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You learn that fatness is "correlated" with the condition but has no proof of being the cause, like how being poor is "correlated" with ill health because of oppression and lack of healthcare. The number on your bank account doesnt actually cause the ill health, it's the oppression and how society treats poor people that is the cause.

You do even more research and learn that turning a fat person into a thin person is as scientifically possible as climbing mount everest without dying, without a sherpa, and without thousands of dollars. And that constant yo-yo dieting and abusing your body into temporary thinness damages your health. Chasing thinness for 80 years is causing the ill health itself.

You learn how fat people endure a wage gap, starvation, medical abuse and medical neglect that leads to death, are refused access to anorexia recovery resources. You realize how fatphobia intersects with all other forms of oppression and that numerous oppressed groups have high numbers of fat people. You learn how fat people's healthy digestive organs are mutilated by doctors to try to force thinness and only result in vitamin deficiencies, alcoholism, suicide, and other unhealthy shit. You read about the fat people whose deaths are blamed on fatness but actually died by police brutality, by a nurse killing them during Hurricane Katrina to not have to deal with the fat patient during evacuations, by a doctor refusing basic tests and telling the fat person to just lose weight until finally a different doctor five years later does that basic test and has to tell the fat person they had cancer all this time and now only have a week left to live. And yes, all of these examples have happened, are documented, and are just a fraction of the deaths caused by fatphobia.

You keep searching and look at study after study that shows the extreme biases that doctors have against fat patients, biases that affect the healthcare they provide the fat person. You see how sports equipment and exercise clothes are intentionally only made for thin bodies. You learn that fat people are ostracized from sports as early as childhood no matter the fat person's skill level.

You keep digging. You find how fatness is extremely tied to genetics. You read about how the sciences actively refuse to study fat bodies even when fat bodies are donated to science. You look at vaccine trials and realize that not a single fat person was included. You google Plan B and learn that the drug doesnt work well for most fat people because only thin people get considered when making drugs safe for society.

After a while, you go directly to the source and look at weight science research. You realize that almost every single study begins with the conclusion that fatness must be "bad" and "unhealthy," which severely affects the validity and credibility of the study, as well as affecting the results. You find out how every weight loss "success" study is extremely flawed, paid for by weight loss corporations, and intentionally ended after a short amount of time and with a miniscule number of participants because that's the only way to make the study a "success." You find tons of studies that actually show how impossible longterm weight loss is, how there's an "ob*sity paradox" where fat people can actually have better health and longer lifespans than thin people, how dieting is severely damaging to the human body. And yet every study still ends with reassurance that this won't stop weight loss attempts. We just need to find successful ways to lose weight. Surely that's possible. Surely that's helpful. Surely thinness must always be healthy and fatness unhealthy. Both fat and thin people get this health condition that we said is caused by fatness? Doesn't matter, fatness is still the cause!

After all, fatphobia doesnt exist, right?

I thought y'all might like to see Niagara Falls lit up for Pride.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.