Capítulo 4
Navigating a World Not Built for Fat Bodies
Have you ever considered how public spaces might be inaccessible to fat people? Hagen vividly describes a particularly urgent bathroom situation during an important meeting. After eating a burrito for breakfast, her stomach rebelled against this spicy morning choice. The toilet was placed in a narrow alcove with barely enough room to sit. When she finished, she realized there wasn't enough space to reach between her thighs to wipe. She tried various acrobatic positions, smashing her elbows and knees into walls while people nearby likely questioned her digestive health.
This experience highlights a common problem-sometimes public spaces simply don't accommodate larger bodies. Many fat people have faced situations where they couldn't use public bathrooms properly. The debate about whether fat people should accommodate themselves to the world or vice versa continues, though Hagen's stance is clear: an inclusive world is better for everyone.
Flying presents another major challenge. Plane seats have shrunk from 19-20 inches thirty years ago to 16-17 inches today, purely to increase profits. Hagen describes her anxiety about flying, preferring window seats to minimize interaction, and the physical pain of being squeezed into too-small spaces. On one eleven-hour flight, an armrest dug so painfully into her flesh that she cried with relief during her seatmate's bathroom breaks when she could briefly lift it.
She's reached the point where she must request seatbelt extensions without shame, though flight attendants often act embarrassed. On a recent flight to Berlin, she was moved from an emergency exit row because she needed an extension, shocking her thin friends who hadn't realized the constant accommodations fat people must make.
Dina Amlund, an activist with the Danish group FedFront, adds historical context by dismantling the myth that fatness was celebrated in earlier times. From ancient Greece onward, slenderness has consistently been the ideal. The earliest corsets originated in Crete, and throughout medieval times, fatness was associated with gluttony-one of the seven deadly sins. Even the term "Rubenesque" is misleading, as Rubens' models were mostly slender or small-fat at most. The myth of fat acceptance in "olden days" serves either to portray fat people as outdated relics or to falsely minimize the historical depth of fatphobia.
Capítulo 5
Fashion as Freedom: Finding Style in a Limited World
For years, Hagen never considered what clothes she actually liked wearing, having always settled for whatever fit her size 26-28 frame. After years of wearing uncomfortable, ill-fitting clothes she disliked, she discovered trousers at age 28 and finally began exploring her identity through clothing.
Hagen envies the "Orange Lady" she spotted at a bar-a woman dressed entirely in orange whose distinctive style impressed her while completely eluding her date. This encounter made Hagen realize she'd never developed her personal style due to limited options.
Fat women face unique pressure to appear ultra-feminine and "put-together" to counter stereotypes of laziness, while thin women can dress casually without judgment. Hagen recounts her transformative moment of self-discovery when she abandoned dresses for trousers and men's vests, finally seeing herself in the mirror and saying, "There you are." She explains how fat women are expected to embrace ultra-femininity to compensate for being desexualized by society, noting that plus-size clothing is overwhelmingly flowery and "cute" as a form of apology.
The near-impossible task of finding clothes above size 32 remains a challenge, with even "inclusive" brands rarely offering larger sizes despite claiming to cater to "ALL BODIES." Hagen highlights how this limitation isn't just inconvenient-it's a form of erasure that prevents fat people from fully expressing their identities.
Summer brings additional challenges with its emphasis on "bikini-body ready" messaging-which Hagen condemns as simply a coded way of saying "Do not dare show your fat body in a bikini, you lard monster," disguised with bright imagery of thin women promoting diet products or fitness centers. She firmly rejects this concept, suggesting the phrase should only be used if one literally means putting a bikini on one's body-and even then, only if you similarly announce "Jacket body!" or "Pyjamas body!" when donning other garments.
Capítulo 6
Love, Sexuality, and Fatness: Breaking the Desexualization Myth
Society portrays fat people as desexual beings-either sexually aggressive or without sexuality altogether. This harmful stereotype leads to horrific attitudes, like when Hagen's fat friend who was raped was told he should be "grateful someone wanted to fuck him," or when a man told Hagen, "If you weren't so fat, I'd rape you."
Against this dehumanizing backdrop, Hagen asserts proudly: fat people are not desexual. Fat people fuck. She's had sex with various partners in multiple locations, yet talks about these experiences extensively because her sexuality is so purposefully ignored by society. "I realized I express my sexuality loudly because it's denied-like my femininity, emotional complexity, and political viewpoints. I'm shouting into existence what society refuses to acknowledge."
After repeated cruel experiences with men-from nightclub "games" targeting fat women to public humiliation-Hagen developed deep distrust when men flirted with her. Even after intimate encounters, she'd anxiously await the revelation that it was all a joke. The hypocrisy was evident when she heard a comedian joke about fat women only "pulling" after 3 a.m. in clubs-the same man who had invited her to his candlelit apartment at 7 p.m., made love to her, and begged her to stay for breakfast.
