Anti-Fat Sentiment in Animal Rights

Thanks for posting this -- it is indeed an on-going issue in the animal rights /vegan community. In fact, I recently stopped visiting one of my favourite vegan discussion boards because a member posted something to the effect of, 'if you are vegan and eat healthy and exercise, you will not be fat, and if you claim otherwise you are lying', and several other members supported him.
I'm fed up. People on vegan boards don't seem to believe me when I say I am a vegan since long back, eat healthy stuff (and am not even able to afford to eat every day), and still weigh 300 pounds, just as I did when I was an omnivore. I just don't know what to say / write to these people anymore.

i'm fat, and i've been vegan (really) since 1998. i got sick of being told i "wasn't doing it right" or i was lying about my veganism within the first year. enough is enough. there is room in the veg' movement for ALL animals - why not ALL people? i had to basically quit participating on most veggie bbs for the exact reason the PP said. people would NOT accept that there can be diversity in body type and size in those types of communities. i actually consider myself a spokesperson for veganism because i now make my living selling gourmet vegan food. but i get some funny looks sometimes.

i wrote this:

Animal Rights Activists, Have You Hugged A Fat Vegan Today?

When I go shopping at the health food store, big hips swinging behind the cart, threatening to topple the shelves in the narrow aisles, I can feel their eyes on me. I used to feel apologetic, embarrassed, ashamed, and desirous of their (“they” being the inevitably thin and 100% organic-fed health food store people) approval. Now I use their stares and silent value judgments as a much needed opportunity to flex my self-love muscle.

I’m not ripped, okay? The damn muscle hangs weak and useless most of the time. But there are moments, like the shopping-in-the-health-food-store one, where it must go to work - it is a simple case of self-preservation. I get one of two vibes off of the other people in the store, be they patrons or clerks. It’s either a snotty “What is she doing in here?” (like fat people can’t care about whole foods) or a condescending “She could benefit from some counseling on nutrition and exercise.” (Like fat people couldn’t possibly know a thing about healthy eating and activity.) I have experienced this moment countless times since deciding to become vegan in November of 1998. Often, as I am examining the ingredient listing of some heretofore unseen cheese alternative, or the sodium content of a brand new meat analogue, I can feel their stares on me. Stares that beg the question: why can’t a vegan be fat?

These are all the reasons why a vegan simply cannot be fat.

Fat is unhealthy. Vegans are healthy.

Fat is ugly. Vegans are luminous.

Fat is self-destructive. Vegans are self-nurturing.

Fat is the result of eating meat and dairy products. Vegans...well...don’t.

Fat is a symptom of laziness and apathy. Vegans are active, and activists.

Fat is evidence of our society’s over-consumption. Vegans are minimalists.

Fat vegans project an image that contradicts the image vegetarian and animal rights groups want to portray. Fat people can’t identify as vegan because it would decimate the validity of the claims laid by these groups; that animal foods are the “cause” of obesity; a fat vegan challenges the assertion that if you go vegan, you’ll be slender.

So, from the moment I walk into the natural foods store, to the moment I walk out with my purchases in hand, I am regarded with suspicion. My purchases are scrutinized. Well-meaning health-food strangers (thin, all) cast their gazes upon me, and my cart, and offer advice to me about the products that will please my palate, and reduce my waistline. Inevitably, it is assumed that I am a newbie to all of this. It is assumed that I have only recently sprung forth from the Big Mac-riddled wasteland of the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet). That I must have finally come to my senses, and recognized that vastness, fatness, softness, and roundness of my body for the evil it is.

The truth of the matter is, fat people exist in all walks of life. Just as doctors, sewer workers, athletes (I can hear the chorus of “Oh My God She’s Crazy” as I write this), socialists and Catholics can be fat, so can the vegetarian. The truth of the matter is, fat is not a good or even accurate indicator of health, lifestyle, mental state, or diet. The truth of the matter is, we are afraid of fat because we are brainwashed.

I will not lie. When I first made the transition to vegan, I was not on the path of self-love. I was not a fat radical. I was a young mom who saw herself as someone who would become an embarrassment to her child once he grew old enough to understand social perceptions and ‘norms’. Fear of my own body was a motivating factor in my decision to adapt a vegan diet. I believed that being vegan meant I would finally have a ‘beautiful’ body accepted by society. I reveled in the comments made by friends and family members: “Oh, that’s a great idea! You’re sure to lose weight!” and “Wow, that will be hard for you, won’t it?” (Subtext: Because you obviously have zero self-control!)

