Mini-sode: Fat phobia & The Rise Of GLP-1s

In last week's episode, I shared that fatphobia has always stemmed from the belief that weight is mostly controlled by diet and exercise. It’s why we’ve been subjected to decades of diet programs, products and books focused on calories in and calories out. It has also perpetuated the narrative that if you “try hard enough” you can also be thin, or manage your weight.

With the rise in use of GLP-1s for weight loss, and the ease at which people can access them privately with very little screening – we’ve watched as diet talk has shifted from how many calories someone is eating to whether it’s an injection day and they’re going to crap themselves.

Seriously. These are the casual, and dangerous conversations happening across social media. And whilst my personal view is these drugs are going to cause more harm in the longterm, I also know people are prescribed this medication for health reasons, and they deserve access to the healthcare their body needs.

In today’s mini episode we’re going to explore how we went from the rise and decline of body positivity in the 2010s to ‘thin is in’ and how this is leading to an increasingly fatphobic society. We’ll also talk about how politics, and facism play a part in this rhetoric, and why it’s going to cause more harm, not just for fat folks, in the long term.

Takeaways:

There is a correlation between the rise in GLP-1s and the rise in fatphobia.
Fatphobia is more complex than just a fear of fat people.
The diet industry thrives on control and fear.
Weight loss drugs are marketed as an act of self-care.
Fatness is not a choice, and it is not a moral failing.
Unlearning fatphobia is crucial for mental health.
Diet behaviors go beyond just counting calories.
The rise in fatphobia is a system designed to fail.
Internalised fatphobia has nowhere to go after weight loss.
The marketing of weight loss drugs reinforces fatphobic attitudes.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Fatphobia and GLP-1s
01:59 Understanding Fatphobia: Definitions and Misconceptions
04:21 The Role of Diet Culture and Weight Loss Drugs
06:37 Marketing Tactics and the Perception of Weight Loss
08:27 Political Instability and the Rise of Fatphobia
10:25 The Impact of Weight Loss on Fatphobia
12:13 Internalized Fatphobia and Its Consequences
14:13 Fashion Rules and Body Image
15:42 Conclusion: Unlearning Fatphobia for Better Health

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Transcript

Melanie Knights [she/they] (00:00)
Hello friends, welcome back to The Culture For All. Hello, hello, welcome my plus size pals. Hello everybody, if you are new here. Thank you so much for joining us.

In this week's mini-sode we are going to be taking a look at the anecdotal evidence showing a correlation between the increased accessibility and use of GLP-1s and the rise of fatphobia.

So in last week's episode, I shared with you six ways to unlearn internalised fatphobia. We looked at what it is, why it's harmful, and we, you know, it's a really full conversation. But I only touched on this kind of rise of fatphobia and the impact that GLP1s are currently having on that. So I we could take this mini-sode to really acknowledge the shift in attitudes, but also so that we can raise some awareness on how to identify this shift in language and behaviours.

So before we get into today's episode, a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Culture of It All on Substack by heading to cultureofitallpod.substack.com/subscribe. You can choose between the free or paid plan. Subscribers get early access to episodes, regular bonuses, including creative resources, blogs, videos, and more. You can follow the show over on Instagram, which is at cultureofitallpod, where I share episode updates and the stories, my fat thoughts, and the odd Aquarius meme.

You can also join me over on TikTok, which is at Melanie Knights, where we discuss plus-sized fashion without the diet talk, body image, parenting, fat acceptance, and I share every episode over there as well.

So today's mini-sode. First of all, course, content warning. We will be talking about fat phobia. We will be talking about weight loss drugs. Please take care of your mental health. If you need to pause this episode, you need to skip it and come back next week. That is fine. We will see you next week. So my intention for this episode is not to be divisive. I have gone back and forth on how to explore this conversation, how to have this conversation, and I've realized I cannot.

control everyone's feelings, I cannot manage everyone's feelings, and the only thing I can do is actually share the anecdotal evidence that there is a correlation between the rise in GLP-1s and the rise in fatphobia. And I think it's important to highlight the rise in fatphobia and this correlation because there has been a shift in perspective. There is a shift in the way people are perceiving weight loss and the way they are perceiving fat bodies.

