#body acceptance

Fat hasn't become a bad word because fatness is somehow inherently undesirable or bad--it has fallen out of public favor because of what we attach to it. We take fat to mean unlovable, unwanted, unattractive, unintelligent, unhealthy. But fatness itself is simply one aspect of our bodies--and a very small part of who each of us is. It deserves to be described as a simple and unimportant fact.

Most of us have a very human and natural fear of not being in control. We think we can ward off bad things by staying on top of stuff and making the right choices. We have a feeling of deserving what we get and getting what we deserve, especially if it's something good.

Thin people are heavily invested in the idea that they're thin because they're doing something right. And in contrast, fat people are fat because they're doing something wrong.

They think they know how they would feel in a fat body (or, in some cases, they have been fat and know how they felt). They think they would feel ugly and undesirable and miserable, they think (rightly) that they would be treated worse, and they need to believe that that could never actually happen to them. They need to feel like they've put in the effort and therefore don't deserve to be fat, and so they never will be. Fat people, on the other hand, have obviously messed up and deserve not only to be fat but to be scorned for it.

This mindset is by no means exclusive to issues of size and weight. People are out here believing in their heart that they could never become poor or homeless or sick or whatever. And sure, there's such a thing as thinking too much about the potential for travesty. We need to focus on other things besides the spectre of death to be present in life.

The Body Check-In Cheat Sheet

The fact that DunMeshi actually depicts starving dwarves as ripped muscular anime boys is, to me, absolutely incredible. I can't stress how often fat people starving are depicted as either skin and bones or ✨️beautiful and healthy✨️ (the latter being a body shape that they are encouraged to maintain), it's straight up a trope in so much media for skinny people to be depicted as fat in the past as if it's some "dirty secret", or for fat people to be depicted as unhealthy/ugly until they starve themselves enough to become "attractive", and on top of that the depiction of the Dehydrated Adonis Protagonist has become more and more present in our day-to-day media

Meanwhile, it's becoming more widely known that this isn't how bodies work at all; that fat isn't inherently unhealthy and that ripped bodies aren't just impossible to maintain but often quite dangerous. All of that put together, the depiction of more actors and characters that are fat, chubby, large, etc and not used as comedic relief has been so, so important to really hammer home that lean, dehydrated muscular bodies aren't necessarily something to aim for

But especially, dwarves being shown to have the same physical features as these ripped muscly characters (lean, bulging muscles, sharp cheekbones, defined pecs and neck muscles, etc) when they're starved, and that being depicted negatively is such a huge deal. This is also coming from the same anime in which one of its male protagonists is the epitome of the hero-- an athletic tall man in a shining knight's armour with a big shiny sword-- and he isn't shredded, he's got a tummy, he's got soft arms, he's clearly strong and muscular but it's all protected by a healthy layer of body fat

I'm never gonna shut up about how Dungeon Meshi has been such an incredible vehicle of body diversity with neither insidious fatphobia/queerphobia/racism nor performative (and frankly harmful) allyship behind it. I'm excited for how many young people (and older too!) will be made to slowly but surely question their internalized and ingrained fatphobia or general medical misunderstandings about weight as they watch/read this series. These are such important details and not enough media addresses them in such subtle but clear ways.