It’s been nearly two months now since the “adult content” ban went into effect on Tumblr, but a handful of key things have not changed.

On December 17, 2018, Tumblr officially outlawed all content considered to be pornography in order to comply with the SESTA/FOSTA laws—laws that are allegedly supposed to combat human trafficking, but instead just make life exponentially more difficult and dangerous for sex workers.

According to a former employee, Tumblr’s new policy was influenced by the fact it had such a massive child pornography problem that Apple removed the Tumblr app from its stores, but the machinations were were already in motion months earlier due to the fact that Verizon—the parent company that owns Tumblr—couldn’t sell ads next to all that porn.

The first thing that any Tumblr user will tell you about the result of this ban is either that there are just as many porn bots on the social media platform as ever or that there are just as many Nazis. All the porn bot creators had to do was change the language their bots used and/or tag posts with “sfw” (safe for work) to avoid the wrath of the wildly ineffective, thrown-together auto-flagging program. Meanwhile, the average Tumblr user has had to put up with posts getting flagged when they have absolutely zero sexual content, but apparently have something in them that looks like a “female-presenting nipple” to a poorly-constructed algorithm.

Many users vowed to leave Tumblr when the ban was announced, and many did. Sex workers and body positivity blogs in particular have been affected. I myself have been on Tumblr since 2012 and credit the communities there for my education in everything from white privilege to non-binary genders to fat positivity. That last issue is of special interest to me as a woman who has gone from being thin or at least “not fat” in 2012 to being solidly fat today in 2019.

Like many people, I gained weight in my 20s due to a natural change in metabolism that happens to the vast majority of humans. Today, at 210 pounds and (almost) 5’5”, I’m a size 16, which is actually the average U.S. pant size for cis women. However, I am “obese” according to my BMI and my hanging belly and double chin would have me labeled as such by any of the mainstream news networks who love to panic about the so-called “obesity epidemic” in America.

I don’t have to tell you that it’s hard to be a fat woman in this country, and increasingly in many other countries around the world. Over the years I’ve experienced a stark difference in the way I’m treated by loved ones and strangers alike, not to mention by myself. Confronting the hateful voice in my head—placed there by a profoundly fat-phobic society—has been one of the greatest challenges of my 20s.

My biggest support in this battle against self-hatred has been other fat women. If it wasn’t for Tumblr, I don’t know where I would have found such a strong community around loving and accepting the body you have, at any size. Part of learning that acceptance has been viewing fat, naked bodies.

Even before the “adult content” ban, I didn’t see much nudity on my Tumblr dashboard, pornographic or not. But most of what I saw was people sharing their naked bodies in a celebratory manner. Whether they were dim, blurry selfies or professional photo shoots, Tumblr users exposed me to naked trans bodies, naked bodies of color, naked non-binary bodies, and naked fat bodies. Sometimes all at once. All were wonderful, and all worked to support those marginalized people who were left out of magazines, ads, and even mainstream pornography.

“Look, these bodies exist too, and they’re beautiful,” said every naked nipple, no matter the gender of the person they were attached to. For me, the fat bodies were a wonderful comfort, and I hoped to some day gain the courage to display my own fat naked body, unashamed, to help other women like myself learn to love and accept themselves.

Now I can’t. And since December 17, 2018, I don’t see naked fat bodies anymore. Ever. Tumblr was the only place I saw them before that date. Where else can I find them? I certainly tried Googling “fat naked bodies” for this article, and you can imagine what I found. Pornography featuring fat women is nearly always fetishized, which is not what I’m looking for. And I don’t want to have to wade through any kind of porn site in order to see a body like mine. I miss being able to see those bodies casually, unexpectedly, on Tumblr, as though it were as normal as a video of a cat batting things off of a counter.

And it’s not just full nudity. Due to the terrible quality of Tumblr’s nipple-detecting program, any photo containing something that looks round and fleshy tends to get flagged. I don’t even see fat bodies in bras and panties anymore. It doesn’t help that many of the body-positive blogs that posted these photos left Tumblr out of protest or because they knew their blogs wouldn’t be able to function anymore.

I reached out to three fellow fat women who had fat-positive Tumblr pages or used a Tumblr blog to promote their sex work to find out how they’re doing and/or where they are now.

Satine La Belle

Satine La Belle, a sex worker who uses multiple social media platforms to sell nude photos of herself for income, has been the most affected. She abandoned her Tumblr account once the “adult content” ban went into effect because she felt like it would be a waste of time to continue, especially with how overzealous the nudity-detecting program is.

