Recently, there has been a lot of controversy over Kate Moss touting the motto “nothing tastes as good as thin feels”. The adage is disgusting and unhealthy and body shaming and all those things, but Kate Moss is not the only one who’s said it. Bri at Fatfu points out that it has long been a slogan of Weight Watchers (and I’ve heard it on Biggest Loser). It leads her to ask the question why is it ok for them to say it but not for Kate Moss to do the same? My response to her question is on there and is basically that we feel a need to regulate all bodies that deviate, whether too fat or too thin. But I thought the most interesting response to this Kate Moss “controversy” is this letter written to her, which points out how the media response only reinforces the lie that skinny must hate fat.

One cliché that has attached itself to you over the years is that because you are skinny you must hate fatness. Skinny must hate fat. This is not true, it is a pernicious and destructive lie.

Another commenter ties in Cindy Crawford recent statements that women should stop buying magazines if they don’t want to see skinny models.:

it’s interesting that in the last two days there’s been two stories which have pitted skinny Vs fat or skinny vs curvy… What these stories fail to see and show (not shockingly) are the complexities involved here. It’s not black and white, it’s not binary oppositions, it is complex, ambivalent, confusing and all bound up in similar parts of the body size discourse.

They are both so on point here. Its so much easier to say that Kate Moss hates fat and that fat women don’t like women’s magazines because they hate skinny women, then to get to the real issues of how women’s bodies are regulated in our society.

It’s also a great way to delegitimize fat acceptance, and really any woman who chooses to accept her own and others’ bodies. Instead of really listening to why women wish to see bodies of all sizes in magazines, it’s a lot easier to play on the cliche of women’s insipient jealousy and say “if you don’t like skinny models – don’t by the magazines!”. Listen, I dislike magazines like Cosmo for a lot of reasons – they’re heteronormative, fat-shaming, and generally a huge exercise in whiteness. I don’t hate the fact that skinny models are in them, but rather that only skinny models are in them. Thin bodies are beautiful, but the magazines are so problematic because they show that only skinny models are beautiful. And sometimes, I do want to read trashly sex advice while on the treadmill, it would just be great if it acknowledged that fat women have sex too. Fat women don’t hate skinny women, and fat acceptance doesn’t hate thinness. All bodies are beautiful, sexual and deserve the agency to have body sovereignty, that’s what we want.

This seems like a pretty simple concept, but in a time where Meme Roth is allowed to say that fat-shaming is the best way to fight obesity on the news and Weight Watchers thinks “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” is motivational, I guess it bears repeating.