By It may come as a shock to you given American fat-phobia, but “fat” should not be considered an insult.
First and foremost, fat is a neutral descriptor. It lacks inherent morality and consequently is not “good” or “bad,” similar to how eye color or hair color is simply a state of being void of moral value. Fat is just another term to describe your body, like small, big, curvy, square – all of these terms are neutral descriptors that have no impact on your worth or value as a human being.
Your worth as a human is inherent, meaning nothing external like weight, body shape, appearance, income, ability, or identity can take that worth away from you.
Second, like many other perceived insults, “fat” is only a word, not something to be feared. Body-positive advocate Megan Jayne Crabbe explained this concept well in an interview with the BBC:
“The word ‘fat’ used to have the power to knock me out cold. I’ve spent my life in fear of being called fat, I couldn’t even see the word,” said Crabbe, aka @bodyposipanda. “When I found the body positivity movement, my eyes were opened to a whole new way of seeing fat. It’s just another word, a way to describe your body, and we need to reclaim it.”
Interestingly, “fat” was also not always perceived as an insult. “Fat” used to be considered a compliment or good thing according to Ashley Austrew of dictionary.com:
“Historically, fat had a number of positive meanings. In the late 1300s, fat land was ‘fertile’ and ‘abundant.’ In the 1600s, a fat person could be ‘wealthy’ or ‘affluent.’ That underlying sense of prosperity lingers in fat cat, a 1920s barb at a ‘wealthy person,’ especially one with political influence.”
The shift towards using “fat” as an insult occurred in the 1940’s and 50’s as thinness became the new standard of beauty in America, a trend the continues to this day and was particularly amplified by the standard of beauty in the modeling industry in the 90’s.
In order to move away from society as a whole using and viewing the term “fat” as an insult, we must take it upon ourselves as individuals to strip this word of the negative connotations we’ve given it, restore it to a state of neutrality, and reclaim it for ourselves.
“Fat is a noun. Fat is an adjective. Fat is not an insult, and it’s time for society and culture to stop doing harm to fat people by treating their body type like it’s a bad word,” said Austrew.
Ris Writes 