"Hey, you don't have to 'feel thin' to have thin privilege," began US blogger Cora Harrington on Monday.
In the seven tweets that followed, Harrington, a freelance writer who operates lingerie blog, The Lingerie Addict, managed a succinct explanation of “thin privilege”, a term used mainly in plus-size online communities to describe the privilege experienced by someone who does not face daily discrimination for their size including street harassment or not being able to shop in mainstream stores.
Harrington, whose thread had gained 4,000 retweets and 18,000 likes at the time of writing, stressed there is a difference between thinking you are thin, and being perceived as such (or, more specifically, being perceived as not "fat").
"My job involves looking at photos of models who are much thinner than me, so I rarely 'feel' thin," Harrington wrote.
"But I can walk into almost any clothing store and expect – without even thinking about it – to buy something in my size. That is thin privilege."
Harrington went on to describe typical scenarios in which "fatphobia" (vilification of people for being too large) is experienced, such as when someone is a passenger on an aeroplane or eating unhealthy food in public, drawing on a line of explanation that has often been used in explaining "white privilege" in online spaces: white (or thin) privilege does not mean your life has not been hard, but it means your race (or size) is not something that is making it harder.
"It doesn’t mean your life is easy or that no one ever made fun of your appearance or that you can find everything you want in your local Target," Harrington wrote. "It means societal discrimination and prejudice does not target you for being thin. It means your weight/body type are seen as 'normal'."
Harrington's tweets, although widely shared, attracted a mix of responses.
Some were pleased to hear her message.
While others questioned whether discrimination against the thin was just as real.
Fairfax Media
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