Fat Girl Break Down also has a LiveJournal at

I find these particularly interesting (emphasis in the original):
When going to a restaurant with a fat person, allow the fat person to choose where you are seated. Consider the fact that your fat pal may not fit into a booth, and may not feel comfortable sitting at a table with their back facing the rest of the restaurant.(I personally don't mind sitting with my back to the rest of the restaurant. But when sitting at a four-person table against a wall, I like to sit on the outside, not the inside where I might crowd the person next to me or where other people would have to get up to let me out if I need to go to the bathroom.)
Don't make fat jokes around fat people. Don't make fat jokes PERIOD. If someone makes a fat joke around you, tell them they are being immature and stupid.I personally don't particularly want people to be called immature and stupid; I'd rather they were just educated that fat jokes - the kind that rely on scorn, disgust, humiliation, or othering - are not OK. But I especially appreciate the part about speaking up against fat bigotry in other people. I don't think people are obligated to do this, but I appreciate it because I'm not good at it. Actually, I'll add that I appreciate the most people who speak up against fat bigotry when I am not around. If I'm around I feel like they're pointing at me and saying "Don't do it because can't you see this fat person is here?" I'd rather that such jokes were considered questionable even in entirely non fat company.
Don't say you're fat if you aren't fat. Don't whine to your fat friends about your gut that's barely visible. Don't try to compare being teased for being "too skinny" to the constant degradation and oppression of fatfolk. If you don't read as "fat" to people who see you, don't call yourself "fat." Body dysphoria and actual size are two different things.I don't personally mind comparisons between the harrassment that fat women receive and the harrassment that non fat women receive (although I prefer it when the comparison isn't made with the goal of saying "I'm more harrassed than you"). But I REALLY like the statement "Body dysphoria and actual size are two different things." I'll just go on the record here as saying that a bunch of times when a thin woman has talked to me about how fat she is, I've wanted to say something like that. I generally haven't because it would be rude, but I've wanted to.
(Note: I don't recall anyone on my flist saying something like this to me, so I'm not indirectly communicating to anyone here. And writing it in your journal isn't the same as saying it to me.)
I don't mean that only people my size "get" to call ourselves fat, but when people who look pretty small to me talk about feeling so fat, I feel like a Nameless Thing ("if they are fat, and my body is so much bigger than theirs, then there is no name for what I am").
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While I'm on the subject of etiquette - this is part fat etiquette, because it applies to some other fat people, but mostly Stef etiquette - I appreciate it when people keep in mind that I usually don't comfortably walk fast. I can walk several miles, but it's at a pace that's slower than what seems to be a "normal" pace. When I'm walking with other people, I appreciate it if at least one person walks at my pace rather than everyone's going on ahead and leaving me alone.
I also appreciate it when walking with one person if they match my pace rather than walking a half step ahead of me, which I experience as pressure to walk faster - and then I do, and it's painful.
Note that I almost never ask for these things at the time. Which is a fault in me, but it's not one I am planning to work on changing any time soon.
Comments
I don't particularly care to sit with my back to a room either, and prefer the outside of the booth for the same reason you do.
As for your comment, that's basic walking etiquette. I'm tall, and I walk more quickly than most people like to. For those who can't keep up--and this included my tall reasonably fit husband--I walk more slowly. If I ever am walking with you, I'm not going to take it amiss if you tell me to slow down. I spent so many years with my feet as sole or only form of transportation that almost everybody walks more slowly than I do. :)
A side note on the walking etiquette: I used to walk very fast, before my current foot trouble, and walking slowly was something I could do only as long as I was thinking about it. As soon as I started thinking about something else, like the conversation, I would subconsciously start to inch up my pace to my natural speed. I didn't mind being asked to slow down -- I appreciated the reminder. Just a datapoint. Now, of course, I'm often the slowest one in a group. :)
I appreciate that the author was trying to educate people about etiquette towards fat people, and issues that fat people face. However, before I read Stef's commentary on it, I was wondering if some of the article was the author's own personal etiquette. And may not apply to other fat people. (Thanks, Stef for confirming my hunch.)
Some of the suggested etiquette may not apply in all situations. For example, when I am driving several others, the person I often want riding "shotgun" is the person who can navigate. Somebody who can give me directions. And that has nothing to do with body weight.
Another example is when being seated in a restaurant. As a parent of a small child, I need to have a seat near my daughter's high chair or booster-seat. Other than being near my daughter, my other rule is that I don't want my back to foot-traffic. (It's not fun putting a fork into my mouth and then get bumped by somebody walking past me.)
I'm male, but I've got a hunch that the concern about unfat people calling themselves fat is mostly about how mainstream culture treats women. It's much more okay for a man to be a bit pudgy or have a pot-belly than for a woman to even show a little extra gut. Hence, more otherwise normal-weight women complain about being fat than normal-weight men.
Restaurants and car journeys are tricky all around I think.
I generally do a quick calculate that includes size (including height), gender (particularly if it's a work situation), kids, various health and disability requirements and then just try and not get in the way myself.
The one thing she mentioned that I had previously missed was bedclothes, I have squirreled that bit of info away for future reference.
I'm a weird pear shape. I carry my weight around my middle - belly, hips/thighs/butt. Below my thighs, my legs are "normal". My arms are slender. When I'm wearing certain clothes, I don't really look overweight, but in certain parts of my body, I AM. ::shrug::
Very true - but then as pleonastic says, it's hard to argue with how people view themselves... But I too get irritated when people get into the whine competition about "oh, look, I've gained at least fifty grams this weekend, I'm SOO fat!".
But there's another thing that's been getting to me when reading your posts. What irks me isn't "anything non-emaciated is fat", it's "fat equals ugly". Because it doesn't. The whine competition seems to me as begging for reassurance, wanting to be told that you're not uglyl. (Or, of course, it's used to put down any woman who's less thin than the speaker...)
I wish we could get rid of the whole beauty having an inverse relationship to bodyweight thing. They're not related at all. IMAO, olf course.
(Preaching to the choir, I suspect) It's legitimate to feel anger when you're part of a group that's systematically misunderstood and mistreated, but expressing that anger toward people one wants to be allies is problematic.
I'm also somewhat distressed by "body dysphoria and actual size are two different things." I live in a culture where, as someone pointed out above, fatness is attributed to size-8 actresses. As a size 12, I do meet that definition of fatness, so a self-image in accordance with that *is* a matter of actual size--and it's not necessarily body dysphoria; it may simply be "I'm fat and I'm fine with that." I much prefer your point, that if being fat means the same thing as being not-skinny, there's no available label for the state of being significantly fatter than not-skinny. That's been more or less the reason that I've stopped applying "fat" to myself--not that I previously wasn't basing the assessment on my actual size, but that it seems useful to favor narrower definitions of the term than those which include said size.
Those issues notwithstanding, I think it's a useful article. Thanks!
I personally think it's legitimate to write an article about "here's how a fat person would like to be treated" rather than an article about "here's how to negotiate the logistics of a car ride considering the needs of a fat person and also a bunch of other competing needs."
But maybe some kind of disclaimer about how other people have needs too would have helped the article come across better.
I agree with your body dysphoria comment.