Ragen Chastain

In the face of funding shortages, Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has decided that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, as well as smokers, will be barred from most surgery for up to a year. But don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about health, or healthy behaviors – this is about money, and it’s about the people in charge deciding whose blatant oppression the general citizenry will tolerate. Years of campaigns suggesting that it’s fine for people to stereotype fat people and blame us for their problems have led to a situation where people are comfortable with us being denied the same medical care that they receive. And that should horrify you.

For many white people, our first reaction to hearing about racism is to immediately look for a reason to say “That’s not racist!” That said, in conversations I’ve had where people are struggling with this, they have asked for specific ways to work through this. So if you find yourself in this situation, here are some steps that you can take yourself through.

We are passing our unhealthy obsession with thinness onto girls and it’s causing them to have issues with food, movement, self-esteem, and body image that can last a lifetime.

Keep working, keep pushing, live so that these people call you attention seeking activists every day. You are making the world better.

As a frightening and dangerous new regime takes office and the resistance begins in earnest, many of us will face the sometimes daunting task of mo

Should we ignore our bullies? The problem isn’t the reactions of the people being bullied, it’s a culture where bullying is considered acceptable.

We could risk the mental and physical health of all the girls in the school by using fat shaming to try to control the way that they dress, or we could just let them wear some damn leggings. Seriously, how is this not a no brainer?

Fat shaming is wrong in any guise, and people who are trying to be funny (and/or trying to cover for a woefully incompetent press secretary) will just have to do better than relying on cheap stereotypes, shaming, and bigotry.

Nobody, of any size, is obligated to participate in sports/exercise/movement.

Megyn Kelly and her guest, Maria Kang, bragged about how having their loved ones fat shame them has been part of their fitness and nutrition routines.