The "Big Fat Friend" trope pervades modern culture, from Fat Monica in Friends to pick-up artist techniques. This harmful stereotype casts fat people as unfuckable annoyances at parties, obstacles to be managed while pursuing their thin friends. This dynamic can breed jealousy between friends despite neither wanting this competition.
Kivan Bay, a trans man interviewed in the book, adds important perspective on the intersection of fatness and gender. He notes the fascinating shift in how his fatness is perceived: when seen as a woman, his fat was considered masculinizing, but as a man, it's seen as feminizing. He observes that fatness makes people "less" of what they're supposed to be in society's eyes.
Capítulo 7
The Diet Industry's Big Lie
At fifteen, Hagen joined a weight-loss group where a nutritionist's casual remark that "bananas are bad for you" triggered a middle-aged man to punch a wall and scream at his wife about eating only bananas for breakfast for six months. This frustration reflects our collective obsession with thinness-Hagen tried harder to lose weight than to pass exams or win love, saying no to parties, friends, and feeling alive for over a decade.
As a teenager, Sunday evenings were filled with hopeful diet planning with her mother. They'd fantasize about her future thinness, tape "before" photos to the fridge, and purge the kitchen of anything containing taste. The first days were exhilarating-hunger felt like progress. She'd decline social invitations to stay home with her carrots and water. Inevitably, within days or weeks, she'd crash, binge uncontrollably, then spiral into self-loathing: "Why am I so weak? I'm disgusting."
Research shows this pattern is nearly universal-studies of "The Biggest Loser" contestants revealed that 13 of 14 regained all their weight, with metabolism permanently slowed. According to Health at Every Size research, dieting slows metabolism, increases hunger, reduces energy, and alters fat-storage enzymes. With only a 0.8% chance of an obese woman reaching "normal" weight, and 95-98% of diets failing, the cycle isn't your fault-it's by design. Diet companies profit when you blame yourself, lose weight temporarily, then return for another attempt.
Weight-loss surgery, often suggested by doctors as casually as waiters offer bread, comes with serious risks: 1-5% die during surgery, and 20% require follow-up operations for complications. Complications include "dumping syndrome" (affecting 40% of patients with rapid food passage, nausea, cramping), difficulty eating during pregnancy, and increased rates of substance abuse and self-harm emergencies following surgery.
Diet pills are equally problematic. Rimonabant, an anti-obesity drug approved in Europe in 2006 but banned worldwide by 2008, showed users were twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts, with three participants actually killing themselves during clinical trials.
As Naomi Wolf writes in The Beauty Myth: "A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one."
Capítulo 8
The Health Myth: Unpacking Medical Bias Against Fat Bodies
One evening while relaxing in her pajamas, eating pasta and chatting with her flatmate, Hagen was confronted by his friend who immediately launched into an unsolicited lecture. Having once been fat himself, he claimed to know "everything" about fatness, insisting it was unhealthy and would kill her soon. He interrupted repeatedly when she tried to respond with scientific evidence, dismissing studies he hadn't personally read.
The author addresses the common question of whether being fat is unhealthy by examining scientific research that contradicts popular beliefs. She highlights how McGinnis and Foege's research on diet and activity patterns was misattributed to obesity in media headlines. Studies show that up to 35% of fat people are metabolically healthy, and that physical activity and healthy lifestyle habits decrease mortality regardless of BMI.
The connection between fatness and poor health is oversimplified, driven partly by weight-loss industry funding of research. Obesity researcher Dr. David Allison published a study claiming 300,000 annual obesity-related deaths, later inflated to 400,000. This study was eventually debunked, with revised estimates showing fewer than 26,000 deaths attributable to obesity-fifteen times lower than the original claim. When questioned, Allison admitted these were just "back-of-the-envelope, plausible scenarios" never meant to be precise. The author reveals Allison had received funding from 148 weight-loss industry companies including Weight Watchers and SlimFast.
Medical bias presents perhaps the greatest health risk to fat people. Two-thirds of doctors believe overweight patients "lack self-control," 39% consider obese patients lazy, 49% of nurses feel uncomfortable working with fat patients, and 24% admit being repulsed by them. Most shockingly, studies show fatter patients are more likely to have surgical instruments left inside them during operations.
The author recounts her own traumatic doctor's visit where she sought contraception but was dismissed, triggering a brief eating disorder relapse. She cites numerous cases of fat people with serious medical conditions (like massive tumors) whose doctors missed diagnoses because they only focused on weight loss. Studies show fat women delay seeking medical care due to fear of discrimination, and this medical bias may contribute to health problems typically blamed on fatness itself.
