This is about rape. It is therefore ugly and tragic. Rape is about control, literally a man controlling a woman’s body with his size and his penis.

A woman’s size is also an aspect in how logistically possible it is to rape a woman. Smaller women are easier to throw in the back of a van, easier for a guy and his three buddies to gang up on her and hold her down. Fat women are simply harder to move, and should they move their bigger bodies alone can generate more force than a small woman. They could potentially protect their smaller friends.

Unfortunately the pattern of our white supremacist patriarchal culture teaches that fatter women are ugly, weak, powerless and unhealthy. As if they have to apologize for their very existence. This is how the culture separates fat women from smaller women. Fat women don’t like to go out to clubs or parties because they are made to feel like they don’t belong there, that they will be ridiculed, that they won’t have fun.

Anyone can be raped by someone who has a weapon, but only 11 % of rapes include use of a weapon according to Department of Justice. Intimidation is a tool rapists use on all women, but if fat women were taught instead to glory in their existence, to be intense, courageous and unintimidated. If they could learn that they are beautiful and as deserving of living their best lives as anyone else, could we protect our smaller sisters? Will a small woman be less easily raped if she goes to parties, college, out in public with a fat woman? I’m not aware of a study that has been done on the idea, but maybe we should give it a try.

Perhaps we should shift the conversation about fatness from fat neutrality or fat positivity to fat power and fat liberation in order to end rape.

I owe my ideas on this chiefly to my mother, but also to my sisters and my aunts. Primarily I owe so much of my learning to the Black, Indigenous, Latina, Asian, Pacific Islanders and other women of color on TikTok who have taught me so much since the pandemic. No doubt one of them had this idea long before me. I want to thank the creators of the movie “Paul” and Nick Frost in his role as Clive Gollings who first gave me the idea of fat power.