For Women Only: Fat Oppression

Dissertation in Philosophy 5483 Words For Women Only: Fat Oppression Abstract This dissertation argues that fat oppression only occurs when fat discrimination intersects with gender oppression. Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of research devoted to fat oppression across numerous academic disciplines, including philosophy. My aim in this dissertation is to highlight how previous research overlooks the key role that gender plays in body related oppression. First, I set out to explain fat oppression as it has been understood by scholars such as A.W. Eaton and what the consequences of a negative attitude towards fat people have been. I then argue that the debate on fat oppression is lacking an understanding of how gender is influential in debates on body aesthetics. By examining Marilyn Frye’s theory of oppression and its limiting qualities, I explain how beauty ideals differs between men and women, and in what cases these ideals become limiting. I find that men are allowed to transcend the circumstances of their bodies but that women are not. Instead women are constantly reduced to their bodies and a failure for a woman to uphold the social norm of beauty (and particularly slenderness) is seen as deviant and immoral. Finally, I explain how women are the only group of people who experience fat oppression. This is because women will experience discrimination in all areas of their lives because of their size. They are continuously reduced to their body and limited because that body’s appearance. 1 Table of contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………3 Fat Oppression……………………….………………………………………….4 Gendered Beauty………………………………………..………………………7 Female Fat Oppression………..…………………………….……………….11 Conclusion…………………………..…………………………………………..15 Bibliography……..………………………………………………………………16 2 Introduction This dissertation will deal with the topics of fat oppression, gender oppression and the intersections between them. Recent years have seen an increase in the amount of research devoted to fatness and fat oppression across numerous academic disciplines, including philosophy. My aim in this dissertation is to highlight how previous research, particularly that conducted by A.W. Eaton, overlooks the key role that gender plays in body related oppression. I will argue that fat oppression is gendered, as women are the ones who experience fat oppression, and that fat men only experience discrimination. By building upon scholarly investigations into fat oppression, gender oppression, gendered beauty ideals, and shame, I will show how fat men and fat women will have different experiences because of the different degree to which society has expectations on the body and its appearance. Before getting into the argumentation, the terminology used needs to be addressed. Throughout this dissertation I will be using the words ‘fat’ and ‘fatness’ to describe bodies which are considered by their surrounding society as ‘larger’ than desirable. What is considered fat may then be different for individuals depending on their ethic, social, or cultural background. Therefore, I also use fat and fatness rather than, for example, ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ as these words have medical associations I wish to avoid as that which is considered fat is not necessarily the same as that which is obese or even overweight1. I will also distance myself from words such as ‘curvy’ or ‘large’ because of their ambiguous nature, as these words do not share the same negative connotations and are used in ‘body positive’ contexts, and because what is considered either curvy or large is not necessarily that which will be victim of fat oppression. Finally, and most importantly, the terms ‘fat’ and ‘fatness’ will be used as they are the words which has been used previously in philosophical debate on body aesthetics. 1 These terms will however be used in discussions that directly relates to health and the medical encounter. 3 Fat oppression Fat shaming and fat oppression is a fairly new areas of philosophical study and although there certainly is a great deal of research done on beauty and the ideal of slenderness, little has been written on fatness and its lived experience. Eaton’s chapter titled ‘Taste in Bodies and Fat Oppression’ (2016), will provide the basis of my analysis. She sets out to explain fat oppression as something which is the result of our collective taste. Her use of taste in this context is ‘taste in something’, as in an aesthetic taste. She describes it as something which gives us pleasure or displeasure. Having a distaste for X is to have a disposition to be displeased by it (Eaton, 2016, p.41). Her argument is then based on the idea that it is our distaste in the fat body, our disposition to be displeased by its appearance, which leads to fat oppression. Eaton spends some time on dispelling arguments as to why we feel a displeasure at seeing fat by addressing the ‘health objection’. The health objection, she recognises, is a commonly used argument for justifying behaviours of fat shaming, such as mockery and bullying, by stating that the dislike for fat is a dislike in that which is unhealthy (Eaton, 2016, p.46). This objection is based on the understanding that fatness will inevitably lead to disease and that calling fat people out is a ‘helpful’ act that will make people change their ways. Eaton addresses this understanding in multiple ways, for example, she states that there is no proof that being overweight or class I obese will have any medical consequences, and these are the two groups that most people fall under. Therefore, the argument for