The Skinny on Privilege | Dear Baby Maybe #30

Dear Baby Maybe,

As you’re growing up, you’ll find you struggle with your weight in an uncommon way. Most people who struggle with their weight feel like they have too much of it. We actually have the opposite problem. You’re realizing that you’re uncomfortable with how skinny you are, because people are constantly calling you out for being too thin.

All of the time people are telling you to eat a sandwich and making comments about how small your body is. You are constantly assumed to be weak or frail, and as you get older you will find you are assumed to be sexually submissive just based on the shape of our body. Through puberty, you will have a hard time finding confidence in your shape and wishing you were bigger. You feel like life would be easier if you weren’t so skinny. All of these reasons contributed to it being so hard for me to grow up to acknowledge that we benefit from skinny privilege.

The most important thing to remember about all privileges is that benefitting from a certain privilege does not mean your life is without hardship. Your skinny privilege does not mean your life is infinitely better than all people who are not as skinny as you. It just means that the size of your body isn’t holding you back from opportunities. There are many kinds of privilege that people have to varying degrees, and our being skinny is just one of ours.

We spent so long being ashamed of our size because it was commented on, so being told that we had privilege in our size sounded ridiculous.

It took me a while to fully comprehend skinny privilege because it’s something we’ve regarded as a negative about ourselves for so long. We spent so long being ashamed of our size because it was commented on, so being told that we had privilege in our size sounded ridiculous. Over time, and through conversations with friends willing to do some educating, I started realize that people would make comments about my size, but they would still be talking to me. People would jokingly tell me to eat a sandwich, but I wasn’t being held from opportunities if I didn’t gain weight. Especially in the entertainment industry, plenty of people are told to lose weight, and they don’t get hired or noticed if someone thinks they weigh too much. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to us. There is a societal standard of what a body is supposed to look like, and we actually are closer to that than we think. (Especially once you realize you’re not a man.)

Fatphobia is part of the framework of our society that we take for granted. I’ve come to notice that most people who are commenting on our weight are actually working through their own internalized fatphobia. Being called out for adhering to something society deems to be the gold standard, while annoying, is not necessarily damaging. No one is picking us to get off an elevator that is too crowded. No one scoffs if we take our top off at a beach. People might comment on our body, but not because they are afraid of or disgusted by it. It is just naturally how our body works, our metabolism is ridiculously fast we can eat whatever we want while maintaining a thin frame. We don’t ever have to worry about stores carrying clothes in our size, or consider the size of the chairs before going to a theatre. Our body is referred to as being “in shape,” and assumed to be the “right” kind of body. No one actually thinks we need to change anything, or thinks there’s something wrong with us or our diet based on the way that we look. For the most part, we can get through a day without thinking about the size of our body, and that’s privilege.

That’s what privilege looks like, most often, when you are given opportunities over others based on the way that you look.

Often, as a performer, I walk into an audition or a dance class and I’m assumed to be a seasoned dancer. People look at my body, the long legs, the slender hips, and they think I’ve been trained in ballet. It pisses me off a lot of the time, because I feel like I wind up letting people down when I’m not as skilled as they assumed. But here’s the thing, our body is getting us into those rooms. We are assumed to have a level of talent and training based on the way we look. If we were heavier or rounder people might look at us and assume we were lazy or clumsy, and not even bring us in to audition. That’s what privilege looks like, most often, when you are given opportunities over others based on the way that you look. In our case, there are multiple reasons we are allotted such privileges, and our size is just one of them. But once we get to know and understand all of the privileges we are walking around with, then we can learn to do something with them. Then we can understand why we only see people who look like us when we look around certain rooms. Then we can build rooms where people look different from each other.

Your future,

Maybz.