Many people wonder what we, here at Tend and Cultivate Counselling, mean when we say we specialize in providing care to people in bigger bodies.

Throughout our website you’ll see a variety of terms and phrases like:

• – fat
• – bigger bodies
• – on the higher end of the weight spectrum
• – plus-size

What we mean when we say “bigger” and “larger” and “fat” might differ from others; these are, after all, relative terms. A “bigger” body in Japan may be quite different from a “bigger” body in Greece or Ghana or Canada.

Our goal, when we use these words, is to identify and acknowledge people who face systemic and institutional violence and oppression simply because of their body size.

We recognize that people in bigger bodies face significant and ongoing harm, violence, and stigma simply because of the size of their body. While bodies have ALWAYS come in a wide range of sizes and abilities and always WILL come in a range of sizes and abilities, dominant culture has created hierarchies that prize and value certain bodies over other bodies.

Body-based oppression is rooted in anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and racism as well as ableism and capitalism. These systems position some bodies as expendable, other bodies as valuable only as long as they’re useful, and still others as being morally superior (typically wealthy, thin, able-bodied, cisgender, white folks).*

Systemic and institutional oppression against bigger bodies takes many, many forms. Despite the fact that body diversity has ALWAYS existed, spaces and places consistently intentionally create spaces and products that dismiss (or worse, harm) larger bodes. Scholar Lauren Munro says that people who are fat not only move through hostile spaces but are marked by them (bruises, scraps, scars) and calls this spatial injustice.

A few examples of systemic oppression that impacts people in larger bodies include:

• – narrow airplane, train, bus, and vehicle seats and seatbelts that only accommodate up to a certain size
• – clothing in most stores that is only available in smaller sizes (and even specialty stores for bigger bodies only go up to certain sizes)
• – birth control and other important medications that are only tested and trusted up to a weight that is below the weight of the average consumer (specifically in the U.S. and Canada)
• – blood pressure cuffs, medical gowns, massage tables, and diagnostic machines (fMRI, for example) that don’t work or fit larger folks
• – furniture that is commonly only weight rated up to 200 pounds
• – workout equipment that is only safe and weight rated for people under 175-250 pounds (ironic, considering the #1 insult flung at fat folks is to exercise more)
• – chairs in hospitals, doctors offices, restaurants, and offices with fixed arms that do not accommodate wide hips
• – lack of discrimination protection (it is legal to discriminate against people in bigger bodies for housing, employment, etc)

And many, many, MANY more.

We understand that in a fat-hating society, many people claim to “feel” fat or claim fatness as a way to express feelings of insecurity, fear, and unhappiness, however our use of the word fat is deliberate, intentional, and specific to those who experience systemic violence because of the size of their body.

We have heard many horror stories of people seeking mental health care only to experience weight-based violence from their therapist or counsellor. Sadly, many mental health professionals fail to understand the damage they can do by suggesting or supporting intentional weight loss, believing their fat clients to be less motivated or capable, or in talking about their own diet or weight loss in front of a client.

Tend and Cultivate Counselling strives to offer trauma-informed, anti-oppressive mental health care to all our clients, however we center the lived experiences and needs of folks in bigger bodies because THERE ARE ALMOST NO PLACES FOR US, BY US.

Instead of making the problem entirely about the body, we hold the complexity of what it means to navigate a world intentionally built to exclude bigger bodies without making wrong the tangled feelings that come with living life in a body that defies convention.

Whether the things you’re struggling with are body related or not, Tend and Cultivate Counselling is here to support your healing practices without diet talk, judgment, or shame.