If you have been following body positivity, fat liberation, anti-diet, intuitive eating, those kinds of areas in the online space for a number of years pre-COVID, pre-2020, then you will have probably been witness to the fact that there was a rise in body positive attitudes. We saw kind of coming out of the early 2000s, we saw this rise in body positivity, we saw this rise in health at every size. I don't necessarily think everyone

myself included, understood what all of those things meant. I think there was still a lot of misinformation, there's still a lot of people, myself included, who believed that intuitive eating was a diet. I thought that until I started. I think people still believed that health at every size, there still was like this, it wasn't fully inclusive, right? It was like health at every size, but, size inclusivity, but. There was always this kind of, for some people, there was this kind of caveat of like, yeah, there was still this...

fatphobic attitude around these these kind of ⁓ movements, let's say. Now, there wasn't. The actual movements themselves should be fully inclusive and should not have any fatphobic attitudes around them. What I'm saying is I think in social media, it's very easy for this information to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, misrepresented. And because diet culture and the diet industry is so, prevalent, it's very easy for those things to kind of get twisted and for people to misunderstand what they mean.

which is why these conversations are so, important.

And one of the things I highlighted in last week's episode is that I think a lot of people misunderstand what fatphobia is. I think a lot of people think fatphobia is either just this made up thing, it's not real, ⁓ people think that it's just a fear of fat people, so because they think that it's a fear of fat people, they're like, well, I'm not scared of fat people, so that's completely wrong. And fatphobia is so much more complex than it's not a fear of fat people, and it's very complex.

And as I shared in last week's episode, fatphobia has always been rooted in this idea that we can lose weight and maintain our body weight through simply diet and exercise. That has historically been how people have perceived fatphobic attitudes to kind of come about. And obviously for many, many years that has been the traditional like diet industry marketing. That's what we've seen. There's been variations of that.

We then saw variations that went into the wellness industry and all these kind of diets that, you know, were very complicated and very classist. And now we are seeing this shift again. Now, of course, this previous idea that everybody can lose weight or control their body weight through diet and exercise, it reinforces this idea that all it actually takes is motivation, willpower and control. I do want to highlight at this point that those three things are very, very much overused, manipulated and abused.

by the diet industry, by coaches and fitness professionals. They are misunderstood. They are simplified. They are made to be this very simple thing that you might have. People like to talk around them in this way that convinces you that, you don't want to be like that, do you? Right? It's this, it's, it's marketing. It is marketing.

And I think it's important to highlight that motivation is very much just like push energy, right? You are pushed into doing something. You constantly feel like you have to force yourself to do something. And very often we will use the term motivation when it comes to this kind of stuff. And it's absolutely right. No one is inspired to go on a diet. No one is inspired to restrict their food intake, right? It is a push energy and it comes from this idea that we are motivating ourselves.

I don't necessarily think that's wrong in like the basic term, but it is wrong to believe that anyone who doesn't choose to follow this is unmotivated, lacking willpower, or lacking any self-control. Again, this is like the opposite side of these marketing ploys that the industry will use, right? they like to label and stereotype people in larger bodies as unmotivated, lacking willpower, and lacking control.

And that is how they sell their products. So the rise in use and social acceptance of weight loss drugs and the way they are being marketed is reinforcing and spreading fat phobic attitudes. We are seeing this shift because now it's perceived that you don't have to rely on the old calories in calories out theory, right? This theory, diet that has been taken and repackaged for decades. Well, now we don't have to rely on this.

