ABSTRACT
Over the course of my lifetime I have seen five therapists for more than a session or two. Each time, without fail, I have encountered what I call the thin gaze and with it the assumption that I should want to lose weight. The thin gaze, arising from thin privilege, is the objectifying gaze cast upon the fat person by someone who is not fat. One therapist, a man who himself was fat, assumed that I should want to lose weight because otherwise how could I ever feel desirable? Each time, with all of them, I was angry, though that anger remained unexpressed. Inside, under the anger, I felt shame and pain. Why was what concerned me of so little interest or value? Why was anything I was concerned about automatically filtered through the therapist’s notions about my weight, even when weight was not the object of my concern, at least not then? How was it that when they saw me, they saw my weight more than they saw me, a woman with her own concerns and issues?