It’s all so insidious, as I look back on it. But as I have had years to reflect and re-examine my motivations for going vegan, and staying vegan, I can honestly say that body-love is something that transcends nutrition and philosophy. That body-love can exist and flourish even in the face of a culturally approved oppression of one’s self and others. That I can love my fat body, and still be a vegan.

Veganism is, ultimately, about love.

It is borne of a great love for oneself – I care enough about how my body assimilates and uses food, to be very selective about the foods I feed it.

It is borne of a great love for Life – I care enough about the lives of all creatures and their abilities to suffer and feel pain, to stop exploiting them and participating in their deaths.

It is borne of a great love for Earth – I care enough about the fate of our planet to strive to reduce the impact my big fat (size 9 women’s) feet make on Her.

It is borne of a great love for people – I care enough about those around me to demonstrate to them how simple, satisfying, and non-punitive veganism can be.

Now I ask, with all seriousness, and without attitude: Why can’t the animal rights activists and vegetarians love FAT me?

Wherever I go in the vegetarian community...

Whatever I read about vegetarianism...

Whatever animal rights or vegetarian propaganda I see...

I am bombarded with fat hatred.

From Dr. John McDougall’s vegan no-fat weight-reducing plan, to PeTA’s “Don’t want to pay for an extra seat on the airplane? Go Vegetarian!” ad campaign, to the hundreds of websites designed to convert the meat-eater, I see hatred towards fat people; there is supposed to be shame and guilt in us fat folks. Fat folks are held up as the pinnacle of reasons to switch to vegan diet. There is supposed to be a deep desire to change, to seek approval and love; and all of it is submerged in this rocking sea of obsession with a “perfect” body. So, what happens to the fat person who finally buys into it? What happens to the fat person who finally makes the huge leap to veg*ism? The fat person who rejects the Big Mac, the KFC, the homemade seafood paella? What happens to this person, who makes the connection (thanks, Oprah!), who pays attention to their grocery store purchases, who removes the cheese, the milk, the eggs from their refrigerator; who goes forth and does battle with their addiction to gelatin-laden Jell-O pudding cups? What happens to the person who does all of this, but who remains fat? I can tell you from personal experience that this fat person, this fat vegan, will discover that it is all an illusion. That buying into the anti-fat propaganda perpetuated by vegetarian groups, and animal rights groups, is no different than buying into the anti-fat propaganda pushed on us by Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and SlimFast. “What?” you say, “How can she seriously be comparing these evil corporate diet-mongers to the righteous, the pure, the good-hearted VEGETARIANS?” Because, my darlings, it is what it is: marketing designed to feed on and manipulate the fatphobia we carry around in us, one and all.

What the people behind these marketing campaigns don’t seem to understand is, the fat person that chooses to go vegan based on the misconception that vegan = thin, and who believes that fat = bad, probably won’t stay vegan.

The fatphobia inherent in the tactics used by veg*n groups to convert the omnivore is wrong on so many levels, but the level of wrong-ness that I am concerned with here has to do with the radical, anti-oppression model that most vegans are supposed to subscribe to. What I am trying to say is, you can’t free the animals; you can’t liberate the pigs and cows and chickens; you can’t stop the world-wide oppression of living creatures everywhere by trampling on – nay, by crushing my wide, soft, rolling back into the dirt. You can’t do that, free all the beings that need freedom, by oppressing me.

Fatphobia isn’t the only problem I have with the marketing tactics used by animal rights and vegetarian groups. But it is the one I am calling out here. Being a fat vegan has taught me a lot about stereotypes, and body image, and especially has forced me to examine myself in a way that nothing ever has before.

So, where I once cringed under the scrutinizing glare of the clerk at The Organic Grocer; where I once huddled to the side of the aisle, mortified at the space I was taking up; where I once heard the snickers as I walked out of the health food store with my purchases, I now walk with my head high, my shoulders wide, my flesh jiggling, and I think to myself, “Y’all been writing me vegan recipe fan emails for four years, dumbasses.”

Christa Trueman
Copywrite 2004

I was horrified when I read about PETA's remarks.

I am not a vegan, and I am not really a vegetarian, because even though I eat a predominantly vegan/veg diet, I do still eat some meat (my husband and kids are omnivores and that's fine with me) occasionally.

Personally, I think that PETA is as representative of vegetarians as the Southern Baptists are of America. People become veg for various reasons, and I completely agree that their marketing "strategies" (read: stunts) are no better than the diet companies.