That is the narrative, You don't have to rely on this anymore, So if you couldn't do that, here's this other option. Here is this other option. I've seen a number of, and I use this term loosely, medical professionals on social media. talking about things like food addiction, talking about how fatness, but they use the O word.

is disease, these things are inherently not true. Food addiction is not actually real and fatness is not a disease, But what they do is they take these, these ideas, they take this and a, we trust them because they are a medical professional and we, they take them and they use them as a way to kind of hold your hand,

It's almost like they've got their arm around your shoulders. They are pacifying, they are infantilizing, and they are saying, it's okay, it's not your fault. It's not your fault, but here's the thing. They're saying it's not your fault, but here's this magical potion solution I have that's going to cost you money, but it's going to solve your problems.

Yes, fatness is not a choice, and it is not a moral failing. And also, these weight loss drugs are not the only way to quieten the food noise,

and they are not the way in which we achieve peace with our body. So, what we now have is these weight loss drugs that are, these people who are selling them, and they are reinforcing this idea that there is no reason for you to not be thin.

And they are marketing these drugs as an act of self-care. I've heard multiple people talk about the fact that it is the act of asking for help, Something that has been talked about lot in the kind of self-help and personal development spaces for many, many years, Especially for women.

This idea of asking for help, this idea of the fact that you don't have to do it all on your own, which we could do a whole episode on that just in itself. But the way in which these drugs are being marketed as like this self care and it's okay to ask for help, you've tried everything else. These are marketing tools. These are ways in which they are manipulating people into believing that this is the only solution. It is a money making scheme. They don't.

care about our health. Because if they cared about our health, they would be sharing with you all the other ways that you can quieten the food noise.

they would recognize that fatphobia doesn't do anything for our health and that this medical weight stigma is dangerous and it kills. So it just reinforces this idea now that there is no reason for us to not be thin, and there are many social and economic influences at play. Historically, during times of economical instability, recession, political instability, know, this like shit show that we're currently experiencing, right? This

This political instability right now it didn't just happen in January, it didn't happen in November, it's been on the cards for a long, long time.

And there is correlation between this political instability and the rise in not only fatphobia, but this need to control.

For example, during the 2016 election, when those results came in, there was this marketing tactic being used heavily within the health and fitness industry. I was a part of that industry at the time. I saw it a lot, which was that you can't control what's happening in the White House, but you can control what's happening in your own house, right? It was those kinds of manipulative tactics that were used in order to prey on people's insecurities, to prey on their fear.

So even people who did not want that outcome, who had not voted in that way, there was still this idea, well, look, you can't control this, but you can control your weight. You can distract yourself. You can, you know, you can focus on your own health. This is more important. There was this idea that, of course, someone's health is more important than this election. I'm not necessarily disputing that someone's health isn't important, but I also think that, like, that's not what you mean, right? You mean thinness. You mean that thinness is more important.

And we have to remember that the diet industry thrives on control and fear and distraction. It wants us to be hungry. wants us to be unhappy. wants us to be chasing this goal and focused on how we look because it's a great way that people avoid and distract from seeing what's going on in the world. And I have a lot of compassion for people who are kind of caught up in this cycle because fatphobia doesn't make someone inherently bad person. The desire to lose weight doesn't make someone a bad person. It is a system.

It's a system that is designed to fail. Diet culture is everywhere. We are all, all a victim of diet culture in every single day of life. The diet industry is a complete scam. It's a lie. It's designed to fail.

But it is also incredibly hard to take yourself out of this system. It's really, really hard to kind of pull yourself out of the system. Of course, it's not impossible, but it's incredibly hard to suddenly take yourself out of a system that has probably been controlling you in some way or another your entire life.

And for years, I thought I wasn't dieting, right? Just because I stopped counting calories. I still had all the diet behaviors. Diet behaviors go beyond calories and fat phobia now goes beyond the belief that we can all be thin if we just try hard enough. There is another layer of fat phobia, which until we have more data to understand the long-term health implications of these drugs, we cannot unravel it and move forward. And history tells us that this will happen, but we don't know when.

Right, historically we went through this in the 90s, with other weight loss drugs that were eventually taken off of the market due to the long term health implications. But to actually have that data, unfortunately you have to wait and see.