“I felt like there was no point in having another platform where I would have to risk my hard work if there was anything sexual, whether that was a nipple or just sex positive sentiments,” she said.

Nearly all of Satine La Belle’s content on Tumblr was flagged before the ban even officially went into effect, including some of the content she used for her livelihood.

“I released a nude that is normally only for purchase on Tumblr before the change for my fans. It was flagged right away and I notified Tumblr about being able to have titties out until the 17th. It was then no longer flagged for a little bit.”

Predictably, the ban has had an impact on La Belle’s ability to make money as a sex worker, and she’s had difficulty making that up on other platforms.

“It has gone alright for me, but I have found it much more difficult to find clients on Twitter then I had on Tumblr. I think it is because Tumblr was a great safe space for nudity, nude art, porn, etc. Since it was more normalized there it was easy to find clients who knew what they wanted and were ready to pay.”

Satine La Belle is on Twitter, Instagram, and DeviantArt. You can also send her some money on her Ko-fi account.

Bec Mae Scully

Bec Mae Scully is the owner of the body-positive Tumblr blog Chubby Bunnies, which was hit so hard by the ban that the entire blog is now hidden behind a content warning. Attempting to go directly to the blog lands you on a page that says “This Tumblr may contain sensitive media,” then directs you to your dashboard where you can view it on the right-hand sidebar. If you don’t have a Tumblr account, you can’t view it at all.

Chubby Bunnies boasts a couple hundred thousand followers and has been a very active account for 10 years. Since the ban went into effect, Tumblring just hasn’t been the same for Scully.

“The ban has affected my interaction with followers a great deal,” she told me. “With close to a couple of hundred thousand followers who would usually be interactive daily with submissions, likes and reblogs have now disappeared.”

The lack of interaction has saddened Scully, but it also interferes with her ability to help the people that Chubby Bunnies is reaching out to.

“As silly as it might sound to some, Tumblr in a lot of ways saved my life,” said Scully. “At least 6 beautiful souls have said that because of the blog it helped them not end their life.”

Interaction with followers isn’t the only part of Scully’s blog that was disrupted by the ban.

“I didn’t make any money off the blog, but had recently been trying to put things in place so I could make a business out of it. When the ban came through it’s put it all on hold.”

Not only that, but the ban almost utterly wiped her blog out.

“At first 99.99% [of Chubby Bunnies’ content] had been removed. Then some of the content came back, and most of it is flagged, including my profile picture which was a caricature of me with mermaid hair covering my ‘female-presenting nipples’ that they seem to have such a problem with.”

The “adult content” ban is supposed to have exceptions for artistic expression and content used to make a political statement. Unfortunately, their flagging software has been wildly unsuccessful in make these distinctions. Users have to appeal every individual post flagged in order to get actual human eyes on the post. When your flagged posts number in the thousands, it creates a problem.

Chubby Bunnies is a Tumblr-exclusive blog, but Bec Mae Scully has many beautiful photos on her Instagram account if you’re lucky enough to be friends with her.

Amisha Treat

Even a Tumblr blog that focuses on fat positivity without showing a lot of skin, like Fat Girls Doing Things, has been affected by the “adult content” ban.

“The ban has mostly been just annoying for me, there isn’t a lot of ‘adult content’ on the blog so in that regard I haven’t had a ton to deal with,” says Amisha Treat, owner of FGDT. (Fat Girls Doing Things.)  “It has however reduced the amount of interaction and submissions happening, which is very disappointing, but I get why that is happening.”

Treat also talked about her constant efforts to block porn bots and blogs, which often target body positive blogs to steal images.

“It has done nothing to reduce the number of porn blogs that follow,” Treat told me. “In fact, it has made it harder to identify which ones are [porn bots] because their icon and posts are blocked so I can’t always confirm if I should block or not.”

Although the FGDT community is still largely intact, Treat is concerned that things will get worse. Unfortunately, there are no social media platforms out there that are quite like Tumblr.

“I have had to spend time trying to find another platform in case the ban continues as is, which is proving to be very difficult in terms of finding a site that allows easy interaction and submission availability.”

Fat Girls doing things also has a Facebook page, an Instagram, and a Twitter account.

In spite of widespread dissatisfaction with the “adult content” ban, Tumblr has given no indication that they plan to change the policy, and the flagging program has not improved. I myself have had two posts recently flagged — one classical nude painting and one that contained no nudity at all. I appealed both successfully.