health is incorrect (Eaton, 2016, pp. 44-4.d5). Another important aspect of our understanding of fatness which informs our behaviour is the idea that fatness results from a lifestyle choice which we ourselves are responsible for. Being fat, is seen as a failure to lead the type of life that would make us slim. This failure is seen as a result of being weak-willed or lazy, because the fat individual was simply not strong enough to choose to live differently (Eaton, p.40). However, fatness is not so simple as there are many other social, material, biological, and medical factors that can determine fatness. For example, Wright and Aronne brings up how certain food reforms in the US made it possible to sell unhealthy foods very cheaply which meant that people from a poorer background would be more likely to gain weight, as the food they could afford was very unhealthy (Wright and Aronne, 2012). Regardless, the association between 4 fatness and poor health, laziness, and psychological weakness persists, and I will continue to discuss how these associations are expressed in society. There are two main aspects of interest in discussing the lived experiences of the fat person that I will bring up here. The first is the external discrimination from society and the second is the internalised feelings of shame and how they result in avoidance behaviours. The external discrimination relates to those instances when fat people are actively treated poorly in society because of their size. One particularly problematic area where fat people are discriminated against, is in the healthcare system. Eaton has found that the negative associations with fatness can be found in medical professionals and that it results in that fat people are less likely to receive proper medical care (Eaton, 2016, pp.3940). This is exemplified in a New York Times article that states that obese patients are often treated poorly in the medical encounter, as medical professionals often assume that the illness a patient has is a direct result of their size, and will thus let patients go without proper examination and only the tip to ‘lose some weight’ (Kolata, 2016). Thus, showing how even medical professionals have internalised the idea that size will directly influence health, which results in poorer treatments for fat patients. Similar expressions of discrimination against fat people can be found on the job market. It has been shown by Flint et al. that fat people are less likely to be hired for a job and, when they are in a job, they are less likely to be promoted because they are considered to lack traits that will make them good leaders (Flint et al. 2016). Here showing the internalization of the associations that fat people are weak-willed and lazy. Another example of this ill-treatment of fat individuals can be seen in airplane companies refusing to accommodate fat bodies (Eaton, 2016, pp.39-40) and how there has recently been a movement that want to charge fat people extra for their flights because of their weight (Kim, 2017). These are excellent examples of how the idea of people’s individual responsibility for their fatness is used to justify discrimination. All these things considered, it can be argued (and successfully so, I would say) that fat people, although not recognised by the equality act as a group that has grounds for discrimination (Equality Act 2010 discrimination and your rights, 2019), represent the group that is most openly discriminated against in our society (Eaton, 2016, p.39). 5 Furthermore, there is also an internalised aspect of fat oppression which resides in the fat person themselves. This will have consequences on the lived experiences of fat people. Dolezal and Lyons argues in their article on health-related shame that minority stigma can be a reason for chronic shame (Dolezal and Lyons, 2017, p. 3). Their general argument is that intense feelings of shame over the body can cause illness, and Dolezal’s 2015 article argues that shame in the body can cause people to avoid seeking medical attention, even when the consequences might be serious (Dolezal and Lyons, 2017 and Dolezal, 2015). Minority stigma occurs whenever someone ‘is seen to deviate from a centrally valued cultural or social norm’ (Dolezal and Lyons, 2017, p. 3). Weight is mentioned as source of minority stigma. Therefore, the body’s size can create a chronic shame in the individual. This type of shame, which is not a result of an embarrassing act, but a constant feeling of being ‘unwanted’ will commonly lead to stress and anxiety (Ibid). Dolezal and Lyons further argue that chronic shame leads to ‘avoidance behaviours’ where people who are stigmatised will stay away from situations where they believe they will be shamed (Ibid). Dolezal’s 2015 article also argues that this shame can result in that people will not only avoid getting medical help in the first place but might also prevent them from following through on treatments because they are shamed by their doctors (Dolezal, 2015, p.573). However, avoidance behaviours can be found in many other areas as well. For example, Eaton mentions that fat teenagers are less likely to date than slimmer ones (Eaton, 2016, p. 40). She would argue that this is a type of discrimination rises from other people’s distaste for fat, which would make other teenagers unwilling to date a fat person. I think that, although what she says is true, the aspect of shame in the fat teenager is also of central importance. The fat person will have internalised a shame for their body, which has come from being part of a stigmatised group and learnt to anticipate shame in social situations, such as in dating, and therefore