So one of the questions we've been kind of exploring over on TikTok and some people have highlighted to me is that some of the most fat phobic people within society are former fat people. And this kind of question is like, why? Where does that come from? Why do people who lose weight become potentially more fat phobic? And I don't think that it's more fat phobic. I think that the fat phobia has nowhere to go. I think that it's really sad because we know the statistics.

We know the reality of being someone who has pursued intentional weight loss, and what that often means, not just physically, but mentally. We know what that impact is long term. We know the data tells us, and our lived experiences tell us, that we know how this is probably going to play out. So do they. So do they. And...

I have a lot of compassion because I remember, you you want to believe that you're different. You want to believe that you're in that five percent. You want to believe that you're, you know, this time is different, that you suddenly figured out this solution. You suddenly have the answer. And that's why people fall into this. Well, if I can do it, so can you mindset? Because up until the point when they realized they didn't have that solution, they didn't do it.

they are being told they did, right? Society has put weight loss and the pursuit of thinness on such a pedestal that it then puts people who pursue and achieve these results on that same pedestal, They suddenly have this validation, they're being praised, they're being encouraged to keep going. These are probably the complete opposite experiences they had when they were in a larger body. So what happens is people often have to distance themselves.

They have to distance themselves from people in the fat community because Where does their fatphobia go? There is nowhere for it to go. It's now internalized, but they don't... When they look in the mirror, they're seeing something different, but it's still there. And I think that's one of the things that's so hard about this is that internalized fatphobia is not just the need to then...

other and be rude to fat people. This happens as well, it happens to me on regular basis from people,

but it's also present in the way in which they talk to themselves.

And I'll finish with this because I've been thinking a lot about the way in which many of us grew up, and people are probably still growing up, with these fashion rules, for example, that are rooted in fatphobia and diet culture. This came to mind recently because I actually had comments from someone. They were horrific. ⁓ Just, you know, basically fat shaming, body shaming.

believed it was okay because they were also plus size, but they had this whole list of things that people in larger bodies shouldn't be wearing. They weren't directing it at me, but it was funny because I wear all those things. And they were just listing in a very nasty way all these things that fat people shouldn't wear. And it got me thinking, right? So you're in a larger body and you're hearing these rules, you're seeing this kind of messaging, you're hearing it from maybe friends or

You're seeing it magazines or online or social media, wherever it is that we're now seeing this stuff. And so even if that person then decides to pursue weight loss, right, even if that person decides to pursue weight loss, when they then are in a thinner body, and they turn around and say, I feel like I shouldn't wear this satin skirt or this crop top, like it makes me feel uncomfortable.

The same people who were spewing these fat phobic and hurtful comments are the same people who are now going to say, ⁓ no, wear what you want, who the hell cares?

You cared. You know? You cared. You cared enough to make these comments and these statements when that person was in a larger body. And what this shows is the fact that that fatphobia doesn't go anywhere. The internalised fatphobia, the belief that you can't wear certain things, it doesn't disappear just because you're in a smaller body.

And I think this is one of the ways in which body positivity perhaps got a little bit twisted, but I don't necessarily disagree with the message, is that, you know, this wear what you want. I very rarely say that because I understand that there are physical barriers to access of clothing. So saying wear what you want when someone cannot get the most basic access to clothing It's a little misguided. But I also...

want people to understand that yes, we should be wearing what we want. We shouldn't be listening to these beliefs. We shouldn't be listening to these rules that are just rooted in fat phobia. They are just incredibly divisive. They are hurtful and they are just doing more harm. And again, even if that person is going to pursue thinness, that fat phobia has nowhere to go. Those beliefs still exist.

And I know that from my own personal experience that even when I was then in a smaller body, I picked apart my body constantly. It was never enough. It was never enough. There was always some kind of perceived flaw because it didn't go anywhere. And that is why, and I think I'm going to make this my motto, unlearning your fat phobia will do more for your health than any diet ever can.