Unfortunately, nothing is likely to change until the reason for the ban, the SESTA/FOSTA laws, are changed or repealed. Sex workers are leading the efforts to make this happen, but due to massive and widespread whorephobia in the U.S. and abroad, few are listening despite the fact that the laws have already been credited for the assault and murder of multiple full-service sex workers.

I’m lucky the ban’s effect on me has been comparatively mild. But I think about all the young women out there who are or are becoming fat who won’t have the same community support and access to unfiltered, unfetishized images of naked fat bodies. Eating disorders and the self-hatred and depression caused by our society’s intense fat-phobia have killed many and will kill many more. The hindering of a formerly indispensable tool in the fight against the stigma and hatred of fatness is nothing short of a tragedy.

Content warning: descriptions of sexual assault

One hundred and twenty two men.

That’s how many prominent politicians, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and public figures have been publicly accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault since Harvey Weinstein left the Weinstein Company. In the last week alone, Junot Diaz joined that growing list, as did New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and the Nobel Prize scandal highlighted the experiences of women working with one of the world’s most prestigious literary organizations. So I suppose that brings our list to 123.

Clearly, we are far from ending this epidemic. But finally, for once, institutions are beginning to name the behavior of the men who make unwanted remarks and unwelcome ultimatums, who expose themselves, who demand our bodies. For once, we’re learning to believe women.

The women coming forward are undeniably courageous: young and old, rich and poor, famous and unknown. And overwhelmingly, they’re thin.

But 67% of American women are plus size. So where are the fat women?

I was 15 years old, and a size 18, the first time a man told me he’d fantasized about raping me.

He told me that he longed to pin my hands behind my head, yearned to hear me tell him no. You’ll fight me off, but you’ll love every minute of it.

The women coming forward are undeniably courageous: young and old, rich and poor, famous and unknown. And overwhelmingly, they’re thin.
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I was shaken, confused, disoriented. As he spoke, every breath drained from my waiting lungs, siphoned by his certainty that I’d be grateful for his violence. You’ll love every minute of it. The life in my veins seeped from my body into the ground I wished would swallow me whole.

Over time, men’s fantasies became part of the fabric of my experience. In the years that followed, more and more men would disclose their desire to assault me. When I told one to stop, in my mid-twenties, he was taken aback. I thought you were liberated. You should be grateful.

The menacing ghost of gratitude followed me everywhere. I was queer, which meant I was expected to be sexually flexible, unfettered by boundaries and unlikely to say no, available to be posed in any scene or position needed for men’s gratification. And I was fat, which meant I should be grateful for what I got. Even if it was violent. Even if I didn’t consent.

When I finally disclosed this pattern to thinner friends, I anticipated some knowing commiseration, some tools for survival. After all, we’d spent plenty of time developing shared strategies for creepy coworkers and lecherous neighbors. But to many of them, this ravenous violence was a foreign interaction, a reason to call police, run away, tell every woman I knew, do something drastic. Desperate measures.

For my thin friends, rape fantasies were an exception, the provenance of a particularly depraved kind of man. For me, they were the rule: so commonplace as to be routine. Around fat women, seemingly any man could be that particularly depraved kind.

More troubling were the reactions from thin acquaintances. A family friend and self-proclaimed feminist, upon hearing about this onslaught of fantasies, congratulated me. Isn’t it great to be wanted? And, more troublingly, there’s a lid for every pot. As if I had been disheartened about the selection of men who would take me. As if their violence were a sign of hope. As if it were just a misguided expression of attraction.

One friend asked why I hadn’t told anyone sooner. I was surprised by her question when the answer felt so plain. Like many women before me, when I share stories of harassment, catcalling, unwelcome advances, and violence, I am met with pushback. Unlike other women, that resistance comes as a question:

Who would want to rape you?

While thin women were free to talk about sexual assault as being somehow divorced from desire — rape is about power, not sex — I didn’t have that luxury. As a fat woman, my body was seen as inherently undesirable. Any sexual attention fat women receive is treated as a windfall worthy of congratulations, an erroneous impossibility, or an out-and-out lie. Fat women are expected to be grateful for any expressions that could be mistaken for want, including assault and harassment. We are exposed to an unvarnished kind of desire, its most violent self, because we are expected to hold and nurture whatever scraps of it we’re offered.

Sometimes, our harassment takes a more menacing turn, relying on reinforcing our rejection, rather than our assumed gratitude. A fat acquaintance recently told me that, at her workplace, men openly discussed who they would and wouldn’t sleep with. She often heard her own body used as a punchline — colossally undesirable, comically unwanted. “I just wanted to work,” she said. Even when we’re unwanted, harassment still finds us.

