Today in #FatStudyGroup, we are reading Chs4-6 of Solovay, S. (2000). Tipping the scales of justice. Amherst, New York, USA: Prometheus Books.
In chapter four, Solovay focuses in on the stigma and discrimination fat children face in educational settings. She cites the 1994 report from National Education Association, and outlines in the chapter the ways that educational settings may be hostile to fat children.
This includes the physical accessibility of the school, the treatment from their teachers, the treatment from their peers, and their treatment from those associated with schooling outside of the school (like the bus drivers or others the child may interact with regularly).
Solovay suggests that underfunded schools are unprepared to meet the needs of fat students, and parents (especially those who are fat themselves) are rarely good advocates for their fat children.
Solovay notes that fat people are less likely to achieve academically, less likely to receive letters of recommendation, and less likely to attend tertiary education, than non-fat people.
Solovay suggests that the “abuse and disrespect against fat children in the lower grades can lead to abuse and disrespect in high school which can spiral into lost opportunities for more education later” (p. 56).
In Ch5, Solovay explores court assessments of whether a parent is fit based on their child’s weight. Where parental fitness plays a role (such as custody cases or where the state wishes to remove the child from the home), the body size of the child may be a deciding factor.
As noted by Solovay, “With a thin child, the courts would consider the parent’s actions and the emotional and psychological consequences to be a priority. With a fat child it can be tricky to get a judge to see past the number on the scale” (p. 65).
She reviews several cases where the child’s fatness has played a role in assessing the fitness of the parent; unsurprisingly, the body size of the child is seen as the responsibility of the mother and having a fat child is usually viewed as a dereliction of duty.
Ch6 is about the verbal abuse that fat people experience. She notes that “thin people are so confident in their right to verbally abuse fat people & the total lack of consequences for those acts, that they do it in situations where they are readily identifiable” (p. 79).
Solovay illustrates with stories of fat people being verbally accosted by strangers, and suggests that many fat people believe themselves worthy of such treatment (and that few lawyers would be willing to prosecute such actions).
She argues that fat people are in an abusive relationship with our culture, and that for many, this leads to a “numbing of the spirit, a lessening of their vitality” (p. 83). The ones that escape, Solovay argues, do so by participating in the fat rights community.
Three more chapters tomorrow! #FatStudyGroup
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