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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.