When fat women do muster the courage to come forward about our experiences with sexual assault, we’re significantly less likely to be believed about our experiences than our thinner counterparts. While thin women face dismal rates of prosecution and conviction for their sexual assaults, fat women are often dismissed out of hand — making it open season on our bodies. The cultural belief that fat women are unlovable, that fat bodies are undesirable, offers a warm Petri dish, a hospitable home for men’s bacterial desires to grow.

It took me years to disclose my own experiences. Because, like any woman, I knew that stepping forward would mean standard denials, scrutiny, dismissals. But for all our talk about sexual assault being an act of power, not desire, as a fat woman, I knew that those statements always came with caveats, asterisks, footnotes. I knew that my body was reliably withheld, an obvious exception to the rule.

After all, who would want to rape us? We should be grateful.

Our national conversation about sexual assault and harassment has become an important flashpoint. Notably, it has been largely led by Hollywood actresses — the Jessica Albas, Salma Hayeks, and Rose McGowans known for their legendary beauty.

But in order to flourish, that conversation will have to hold space for women whose leadership we struggle to respect, whose bodies we struggle to embrace. Even those who, in our heart of hearts, we still expect to be grateful. Because if our feminism fails to acknowledge the humanity of 67% of us, who will that victory serve?

I was 18 the first time I met a fat sister-in-arms. It was my first semester of college, and we immediately gravitated toward one another, buoys in the choppy waters of an unfamiliar sea.

That year, we became closer than either of us expected. Both of us had been the fattest kids in our high school classes, held at a distance from classmates by virtue of our bodies. We’d both hoped college would be easier, but most of the time, it felt familiar: the desks that weren’t built for us. Classmates who stared openly at our bellies and thighs. The lengthy diet talk amongst classmates, bemoaning the fat on their slight frames, a hundred pounds lighter than our own. Professors’ penchant for using obesity as a metaphor for capitalism and excess. Our bodies were always unwelcome, a stand-in for some pandemic or a terrifying future.

In the face of all that, we made a radical decision: We decided to like each other, and we decided to like ourselves. We became two of the few fat people who no longer feared our own skin. There was such reckless joy in our time together, such fearlessness in our hearts. We learned of our thirst for understanding only as we slaked it.

Our bodies were always unwelcome, a stand-in for some pandemic or a terrifying future.
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This was when I learned to love and admire bright and shining fat people, the ones who vibrated with joy, who refused to reject their bodies as character flaws or moral failings. The ones who resisted diet talk, the conscientious objectors to bemoaning their thunder thighs and bingo wings, their rolling bellies and wide hips. The ones who wore clothing that was bright and tight, or billowing and dark — whatever they felt like wearing. The ones who happily, loudly loved their size. The ones we were becoming.

These, I learned, were my people.

When we returned for our sophomore year, she told me the pressure had become too much. She feared for her partners’ shame, feared for more bullying from her tough love parents, feared for the jeering her thinner friends had to endure when they spent time with her.

So she got weight loss surgery.

I told her I was happy for her, and I was. She’d made a decision about how to engage with her own body. We’d often talked about how often our bodies were taken from us — from unsolicited diet advice to fatcalling, unwelcome comments about our orders at restaurants to bullying in the name of “concern.” Thinness was the only way she could truly end all of that.

My Friends Would Rather Have Their Guts Cut Open Than Be Like Me
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But her body wasn’t the only thing that changed. As she lost weight, so much more fell away. She gushed over her new straight size clothing, and relished the femininity she was now allowed by those around her. Her attention drifted to thinner friends. She grew out her hair and dyed it. At her thinnest, she started talking about how much she hated her thighs, even at the smallest they’d ever been.

That was how I lost her. She disappeared into the warm sunlight of thinness. I returned to the role I knew best: the fattest student in class. And I learned the quiet heartbreak of losing someone who truly understood what it meant to live in a body like mine.

There’s a quiet adjustment of expectations that comes with being very fat. You learn that you’re unlikely to be welcomed where your body can be seen: in sports, acting, sales, communications, politics. You might apply for a restaurant job as a server and be offered one as a dishwasher. You might audition for a play and be redirected to join the crew.

Sometimes people tell you kindly, sometimes cruelly. Sometimes you find out by seeing another fat person rejected in public, sacrificed as an object lesson. But no matter where you go, someone is always there to teach you a mandatory lesson: that your success will always be contained by others’ willingness to see your body.

