Joining the Size Acceptance Revolution:
Doing Your Part.

Our culture's idealization of slenderness results in personal and cultural biases against fat people, and causes discrimination against those who are larger than average. As an ally to fat people and to the size acceptance movement, there are a number of things you can do to help reverse this bias and end size discrimination.

SIMPLE, IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO:

• Become a member of NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) and renew your membership every year. To join, send your name, address, and $15 to: NAAFA, P.O. Box 22510, Oakland, CA 94609.
• If you are a health professional with a waiting area outside your office, keep current issues of the NAAFA Newsletter and NAAFA brochures on hand for waiting clients. Recommend NAAFA to your fat clients. Consider displaying prints or art reproductions which celebrate large/fat people.
• Make a pact with yourself to be politically active by writing a letter of protest to and advertisers or a TV show or a Congress person at least 2 or 3 times a year. Watch the NAAFA Newsletter for letter writing campaigns.

VERY PERSONAL GOALS
Avoid participating in the diet culture:

• Do not work to maintain an unnaturally low weight. Do not go on weight-loss diets or engage in compulsive or excessive exercise programs.
• Avoid all discussions of "good/bad" food and being "good/bad" in relation to eating.
• Do not compliment anyone for losing weight, do not criticize anyone for gaining weight.
• If you struggle with body image issues, try to discuss your feelings only with close friends, family, and/or a therapist. For instance, do not complain in public that you "hate your fat thighs" or "wish you were thinner" etc. Try to learn to accept/love your body.

OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO
Outreach:

• Encourage your close friends and relatives to do some or all of the following: question their own fattist assumptions and attitudes, eliminate fattist behavior, stop idealizing slenderness, stop participating in the diet culture, and support fat people's rights and dignity.
• When you hear comments or see behavior which troubles you, consider saying something. You can't say something at every single opportunity or you'll quickly "bum out" and give up. But when you feel up to it and you feel able to say something in a constructive way - do it!
• Encourage colleagues to do some or all of the above. Focus your energy on people with similar degrees/positions to your own (e.g. doctors focus on enlightening other doctors, nutritionists other nutritionists, and so forth).
• Keep a small lending library of information so that you can offer written material to people who are interested and/or skeptical. Your library might include:
  
  
  • Rethinking Obesity: An Alternative View of Its Health Implications
    by Paul Ernsberger and Paul Haskew, Human Services Press, 1987.
    Especially good to lend M.D.s and their like. Provides a very well documented rebuttal to the old NIH Panel pronouncement that obesity is a "killer disease." Originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Obesity and Weight Regulation.
  • The Dieter's Dilemma: Eating Less and Weighing More
    by William Bennett, M.D., and Joel Gurin, Basic Books, 1982.
    Good for doctors and other health professionals who are still recommending weight loss diets. Explains why diets are obsolete and discusses setpoint theory.
  • Overcoming Fear of Fat
    Edited by Laura S. Brown, Esther Rothblum, PhD., Harrington Park Press, 1989. Experts share personal and professional experiences of challenging fat oppression. An empowering guide for fat people and their supporters.
  • Making Peace With Food by Susan Kano.
    A self-help text and workbook for chronic dieters of all sizes and eating-disorder sufferers. Also useful for doctors and therapists who are interested in an alternative to weight-loss diets.
  • Great Shape by Pat Lyons and Debby Burgard, Bull Publishing, 1990.
    An empowering, joyful exercise guide for large, fat women. A great resource for doctors and therapists who don't want to tell their fat female clients to go on another diet.
  • Are You Too Fat, Ginny? by Karin Jasper, Is Five Press.
    Written for young girls but also useful to parents and teachers. Challenges myths about fatness and dieting in adolescence and encourages self-acceptance.
  
  
• NAAFA Educational Brochures (available online):
  
  
  • (100) Declaration of the Rights of Fat People in Health Care
  • (101) Guidelines for Health Care Providers in Dealing With Fat Patients
  • (102) Guidelines for Therapists Who Treat Fat Clients
  • (103) Facts About Hypertension and the Fat Person
  • (200) Dispelling Common Myths About Fat People
  • (204) The Fat Acceptance Revolution: Doing Your Part (the page you're reading now)
  • (205) Activism P's and Q's
  • (300) Airline Travel Tips for the Large-Size Person

The information in this brochure was developed by Susan Kano, author of Making Peace With Food, and is reprinted with her kind permission.

© NAAFA
PO Box 22510, Oakland, CA 94609 Phone: (916) 558-6880 Fax:(415) 863-8596

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