avoid it. In this way, the oppression faced by fat people is both the result of taste in others which results in discriminatory behaviours and institutions, and also from the individual’s shame over the body that leads to avoidance behaviours. Altogether, Eaton, Dolezal, and Lyons, indicate that fat people are discriminated against in many areas of their life and provide good examples to support this, such as: fat people are treated poorly in the job market, in their personal lives, and in the medical encounter, and shame plays a big part in upholding this discrimination. However, Eaton – who calls attention 6 to and clarifies the concept of fat oppression – does not succeed in showing that all fat persons are oppressed. In the next section, I will contend that only fat women are victims of fat oppression. Gendered beauty To discuss the gendered component of fat ‘oppression’, I will draw upon Frye’s influential account of oppression and examine the impacts of gendered beauty ideals. Eaton shows that the oppression of fat people is deeply connected to our collective taste in bodies. However, she does not consider how our collective taste in bodies is gender-sensitive, with the consequence that she fails to see how only one gender suffers from fat oppression. Something which she, as a feminist scholar, should have seen. Marilyn Frye’s theory of oppression as expressed in her Politics of Reality gives a clear distinction between what oppression is and what it is not. Discrimination, unfairness, limitation, or suffering is not on its own enough to be oppression. A person may well be treated poorly without being oppressed (Frye, 1983, p. 1). What oppression is, is a form of pressure with the intent to reduce or immobilise a person because of their belonging to a certain category (Ibid, p.2 and p.8). She states that: When trying to understand why you are being blocked, why this barrier is in your path, the answer has not to do with individual talent or merit, handicap or failure; it has to do with your membership to some category understood as a ‘natural’ or ‘physical’ category. (Ibid, p.7) In order to qualify as a form of oppression for Frye, fat oppression would have to severely limit the options of the victim. So, being oppressed based on size would entail that borders are set up to stop you from reaching a goal because of your fatness. As slenderness is a beauty ideal, it is important to look at how influential beauty ideals are to women and men respectively as it will tell us how much fatness will influence individual lives. Susan Bordo argues that what makes us more or less vulnerable to social ideas of beauty has to do with how connected we are to our bodies (Bordo, 1993, p. 143). Historically the body has in many ways been the only property allowed women, her only capital. The body for the woman is the only sphere that she herself in is total control over and beauty is the only way for her to move beyond her position. Although there were often political and social aspects that were important in arranging marriages, these are aspects of a transaction between two men, the woman herself is merely a commodity. Therefore, the only thing the 7 woman herself had ‘to offer’ that could help her reach a higher status was her body and thus that body’s appearance was very valuable. This historical understanding of women is deeply rooted in us and can be seen in contemporary society. Susan Bordo states that women don’t just have bodies, but they are often reduced to them, their value is reduced to the value of their body-object, and as such women are more vulnerable to cultural understandings of bodily discipline (Bordo, 1993, p.143). One important aspect of female beauty ideals is her small stature. She is supposed to be smaller and shorter than her male partner. Bartky notes how the idea of the bride carrying her husband over the threshold is an image of comedy, rather than romance (Bartky, 1990, p.73). The idea of a woman being stronger than her husband is played for laughs. That this ideal of female slenderness is striven towards can be seen in that women greatly outnumber men in self-help weight groups and visit diet doctors to a larger extent, because it is so important for her to remain physically smaller (and therefore weaker) than her partner (Bartky, 1990, p.66). This is not to say that the ideal is specifically for women in heterosexual relationships. Merely, that heterosexuality is an expectation in society and that the female ideals (whether they are heterosexual or not) are formed in direct relation to the male ideals. Women’s otherness is not dependent on heterosexuality in itself but rather on the expectation of it, as part of the heterosexual matrix. The matrix distinguishes feminine/female from masculine/male and puts them in asymmetrical oppositions and then expect the performance of heterosexuality (Butler, 1990, p.17). Therefore, even the homosexual women will be assessed based on the same aesthetic standard as the heterosexual woman. Bordo’s work focuses on an extreme and unhealthy obsession with body size in her work on anorexia. She notes that 90% of all people who suffer from anorexia were women and suggests that one of the reasons for this is because of the way that women have historically been associated with bodies, which results in an unhealthy obsession with thinness (Bordo,1993, p. 140). Current numbers of gender distribution on patients with anorexia nervosa show that 75% are women and 25% are men2 (NEDA, 2018). Relating this back to Eaton’s research, she also answers the argumentation from health, by stating that it is not only incorrect that fatness indicates 2 This would perhaps seem to suggest that the pressure to assume slender bodies is on the rise amongst men as well. However, in the case for the rise of male anorexics, it is a move away from traditional ideals for male beauty and thus does not share the connection with body ideals as it does for women. 