‘Hella Problematic’: Students, experts discuss fatphobia at SU

One of his friends recently lost a significant amount of weight, and while he previously struggled to get cast in roles, he got four callbacks after losing weight.

“It’s part of the business,” he said. “If you’re going to play the ingenue, the attractive type, there’s a certain social standard that you have to fit.”

Understudies in the industry are also typically required to be close enough in weight to the person playing the leading role because they have to be able to fit into their costumes, Poulin said. And choreographers often expect students to be fit enough to jump to certain heights and perform different dance moves, he said.

Outside of the classroom, fatphobia tends to manifest itself in social settings as well, specifically in schools with heavy party cultures, such as SU.

Poulin often does not notice fatphobia because he has a thin body. Though on Halloween, he dressed up in a Luigi costume that made him look larger than his usual size, and said that no one would talk to him. But the next night, when he wore an outfit that exposed his body, significantly more people approached him.

“(The Luigi costume) made me look super distorted and larger than I was, and just no one would talk to me,” he said. “Body’s an important factor of whether or not someone’s going to talk to you.”

The anonymous freshman said that one time when she was going out with friends, none of them had to pay the cover charge, but because she has a larger body, she did.

“Girls get in free, but only if they’re skinny, and stereotypically pretty,” she said.

On another occasion, the freshman went to a party hoping to have a good night. But when a man approached her and said, “what are you doing here fat ass?” it ruined her night.

Sarah Bolden, a doctoral student in the School of Information Studies who studies digital fat activism, said party culture often perpetuates peer pressure, which can lead people with bigger bodies to change their behavior and ways of life.

“Maybe you want to wear the more revealing clothes, but if you feel like you’re fat, or you are fat, there can be a lot of shame involved in that,” she said. “You end up shifting how you behave in a world that you don’t feel is designed to accommodate you or you don’t feel like you’re necessarily welcomed in.”

Bolden added that if someone feels like they are taking up too much space physically, they could feel unwelcome in the room.

Duggirala noticed friends skip meals to get drunk more quickly or force themselves to throw up, or “pull trig,” to continue drinking, they said.

“It’s literally the grossest thing I’ve ever heard,” Duggirala said. “There’s such a high occurrence of disordered eating (behaviors) on college campuses.”

Duggirala also said that because their partner is mid-size and deemed traditionally attractive, people will often approach their partner and try to flirt, despite Duggirala’s presence.

“The assumption is I’m not a threat,” they said. “I’m also something that is and should be disposable.”

Ragen Chastain, a speaker, writer and trained researcher on fat activism, said there is a tendency among college students to associate with people that fit into traditional beauty standards. Society often glorifies people who are thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual and do not have a disability, and those who don’t meet those standards can often feel left out and unwanted.

In some cases, fat people will choose to not be social and isolate themselves because of weight stigma, Chastain said.

“The problem isn’t the fat person’s choices to try to keep themselves safe,” she said. “It’s that weight stigma exists in the first place. But it can really create a situation where fat people don’t feel welcome.”

Lalonde said she often feels like an outsider in most social settings given her age and weight.

“They’re like, we don’t want to hang out with this, like old grandma,” she said. ”And I don’t know if it was because of my size, or if it was because I’m an older student.”

College students often hear that they are at the age where their bodies are supposedly in the best shape, which can target larger bodies and make college campuses a “breeding ground” for the rhetoric that thin figures are ultimately better, Duggirala said.

“No matter how smart you might be, or talented you might be, or personable you might be, you’ve committed the kind of social sin of failing to have a thin body,” they said.

Danae Faulk, a doctoral student in the religion department who studies fatness and religion, said laziness and fatness are almost always associated with each other, especially for women. She works in a fifth floor office in the Hall of Languages and opts to take the elevator, which often causes her male colleagues to criticize her.

“There’s an ableist rhetoric,” she said. “There are obviously implicit thoughts people have that I need to get in shape or lose weight.”

Faulk also said fatphobic rhetoric around obesity and COVID-19 complications has persisted throughout the pandemic, especially since those that have a body mass index of 30 or over, including Faulk, qualified for the vaccine sooner than the general population.

“That category is like hella, hella problematic,” she said.

The problematic label gave her an advantage for the first time, which she said was conflicting. But even prior to the pandemic, people often made assumptions that fatness was associated with unhealthiness, she added.

“Folks really like perpetuating ideas that fat bodies are unhealthy, that fat bodies are sick, that fat bodies are going to die,” she said.

Duggirala said they haven’t weighed themselves in eight months. They let the doctor weigh them, but they don’t ask for the number because they know their doctors would tell them if their weight was a health concern. Like other medical treatments, any patient can refuse to be weighed at the doctor’s office.

Chastain said people feel like they have a justified reason to mistreat fat people given that larger bodies are falsely associated with being unhealthy.

“Fat people have the right to exist without shame, stigma, bullying or oppression,” she said. “It doesn’t matter why people are fat, it doesn’t matter if their health impacts being fat, and it doesn’t matter if they could or want to become thin.”

While federal laws prevent workplace discrimination on the basis of age, disability, sex, gender, religion, race and national origin, this does not prevent discrimination based on physical appearance, including weight.

Michigan is the only state that has a law protecting discrimination based on weight. Many municipalities, including Binghamton, New York, which is an hour south of Syracuse, have updated municipal codes to include weight and height as protected categories. Still, in most municipalities, including Syracuse, discrimination based on weight is technically legal.

Duggirala said they also notice fatphobia through the thrifting culture. They said that they notice that traditionally thin people will buy plus size clothing and crop it.

“A lot of it is based on the fact that even with clothing and things that are made for fat people, we think that they have more value and more worth on (thin people),” they said.

Faulk said she feels like society thinks she’s doing something wrong by being herself rather than conforming to the thin, quiet and submissive hegemonic norm.

“I am being a bad white woman by being a fat woman,” she said. “And then I’m a loud woman on top of that. So these things sort of double down.”

While courses like first year seminar focus on bias and microaggressions toward certain identities, the course does not include anything about size inclusivity, which could be beneficial, Lalonde said. The FYS 101 syllabus does not include any lessons on size inclusivity.

Bolden said society needs to implement structural shifts in discussions about fatness and the stigmas tied to it. But the freshman student said that she’s not sure that will ever happen.

“The dynamics will always be the same unless major social change happens,” the student said. “But is that happening anytime soon, or at all, honestly?”

To deconstruct internalized fatphobia, people should participate in and follow the fat liberation movement, whether it be through social media or through conversations, Duggirala said. It’s important to spark this discussion, and people cannot consider themselves activists if they are still fatphobic, they said.

Faulk also added that fatphobia can be more under the surface in environments that are “woke,” including college campuses.

“(People in these spaces) are very aware of (social) justice issues,” she said. “Some of the more egregious acts of fatphobia are missed.”