Last night’s Q&A on ABC was a fiery one, with an all-female panel for International Women’s Day.
The show brought together writer Lindy West, lawyer Josephine Cashman, journalist Mei Fong, TV personality Faustina Agolley and Thordis Elva, who recently made headlines for sharing a stage with her rapist for a thought-provoking TED talk.
Naturally, much of the conversation played off Thordis’ story and sexual violence, however another topic piqued people’s interest.
One audience member asked Lindy West, and an activist for body positivity and fat-acceptance, this interesting question:
“As a person who has hated their body, and fought against their body for most of their life, I commend you for promoting acceptance of your body, and that we do not all fit into one mould as women.
“However, given the global obesity epidemic, is it ignorant to assume that overweight is not linked to poor health outcomes? By promoting fat-acceptance is there also a risk you are promoting obesity and all its risks?
West responded pragmatically, saying that “you can’t take good care of something that you hate.” She added that she wants to empower people to be healthy in both body and mind.
She continued, saying that shaming fat people wasn’t a ‘moral obligation’.
“People don’t have to be healthy. People don’t owe you health. People own their own bodies and their own lives, but if you want people to be healthy, which is also a very vague and complicated term, the best thing you can do for them is fight discrimination against fat people, which includes medical bias,” she said.
“Fat people get measurably worse care from their doctors because of assumptions like that, because of assumptions you can tell how healthy someone is by looking at them.
“Give fat people the permission to live, to just live their lives and be happy and be vibrant and not think of themselves as a broken temporary thing, as a thin person who is failing every single day.
“If we care about fat people, care about fat people.”
Writer Jane Caro also added to the conversation online, perfectly shutting down a troll.
Lindy West finished her argument by reminding people, “I have a doctor. I don’t need six billion ‘doctors’ around the world telling me what’s best for me.”
“If we care about fat people… care about fat people!”
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