In recent years, a handful of fat people have slowly but surely chipped away at the stone walls faced by fat people who want to be seen, who want to ascend to the heights normally reserved for those who have earned visibility through thinness. As an adult, I’ve seen two women my size become household names: actor Gabourey Sidibe and plus size designer Ashley Nell Tipton.

As a fat woman, these two had not just been breaths of fresh air, but indicators that more might be possible. That people who look like me could find their way into places we weren’t expected, and often weren’t welcomed. That people who looked like me belonged in front of the camera just as much as behind it. It is extraordinarily rare to look up to someone with a body like mine. It is rarer still for those women to be lifted up in media. That moment — of seeing and knowing bodies like mine in media — became a fleeting one.

What It Means To Become The ‘Fat Friend’
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Sidibe and Tipton both announced this year that they’d had weight loss surgery. Some — mostly thin body positivity activists — have congratulated Sidibe and Tipton for what they see as positive choices to benefit their health. Others — mostly fat activists — have responded with frustration or anger at losing two of the very few, very fat people who have ascended such great heights. These losses cut deep — not because of their individual decisions about their own bodies, but because it reminds fat people of how we’re seen, and often, how we’re forced to see ourselves. The ways in which we are expected to sacrifice our bodies for the comfort of those around us.

I am reminded of all of that, and of what it means to lose someone you’ve loved and looked up to — the familiar drift of formerly fat friends into thinness. I’m bracing myself for the crash.

But the longer I sit with the reality of losing two icons that have bodies like mine, the more I think of my college friend. I think of the ways in which her mother’s cutting remarks whittled away at her sense of self, the fear of facing an airplane full of disdainful passengers, the exhaustion of fending off strangers’ comments on her groceries at the store. She was constantly pitted against her body, made to choose between cutting out a vital organ, or continuing to live the tiresome life of a very fat person.

Her decisions are her own, as all of ours are. But often, weight loss was posited as the only way out of the heavy rainfall that eroded her sense of self: first topsoil, then clay, then bedrock. In the face of unrelenting bullying and rejection from all sides, fat people are told our only option is to forsake the only bodies we have.

I wonder about my friend, and what her body looks like now. Whether it has found its way back to its old shape, as so many do, or if she has stayed thin. I wonder if her mother still speaks to her so dismissively and unkindly. I wonder if she still feels the warmth of thinness on her shrinking skin, slipping into a new life like a witness under protection. I wonder if she found love with those who used to hate her. I wonder if she is happy. I wonder if she’s found the acceptance she was looking for.

What is so often lost in conversations about weight loss surgery is the untold story of the constant pressure fat people are under to lose weight. Not just some weight, but as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible. And then we’re expected to lose more. For fat people in the spotlight — especially very fat people, very fat women, and triply for very fat women of color — that pressure warps and magnifies, fortified by so many people’s beliefs that we are entitled to others’ bodies, especially fat bodies, women’s bodies, and bodies of color.

Of course, all of us should be able to make whatever decisions we like with regard to our own bodies. And of course, I’m here for all of those choices. But for some of us, only one option is made available. And we are taught that it’s the only way to reclaim our own bodies, to succeed in our careers, to stem the tide of rejection visited upon us, and to gain the love and acceptance of those around us.

What Happens When One Fat Patient Sees A Doctor
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I cannot claim to know the intricacies of Gabourey Sidibe or Ashley Nell Tipton’s life decisions. I cannot know how many jobs they lost for being too fat to be seen, and how that shifted their expectations over time. I cannot know how many colleagues spoke to them with syrupy concern or outright rejection. I cannot know the diagnoses or conversations with doctors that shaped their decisions. And I cannot — and will not — judge their decisions.

But I do know that the deck is stacked against fat people staying fat, keeping the bodies that have cared for us all this time. Our character, will, strength, worth, and health are all judged on the size of our skin. We are told that others’ behavior hinges on our size — that if we resisted our own bodies, they wouldn’t be forced to treat us poorly, mock us openly, or disregard our most basic needs. The only path to respect, we are told clearly and repeatedly, isn’t to request it from those around us, but to transform our bodies completely and immediately. For some of us, the only affirmation we receive comes when we lose weight.

As people living in fat bodies, our choices about our bodies are never fully our own — always swayed or sunken by the pressures of media, family, friends, doctors, strangers on the street. Everyone has an opinion on our bodies, and those opinions are asserted freely at every turn.

For very fat people, weight loss surgery is never as simple as a matter of health, and is rarely a decision offered freely to us amongst an array of options. Yes, I support the choices fat people make to lose weight. I just wish it weren’t the only choice available.