A Quote by Lindy West

When I started tentatively dipping a toe into fat-positive internet spaces, I learned that reclaiming the term was the quickest and most powerful way to make it stop hurting. If you can say, "Yes, I am fat, and it's okay to be fat," then all of a sudden it doesn't hurt when someone says it to you. And it's also just a descriptor. It's like tall.

Lindy West

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Lindy West
American - Writer
Born: March 9, 1982

Reclaiming the word fat was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.

Beth Ditto

Reclaiming the word 'fat' was the most empowering step in my progress. I stopped using it for insult or degradation and instead replaced it with truth, because the truth is that I am fat, and that's ok. So now when someone calls me fat, I agree, whereas before I would get embarrassed and emotional.

Beth Ditto

I'm OK with being called plus size, I'm OK with being called fat. If someone is shouting that I'm fat in the street in a derogatory way, then obviously I'm not OK with that, but I'm comfortable using the adjective fat to describe myself, because I am fat.

Tess Holliday

I use the word 'fat'. I use that word because that's what people are: they're fat. They're not bulky; they're not large, chunky, hefty or plump. And they're not big-boned. Dinosaurs were big-boned. These people are not overweight: this term somehow implies there is some correct weight... There is no correct weight. Heavy is also a misleading term. An aircraft carrier is heavy; it's not fat. Only people are fat, and that's what fat people are! They're fat !

George Carlin

It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.

Roseanne Barr

If someone calls you fat and you are fat, then it will be hurtful only if you feel you should not be fat.

Ann Widdecombe

In L.A., fat people are mythical. We're like Big Foot. 'Oh, yeah, my cousin knows someone who's fat.' Nobody's fat in L.A.

Ralphie May

Chicken fat, beef fat, fish fat, fried foods - these are the foods that fuel our fat genes by giving them raw materials for building body fat.

Neal Barnard

You can be fat and love yourself. You can be fat and have a great damn personality. You can be fat and sew your own clothes. But you can't be fat and healthy.

Susan Powter

I've always turned down stuff where you had to be fat. I may be fat, but that's not why you play a role. If the guy has to be that way, I say get somebody else because I'm not doing any fat acting.

Richard Griffiths

I am too fat and tall to be a jockey. This is not self-deprecation - I realise that I am neither too fat nor too tall - but I am too fat and too tall to be a jockey.

Aisling Bea

By the age of 18, I was very fat. My dad would say there's a Spall fat gene. But I was fat because I ate loads. I used to go and buy six or seven chocolate bars and eat my way through them.

Rafe Spall

Being fat is the absolute nadir of the misfit. You're a misfit because nothing fits. You don't fit in. You're not fit. You're fat. Fat doesn't have the poetic cachet of alcohol, the whiff of danger in the drug of choice. You're just fat. Being fat is so un-American, so unattractive, unerotic, unfashionable, undisciplined, unthinkable, uncool. It makes you invisible. It makes you conspicuous.

Claudia Shear

I've always been a big guy, whether it's been a fat kid, a fat young adult, or a fat adult. I was always sort of... I guess the term would be 'popular.' I never dealt with a lot of name-calling or any of the bullying you'd think a fat kid might have to deal with.

Jim O'Heir

Fat is a barrier, a bellicose statement to others that, to some, justifies hostility in kind. The world says to the fat person, "Your fatness is an affront to me, so we have the right to treat you as offensively as you appear." Fat is not merely viewed as another type of tissue, but as a diagnostic sign, a personal statement, and a measure of personality. Too little fat and we see you as being antisocial, fearful and sexless. Too much fat and we see you as slothful, stupid, and sexually hung up.