Capítulo 9
The Path to Liberation: How to Love Your Fat Body
Learning to love your body is incredibly difficult-perhaps harder than climbing Mount Everest-because it requires complete rewiring after lifelong conditioning. Unlike diet books that promise happiness through restriction, Hagen promises that loving your fat body will bring genuine joy, autonomy and confidence-with the added benefit that "you can eat whatever you want" without guilt or shame.
The journey to self-love begins with unlearning everything society has taught you about fatness. Like throwing diet food in a dumpster and pouring soap over it, you must discard society's beauty standards completely. Once you recognize fatphobia, you'll see it everywhere-in casual compliments about weight loss, magazine headlines, and the absence of fat characters in media.
The first crucial step is accepting that being fat isn't bad. Society has implanted a voice telling us fat equals bad, but this equation is fundamentally wrong. "Fat" simply describes a body that's rounder and softer than others-it's neutral. Owning this word was Hagen's most important step toward self-love. By reclaiming "fat" and stripping it of negative connotations, she transformed a weapon used against her into something empowering.
Daily affirmations, though awkward at first, actually work. Write down your insecurities honestly, then transform each negative statement into a positive one: "my thighs are gross" becomes "my thighs are wonderful." Say these affirmations regularly, even when it feels like lying. You're speaking to the child version of yourself who was taught to hate their body before they could even speak.
Exposure to fat bodies helps normalize them. Look up projects like the Adipositivity Project where photographers capture nude photos of glorious fat people. Make these images your wallpaper, get calendars, surround yourself with fat bodies until they become normal.
Eliminate anything that makes you feel bad about yourself from your social media. Unfollow, unfriend, hide, block and mute every account that triggers negative feelings about yourself. This isn't petty-it's self-protection. Then, actively fill your feeds with fat people doing everything: sports, fashion, science, art, comedy, yoga.
Break fat-person rules: don't wear crop tops, don't eat fast food in public, always signal your shame. These rules are illusions-prison bars you can walk right through. When you break them, you might face stares or comments, but you'll feel empowered.
Kill your "inner thinnie"-that idealized future self who's happier and has everything you want. As long as "thin you" remains a possibility, it's difficult to accept your fatness. Live your life as if you'll have this body forever-because then you start living for the real you, not an imaginary future version.
Capítulo 10
Becoming an Ally: How to Support Fat Liberation
Despite fatphobia affecting everyone, asking for allyship feels uncomfortable when fat people already feel they take up too much space. Thin privilege means not experiencing discrimination in everyday situations like fitting into seats or buying clothes in stores. Acknowledging this privilege helps recognize how much space to take up and how one might have inadvertently talked over fat people or made decisions that negatively affected them.
Fat people experience gaslighting daily when others refuse to acknowledge their physical reality. Being told they could fit into spaces or clothes when they couldn't, or having their perception denied when people say "you'll be fine" about chairs that ultimately broke under their weight. This constant invalidation leads fat people to doubt their instincts and perception.
Society either acknowledges fatness negatively or erases it completely. The coded language people use-like "pretty face" or "great personality"-attempts to ignore fat bodies, and euphemisms ("curvy," "voluptuous," "plus-size") avoid the word "fat." Microaggressions like "You have such a pretty face" or "Have you lost weight?" harm fat people, and even self-proclaimed allies make fatphobic comments.
Thin allies should amplify fat voices, call out fatphobic comments rather than just texting fat friends about what happened, and take concrete actions: boycott venues that aren't fat-accessible, avoid restaurants with restrictive seating, don't buy from clothing stores without plus sizes, and pressure businesses to change.
The fight against fatphobia isn't just personal-it's systemic. Our capitalist system profits from making us hate ourselves. Companies sell products to "fix" problems they've convinced us we have. We blame ourselves for not fitting into airplane seats rather than questioning why seats are too small. This system values profit over children's safety and mental health.
Walking home one summer evening, Hagen was verbally abused by two young men who called her a "Fat cunt!" and added, "I wouldn't even fucking touch it." Instead of her usual reaction-ignoring it and processing later-something snapped. She burst into uncontrollable, bellowing laughter. These men verbally abused her because of their own insecurities, believing fat people deserve mockery and women should be submissive. She realized the opposite of cowering in shame is laughing loudly.
While individual journeys toward self-acceptance are important, we must shift focus to dismantling the systems that teach hate. When two twelve-year-old girls emailed Hagen stating matter-of-factly "When you are twelve years old, you hate your body," it confirmed we can no longer focus solely on individuals. We must work toward freeing fat people everywhere from discrimination, objectification and abuse. Fat people deserve better.
