We don’t get to decide what triggers people.
To be frank, the thinspo bombing pisses me off. I don’t find it productive, positive, helpful, or as an act of reclamation in any way. There is a difference in standing up for the idea that your body is inherently valuable, and refusing to accept abuse/fat-shaming from other people, and seeking to engage with people who have a very real and dangerous mental illness in an attempt to flaunt the fact that you are in a part of your journey that seems unimaginable to them.
I’m pissed off that most of the people involved in the thinspo bombing are members of the feedism community, because your right to a fetish does not outweigh someone’s need for mental stability and self-love.
Don’t get me wrong. The people who are responding to the thinspo bombing with fat-hate, racial slurs, and whatever else are fucking up too. Because they’ve surrounded themselves (intentionally or not) with so much hate, so much negative thought, that they’re grasping onto any hurtful material they can use to throw back at the people who are thinspo bombing, and that is unacceptable. Racism is unacceptable. Fat-shaming is unacceptable. Telling people to go kill themselves is unacceptable.
But it’s not just about posting pictures of fat people in the thinspo tag. Because there have been so many captions to those pictures that say something like “I hope this helps you puke!” That’s NOT body positive. It’s fucking ableist. It’s NOT a form of fat acceptance. It’s not fucking acceptable.
I really really hate that the fat tag is largely negative. I try to change that by tagging body positive posts with “fat” in the hopes that it will create a more positive tag. But bombing the thinspo tag with triggering messages is not positive or cute or okay. It’s just not.
Why don’t we bomb the fuck out of the fat tag? Why don’t we post tons and tons of positive fat messages? Because going into a space that is mostly for mentally ill individuals and saying “HEY LOOK AT US WE LOVE OURSELVES WHY CAN’T YOU LOVE YOURSELF YOU’RE SO BAD BECAUSE YOU CAN’T LOVE YOURSELF” is not fucking okay.
There are better ways of standing up for fat bodies. This isn’t it.
rebloggable by request
I am all about bombing the “fat” tag all day every day forever.
Yeah that shit was not at all cool.