8 poor health, but also that our distaste for fatness cannot be connected to health anyway. This is because other unhealthy bodies are often aestheticized, and the unhealthily thin are often not met with disgust but envy (Eaton, 2016, p. 46). I think this is particular the case for women for whom the aesthetic ideal is a lot slimmer than for men and many women participate online in pro-anorexia communities and look for ‘thinspiration’ (Rainey, 2013). This focus on female thinness, I argue, is in keeping with the long tradition of feminine body-discipline. The female body has always needed to be disciplined; squeezed into corsets, covered in makeup, and stripped of hair. The ideal ‘feminine’ woman will spend time shaping her body into a tight frame. Anorexia is in many ways an extreme exorcise in bodily discipline and obedience, a victory of the mind over the body (Bordo, 1993, p. 146). Bordo writes that the idea for the anorexic often is to transcend the body’s needs3 (particularly the need for food). Like with the ancient philosophers, the body is seen as a prison and through the win over the body’s needs there is a connection with hyperintelligence and transcendence of the flesh. Fat on the other hand is connected with being ‘all body’ and thus connected to mental decay and pollution (Bordo, 1993, 147-148). This association is not just made in the mind of the anorexic but in our collective consciousness as well, where fat is prejudiced as being lazy, weak-willed, unhygienic, and gluttonous (Eaton, 2016, p.40). There seems to be an understanding that if you cannot control your body then you cannot control your emotions or your intelligence. This association between woman and her body that has historically developed then explains why women, in a context that so strongly advocates slimness, would be very sensitive to try and follow these ideals, even when they result in illness. Men, on the other hand, do not share this historical association with the body and as such do not suffer the consequences of a size-obsessed society in the same way that women do. Although it may appear as though fat women and fat men are treated in the same way, this is not the case. Historically, men have been allowed to own property and to enter the workforce. Their appearance has never been considered as key to their personality or worth. He has not been reduced to his body in the way that she has been. The fat man today faces discrimination only in scenarios where the body’s size is directly relevant, like in medical encounters, and in 3 This transcendence is not the same as the one I will argue that men are allowed on the virtue of being men. Rather, this transcendence of the body’s needs is merely to stand above the body’s needs and not be controlled by them. 9 airplanes where the seats might not accommodate their size. In other areas of their lives they are not directly affected by their fatness, they are allowed to transcend their bodies. Transcending the body, rather than the body’s needs, as discussed above, relates to the possibility of being recognised as a person of social worth regardless of the body’s appearance. Men are allowed to transcend their bodies because they are not reduced to it but are able to be valued for properties which are not directly related to the body. For example, fat men are allowed to be in high-earning jobs and in positions of power. One example of this is Winston Churchill, whose authoritarian power was not diminished by his size. In fact, the man’s body ideal is to be larger than a woman. Where she is supposed to be slender and weak, he is supposed to be ‘buff’ and strong. The male ideal is not in direct opposition to fatness and a greater body mass for a man is associated with (physical) power. Fat women, however, are punished for their fatness in almost all aspects of their life. Her discrimination follow her into areas where her body’s size should be irrelevant, like in the workplace. In the very few instances where a fat woman has come into a position of power it has been acquired by her own genealogy, like Queen Victoria. In current positions of power, it is hard to find a single woman who is fat. Though it is difficult to prove that fat women are not put in positions of power due to their size, as it is unlikely that employers would outright state that they did not promote someone because of their fatness. Yet, as it has been shown that fat people have a harder time getting employed and that they are considered to lack the qualities that would make for a good leader (Flint at al. 2016), and because women’s association with the body makes them more vulnerable to these ideas, it is reasonable to conclude that fat women are continually kept from leadership roles because of their size. This demonstrates that it is only fat women that experience fatness as an oppressive barrier. This is because the barriers women face by virtue of being women are set up to the general benefit of men, who are not subjected to the same scrutiny regarding their appearance, and they arguably benefit from the standards that keeps women – including fat women – out of positions of power since this means that there is less competition for them. For the man, slimness is not a condition for his individual success. The fat man is not rendered immobile by his weight because men are first evaluated as