By way of introduction to this week-long, 5-part series on the 2009 NAAFA Convention, I’d like to remind everyone that the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance just had its 40th annual conference in Washington DC from July 31st to August 3rd. After a thoughtful week of recovery and reflection, I’ve decided to share my experiences with you in this series of articles. For the privacy of others, names of non-public figures will be changed. In addition, the thoughts shared in these articles are not endorsed by NAAFA in any way and are the sole expression and opinion of the author to whom they are attributed. I hope that if you were in attendance at any of these events, you’ll share your own thoughts and experiences of them.

Dr. Linda Bacon: A Keynote Speaker to Remember

Dr. Linda Bacon wrote the incredible book, Health at Every Size: The Incredible Truth About Your Weight, which was the book that really made me understand the Health at Every Size movement and the extent to which our society at large is not giving us the entire picture on weight, health and more. In short, the book changed my life, and that Linda Bacon was going to be the keynote speaker at the NAAFA Convention was hugely exciting for me. Not only would I get to hear her speak on such a fascinating topic, but - if I was lucky - I’d get to meet her as well.

Now, for those of you who haven’t ever seen Dr. Bacon, she is both short and thin, not what one would expect from a keynote speaker at the NAAFA Convention (and I’ll address reverse size discrimination a bit below). Similarly, for those of you who have never seen me in person, I am also quite thin (if you want to know about how I got involved in this movement, please read my forum post about it). Though I cannot understand what it was like to be fat and listen to Linda Bacon speak about Thin Privilege at a fat conference, I feel as though her speech had a special impact on me because of my own size.

Thin Privilege

So what is Thin Privilege? Thin Privilege is the benefits that thin people come by because of our society’s general discrimination against fat people. Allow me to provide you with an example from Linda’s talk.

Linda Bacon is a nutrition professor, and her website says the following about her degrees and the fields she’s in: “physiology, specializing in weight regulation…[with] graduate degrees in psychology, specializing in eating disorders and body image, and kinesiology, specializing in exercise metabolism.” Do these sound like fields in which fat people are particularly welcome? Rather than bombard you with stories of how bigger people have tried and been kept out of medicine, nutrition and fitness fields (to name but a few obvious ones), I hope that you’ll accept as a given that this happens (if you aren’t convinced please read about Jennifer Portnick and Jazzercise).

After being on a hiring committee that wanted to pass up a fat person for a position solely because of her size, Linda began to reflect on how much in her life she hadn’t really earned because she, as a thin person, had an unfair, societal advantage over the fat competition. The erroneous assumptions that our society has about fat people and their abilities (that they’re slovenly, lazy, can’t take care of their weight so how could they take care of business, etc.) give thin people an unearned edge in numerous facets of life. Linda spoke of how she couldn’t possibly know how many times this had happened in her life, but that she could never feel as though all of her accomplishments were entirely due to her merit when fat people were being discounted because of their size.

This, in a nutshell, is Thin Privilege. Moreover, upon reflecting on this point, Dr. Bacon emphasized why she thought the fight to end size discrimination and propagate Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size was so important. It’s the right thing to do. Setting aside a few conceivable exceptions, no one deserves to be evaluated on anything but his or her merits. However, our society does not embrace that notion (though sometimes it claims to). Thus, joining the fight for Size Acceptance is simply the right thing to do.

How Linda Bacon’s Thin Privilege Affected Me

Sitting in this conference room of fat bodies, I was keenly aware that I was but one of two or three thin listeners - but boy was I listening. I knew what I was doing at this conference, but until hearing Linda speak I didn’t realize how much I needed to be there. And no, not for the fat people who needed the help of some thin guy - but for the sake of what’s right.

When I applied to college there was a place to attach a photo. I did not attach a photo. I thought, “What the hell does my picture have to do with whether or not I should be admitted?” I wanted to get accepted or rejected based solely on my merit, and I never wanted to wonder what else got me in or kept me out. I want other things to work that way too. Now, of course, all interviews can’t be conducted “blind,” but the problem is not that we can judge people based on irrelevant criteria. The problem is the irrelevant criteria by which we judge. One of the largest irrelevant criteria, I believe, is people’s size.

You may think that I’ve never been judged for my size, but I have. The most recent example was the NAAFA Convention. Though people were very welcoming and it was amazing to meet them, I knew - at least at the beginning - that numerous eyes were on me, and that people were thinking, “What’s the skinny guy doing here?” Moreover, in very un-malicious ways, people would address me to ask a question that they wanted answered from the perspective of “the thin person.” They also sometimes assumed what I thought about something because I was thin. That’s understandable, and I was never bothered by it. However, I’ve been judged at other times that did bother me.

At a recent family affair, many of my relatives fawned over my thinness, telling me how lucky I was and continually noting the fact that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. That was a horrible feeling. Not only is it entirely irrelevant that I’m thin, but the very act of acknowledging my thinness was their way of being self-deprecating towards themselves. How horrible to know that I was the basis by which they made themselves feel terrible - my family, these people that I love.

Now, I can’t pretend for a second that these few experiences amount to anything like the size discrimination fat people face every single day, but they call my attention to the problem of judging people based on size, the frequency with which it happens, and the Thin Privilege to which I’ve been subject my whole life. Have I earned tons so far because I’m thin? Probably not, but I’ve no doubt that I’ve been evaluated differently than others with different body types, including losing out on something to someone who was not only thin but particularly handsome and chiseled, as the case may have been.

So what am I going to do with my Thin Privilege, then? I’m going to use my Thin Privilege to get other thin people to listen to me and what I have to tell them about Size Discrimination, Size Diversity, Fat Acceptance and Health at Every Size. I’m going to use my thin size as a means of getting thin ears that discount fat peoples’ words because, well, “Of course they think there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re the fat ones.” Is it fair that I may have an easier time getting people to listen to me. Absolutely not - it’s not even necessarily true - but it’s the right thing to try to do, and I hope that, to whatever degree I succeed in getting anyone to listen, it will be the last thing I ever get in my life because I’m thin.

Did you hear Linda Bacon’s speech? What did you think? Do you have thoughts on the notion of Thin Privilege? Have you ever experienced anything, as a fat or a thin person, that you think Thin Privilege had a place in? Please share any other thoughts and comments.

Want to talk about other elements of the NAAFA Convention? Check out the NAAFA Convention forums. Tune in tomorrow for installment 2 of 5 on the 2009 NAAFA Convention.

As an historian, Jay understands the degree to which our aesthetic judgments are shaped by our cultural surroundings, and he has studied and written about the importance of rights, respect and acceptance for all people. Jay is a member of the Association for Size Diversity and Health.