the Social Impact Summit representing a fat-specific organization. But as I looked around the gathering, there were so many fat people there! It’s no surprise to me. I already know that when you gather a bunch of people who are trying to build a better world, fat people will be among the folks who show up to do the work. We do this despite often showing up to places that are unwelcoming and unaccommodating to us, even within social justice spaces. I wasn’t the only fat person at a workshop taking my notes from an awkward angle because the “one size fits all” seating forced me to sit sideways in a desk that wasn’t made for me. But I will probably be the only one to follow up with the planners to let them know that if they want fat people to show up for the resistance, they have to make space for us.
And that’s what makes NAAFA’s work unique in this moment. We keep fat people’s needs on the radar. Anti-fatness grows out of the same capitalist and nationalist objectives that stand to endanger so many of us. Maintaining pushback against anti-fatness is essential in the midst of everything else we have to fight for. Fat advocacy matters, not just to fat people, but to all people.
We fully intend to keep up the fight, and we can’t do it without you. Donate today to help us remain resilient and resistant as we fight for Size Freedom and all freedom.