subjects. Women, though, are first evaluated as objects. As such, she experiences oppressive barriers because of her group belonging, even in instances where belonging to said group 10 should be irrelevant. However, a man does not experience these barriers and therefore is not oppressed because of his fatness. Female fat oppression I have shown that women are particularly exposed to beauty ideals and that women’s value is often reduced to the value of their body-object which can have very negative consequences. I have also shown that fat men are not oppressed but simply discriminated against, as they are not immobilised by their size and are allowed to transcend their bodies. What I have yet to demonstrate is that women do experience fat oppression, and that this oppression is different from the oppression one suffers from just for being a woman. As was mentioned in the previous section, the female body has historically been her only form of capital and thus her beauty is very important, and this has transpired into our time today. Because of this structure, the fat woman has failed, her fatness is not only seen as being unhealthy but as being undisciplined and disobedient. Her body is a failure to meet the only goal society sets for her, to be beautiful. There is an aspect of immorality linked with the fat women as, like mentioned earlier, if she cannot take care of her only given responsibility then she must also be unintelligent and lazy (Eaton, 2016, p.40 and Bordo, 1993, p.148). Bartky also mentions the implications of the fat woman by stating that ‘today, massiveness, power, or abundance in a woman’s body is met with distaste’ (Bartky, 1990, p.66). This distaste is not only met by individuals but by society as a whole and Wolf argues that the female body is not recognised as her own to be aestheticizes for her own pleasure, but it belongs to society and to its pleasures only (Wolf, 1990). […] women feel guilty about female fat, because we implicitly recognize that under the myth, women’s bodies are not our own but society’s, and that thinness is not a private aesthetic [...] (p. 187) In this way we can see that the fat woman’s failure to be thin is not only a personal failure, but a moral one and, therefore, a societal matter. Thus, punishments for female fatness can be ‘justified’ by the argument of personal responsibility. Furthermore, problems with attitudes towards female fatness is not only that women are continuously shamed and punished for being fat, but also that what we have decided should be considered fat for a woman is unjustifiable. Film and TV continuously create tastes and distastes in bodies and when it depicts the feminine body it is very strict in what is thin and 11 thus attractive, and what is fat and thus ugly. For example, in the 2018 film I Feel Pretty, Amy Schumer plays the main character who is portrayed as a plain, ugly, and fat character who after hitting her head believes herself beautiful. The film is about a woman obsessing about her appearance in one way or another and after she hits her head, she believes herself not just beautiful, but to look different than she actually does. She does not believe that the body she already has is now beautiful (that would be absurd). Rather, she believes herself different. In touching her stomach, she refers to her ‘abs’, and her believing herself pretty enough to succeed romantically and in her career is played for giggles. The problem with this is that Amy Schumer is perfectly healthy and not even overweight. She is a perfectly ‘acceptably’ sized woman whose appearance is used to make the audience believe her too ugly to find love and success. This teaches women that, even when a body is considered to be of a medical ‘healthy weight’, it is still fat. Thus, the argument that the distaste for fat female bodies is a concern for women’s health and well-being is incorrect as the ideals for women is not to be healthy, but to be very skinny, and the two are not the same. The ideal of being very skinny is concerned with female obedience which is a consequence of a patriarchal society that sets a tight frame for female appearance, and not from a society that cares for women’s well-being. Not only are women taught that their healthy bodies are too big, the women that are fat are doomed to a lower quality of life than their slimmer sisters. This is because of continuous discrimination faced by fat women in aspects of life that should not have to do with size. Fat women are less likely to be hired for a job than any other group of people and when they are hired, they earn considerably less (van der Zee, 2017). An Exeter study found that a woman who was one stone heavier than another woman of the same height would earn £1,500 less per year (Exeter University, 2016). Another study has found that fat women labourers tend to work in lower income jobs, which seems to correspond well with their inability to be hired in the first place, and thus make considerably less than other women do (Wolf, 2014). The same study also found that obese men saw no such problems, although they have a slightly harder time getting a job, they do not make less than their other colleges and are not put in low-income jobs (Ibid). Bringing the discussion back to the topic of shame and healthcare, we have discussed why women might be hypersensitive to body shame because of the importance of female beauty. It is thus fair to say that obese women fare poorly in the healthcare system as well. Because of the 12 female connection with her body is such a strong one, illness, size, and other ailing that can be attributed to lifestyle, shames a woman because her body is