Author Lindy West wants you to think about these five things when you meet a ‘fat’ person

By Andrea Kane, CNN

Season 9 of the podcast Chasing Life With Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the intersection between body weight and health. We delve into a wide range of topics, including why losing weight is so hard, the new weight loss drugs and how to talk to kids about weight. You can listen here.

(CNN) — This is an article about the F-word.

No, not that F-word. The other F-word. The one that makes most people uncomfortable to hear but more so to be called it: fat.

For more than a decade, author Lindy West and other fat activists have been working to reclaim and destigmatize the term, much like gay activists who have taken back the word queer.

For West, it began in 2011 when she penned an essay titled “Hello, I’m Fat.”

“There was this way that calling myself fat publicly made me fat,” she told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on his podcast Chasing Life recently. “Whereas before I was operating, like ‘I am gonna be thin.’ That’s the cultural narrative: that fat people are thin people who are failing. And so, I was bought into that. So that was scary to kind of, in a certain way, announce, ‘I’m throwing in the towel of trying to be this other thing and waiting for my life to start.’” 

The essay went viral, and West shot to cultural prominence. A memoir, “Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman,” followed five years later, and it became the basis for the Hulu series “Shrill.” In addition to being a writer and producer, West is cohost of the NPR podcast “Text Me Back.”

West explained that she and others in the fat liberation space don’t like the word obese because it unnecessarily medicalizes them. (In 2013, the American Medical Association voted to classify obesity as a disease.)

“That’s why I say fat, and I don’t use the word obesity. It is pathologizing, and I don’t have a disease,” she said. “If it’s a disease, then it seems like there would be some kind of unifying factor across all fat people as to why we’re fat, some sort of mechanism for how this disease works — and that’s just not the case.”

West added that it reduces people to one dimension. “It flattens fat people into what they want us to be, which is just fat, lazy gluttons,” she said.

Listen to more of the conversation with Lindy West by clicking the player below.

It hasn’t been easy for West to come to peace with her body, much less to get society to accept her.

“Having had my weight fluctuate, I know for a fact that the smaller you are, the nicer people are to you,” she said. “People will be kinder to you. They will take you more seriously. They’re friendlier. They’re more welcoming.

“Think about what it’s like to live your life and no one’s ever kind to you. And then you’re also told that this is your fault, and that the fact that you haven’t changed your body in the way that society wants you to, says all these negative things about who you are and your capabilities.”

West calls it cruel to treat fellow human beings that badly. “To rob people of basic respect and joy … and participation in the full spectrum of life. So, it doesn’t matter why people are fat, you know, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “You should treat people with respect and kindness, regardless.”

What should people keep in mind when interacting with those who have larger bodies? West shares these five thoughts.

Be part of the solution

Work to improve the situation, not just for the sake of plus-size people but for the future you.

“You have no guarantees that you will never become fat or disabled,” West said via email. “Do you want to spend your energy making life harder for fat people and disabled people, or do you want to expand systems of care and accessibility to make life better for everyone?

“If you can’t do it for other people, can you do it for your potential future self, or your parents, or your children?” she asked.

Tread lightly with kids

Children need unconditional love, and not necessarily a prescription for one of the new weight loss medications — some of which are approved for kids as young as 12.

“(T)here’s not just the physical toll to worry about — both short-term risks and the completely unknown long-term effects — but also the emotional impact,” West said. “It permanently changes you to be taught, when you’re still a child, that your body is something to be ashamed of and something to be changed at all cost. It is a pipeline to disordered eating to tell kids that there’s something wrong with them for listening to their hunger cues.

“Kids are still growing, still developing their relationships with food and body. They don’t need to be nauseous all day at school, vomiting up their meals. They don’t need to be hearing the same messaging from their parents that they hear from their bullies at school. Their bodies need nourishment, and their brains need to know that they’re unconditionally valued.”

Lead from the heart

When you encounter someone, understand that you have imperfect and incomplete information and can’t presume to judge this person.

“You can’t tell from someone’s body whether they have an eating disorder or not,” West said. “You have no idea what is going on in anyone else’s life, or why anyone’s body looks the way that it does, so the only ethical way to move through the world is to treat everyone with humanity and respect.”

Educate yourself

To learn more about the pervasive cultural bias against people in larger bodies and how to start deprogramming yourself, crack open one (or all) of these books.

“Read: ‘Fearing the Black Body,’ ‘The Body Is Not an Apology,’ ‘Intuitive Eating,’ and both of Aubrey Gordon’s books,” West recommended. (The latter two are “‘You Just Need to Lose Weight’: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People” and “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat.”)

Zip it — seriously

If you feel the urge to say something — recite the calorie count for a slice of pizza or a plum, give diet advice, share the latest health factoid, offer up praise for exercising or anything else — check yourself. Don’t. Do. It.

“Mind your own business and leave fat people alone!” West exhorted. “We’re busy! We have lives and brains! Go away! Go have fun!”

She added, “I don’t barge into your life and tell you not to go mountain biking, you weirdo!”

We hope these five thoughts help you develop a more compassionate perspective on — as West would say — fat people. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week on the Chasing Life podcast when we bust some myths about popular weight loss products with Dr. “Mike” Varshavski.

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CNN Audio’s Grace Walker contributed to this report.