I say this as someone who is sympathetic to animal rights and having some understanding of it. PETA often seem to me to be this cult of hip celebs with a cause du jour - who walk around with khakis and Macbooks and scoff at anyone who looks different or thinks differently.

Of course, that is as unfair a stereotype as the one that they paint of fat people, but I guess we can give as good as we get eh.

Kreeli, thanks for expressing so wonderfully what I've been feeling for so long. (It sounds like we've led virtualy parallel lives in our diets and experiences, too!)

Actually I consider "organizations" such as Peta and their kind to be anti-animal. They're soo rapid in their hate against animal eaters---umm... well that must include lions and tigers and bears oh MY!! Along with other mammals, sharks, seals, orcas, birds, etc... there is a definate food chain there that includes carnivores. I can't support an organization that so obviously couldn't care less about soo many of the animals that inhabit the planet. Peta hates animal eaters---well, then they also must hate the animals that are aminal eaters too.

As for them being anti-fat, they're just riding whatever the populist wave is, as they think it will garner them more supporters. They know most people don't want to be fat so they capatalize on it. They know the way using semi clad, or naked women boosts product sales, so they create ads with naked women in them. TO me they're nothing more than animal hating, people hating opportunists with no regard for anything other than increasing their profits and maintaining the illusion of caring for something other than themselves. Which by-the-by they don't so well in my book. Remember when they gave out fur coats to homeless people? It was a stunt go get their name in the papers and to be seen as doing something "caring". Now, love him (like i do) or hate him, Michael Moore is definatley a well-known film-maker. So Peta has found a way to try and ride his coat-tails. MM said he started eating more veggies and walking and so Peta is trying to capitolize on that. If Peta wasn't so dangerous (destroying labs and medical research) they'd be laughable in the way they go about trying to garner attention for themselves. And it IS only for themselves, as we already know they hate animals!

I remember they tried this a few years... (SIGH).... As much as I don't want to be biased, I have to say this:
F*** PETA! THEY CAN KISS MY SKINNY FAT ASS!
This is the third time I've had a problem with them (And the groups with similar alignment). First they did the childhood obesity campaign, then they caused the leader of an African country to refuse to accept a million pounds of donated corn (DONATED.... it was the concept of hormones and additives to the corn that got them [OMGZ MUTATED CORN M8KS ALIEN PEOPLE!!! ONOZ!!!), and now they are back on the fat campaign.
You know, one reason I joined the Size/Fat Acceptance movement is because I was sick of people picking one movement to go with, but being prejudice in another. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't join their side even if I didn't eat meat. I can't accept what they are doing.I tried being neutral, but if they are going to weigh this movement, I have no choice but to be against them.

Like many vegans, I am not a PETA supporter, either. (Although to claim that they are against carnivorous animals eating other animals is quite ridiculous; and it is groups like the Animal Liberation Front, not PETA, which stage raids/rescues from labs.)
I find many of PETA's tactics stupid and probably alienating as far as public sympathies are concerned. Yes, they grab media attention, but superficially, while a simple and honest portrayal of the horrors to which animals are subjected is enough, I believe, to attract the support of any human being open enough to care. These theatrics are just stupid, and they take away from the successes that PETA has had (for example, in pressuring beverage companies to stop animal testing).
That PETA *continues* to push the anti-fat agenda, after being called on it many times by fat-positive vegetarians and vegans, is unacceptable. I would gladly put my support behind those belaclava-clad activists actually liberating animals from the vicious practices of the medical-industrial complex, but not fat-phobic PETA.

Yikes! I know I let my PETA membership lapse and had felt guilty about it until now. WTF?! I am an obese vegatarian (would love to be vegan and working very hard on it). What gets me is that the few doctors I've told about my diet either don't believe me (how could someone soooo fat be eating healthy) or think the idea is ridiculous. I will never feel guilty about not being a member of PETA again. Jeesh!

I used to support PETA, but that was back when they were fighting against animal testing. When they started going after fur I didn't mind so much (though I didn't like some of their tactics), but when they started attacking omnivores, that's where I drew the line and stopped supporting them. Then they started attacking fat people, and now I'm glad I don't support them.

And a comment to the poster above, I've also received dirty, "I'm sooooo much better than YOU" looks at my local natural foods market. WTH? I don't get that at Whole Foods, so, while I would like to support local businesses, I don't see how I can when I'm made to feel uncomfortable there, and I'm not at the competition.