seen as bearing her moral failings (Dolezal, 2015, p. 572). Further, Dolezal states another reason for why it might be more difficult for fat women to see a healthcare professional: The lopsided power relation between the (usually male) doctor and the (usually female) patient is augmented to the extent that it is difficult, if not impossible, for women (who are already vulnerable) to resist the advice (or shame) of their doctors. (2015, p. 574) Being shamed by a male doctor can then be part in reproducing the already existing shame of being fat and a woman to the place where they, as Sarai Walker said, ‘avoid going to the doctors at all’ (Dolezal, 2015, p. 574 and Kolata, 2016). Thus, they risk serious health implications and even death. This strongly suggests that fat women suffer a lower quality of life that fat men; they have a hard time finding a job, they are payed less than their female co-workers, and have a harder time getting medical care. Thus, women are not allowed to transcend their bodies in the same way that men are, as they are constantly reduced to the body and its appearance, even in situations where the body’s appearance should not matter. However, discrimination and the disadvantages experienced by fat women are not only expressed in external institutions but in internal and social experiences as well. While much scholarly work has been focused on how women are expected to perform the role of a sexual object, ready for possession and submission.4 The lived experiences of the fat woman becomes one of ambiguity. On the one hand, as women, they are expected to follow the social protocol of female beauty. On the other, they are informed that because of their size, they are unwanted. This creates for fat women, in most social situations, a balancing game where shame is the only outcome. Gina Tonic writes about how fat women are expected to behave around food during the holidays. There is a mentality that should you indulge in the holiday foods people will comment on your size, and if you do not, then you are not able to properly take part in the celebrations. The Christmas food becomes a minefield (Tonic, 2018). Although she never mentions the word in the article itself, she deals primarily with the shame associated with body size. Her portrayal focuses on the aspects of being For further reading on this subject see for example, Sandra Lee Bartky’s Femininity and Domination. 4 13 shamed by others and feeling constantly watched and evaluated. Dolezal and Lyons mentions this perceived judgement as central in feelings of shame: Shame is a negative emotion that arises when one is seen and judged by others (whether they are present, possible, or imagined) to be flawed in some crucial way, or when some part of one’s self is perceived as inadequate, inappropriate, or immoral (2017, p.1). For the fat woman, fatness is associated with all kinds of inadequacy. Impropriety – from lacking the good qualities that would have prevented fat – and immorality, from not performing one’s duty as a woman to conform to beauty standards. Shame, then becomes an intricate part of the fat woman’s personality and avoidance behaviours is a common consequence of this chronic shame (Dolezal and Lyons, 2017, p.3). As previously mentioned, avoidance behaviours can influence social interactions and Tonic’s account shows how it becomes important even in family relations where shame and being shamed can result in individuals not being able to enjoy holidays, family dinners, or even meeting friends for a night out (Tonic, 2018). Altogether, these examples and the shame that fat women face, indicate that fat women live in a cage of oppression which reduces and immobilises them. This oppression is closely connected to general female oppression because it is created from the ideals of female beauty and the structures used to enforce it. However, it is distinct from it as fat women are oppressed by an additional network of barriers that are exclusive to fat women. In some ways, fat oppression is a smaller birdcage inside Frye’s birdcage for women, and should you ever manage to escape the inner one, you only find yourself in another, larger cage of being female in a patriarchal society. 14 Conclusion This dissertation has explored the interconnections between fat and gender oppressions. By building upon Eaton’s theory of fat oppression, I have shown that there are two important aspects of the lived experiences of the fat person, external discrimination and internal shame. I argued that although Eaton sets up a strong theory and offers good examples, the experience she describes as fat oppression is not oppression as she does not show how all individuals in the supposedly oppressed group – i.e. all fat persons – are immobilised by their fatness. In order to establish the existence of an actual oppression, I had to consider the intersections between fat discrimination and gender oppression because fat men appear to be allowed to transcend their bodies in ways which fat women are not. This is because women, in a patriarchal society, are reduced to their bodies. Further, I have shown that fat women are oppressed both because they are women and because they are fat. The oppression of fat women has many negative consequences for the individual, fat women earn less than slimmer women; they have a harder time getting jobs; and, because of their association with the body, they are more prone to the shame that follows being part of a stigmatised minority. As such, fat women feel constantly watched in their social lives which leads to avoidance behaviours that isolate them. 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