All people have some level of privilege. This doesn’t mean their lives aren’t hard — it may just mean that their race, socioeconomic class, gender, etc., isn’t what’s making it hard for them at an institutional level.

While white privilege is most frequently brought up in these discussions, a recent viral Twitter thread has brought attention to the privilege that comes with being perceived as thin.

Lingerie blogger Cora Harrington tweeted, “Hey, you don’t have to ‘feel thin’ to have thin privilege. Thinness isn’t a feeling. If other people perceive you as thin, you are thin. If you are able to walk into any clothing store and expect to see a wide range of options in your size, you are thin.”

Hey, you don’t have to “feel thin” to have thin privilege.

Thinness isn’t a feeling. If other people perceive you as thin, you are thin. If you are able to walk into any clothing store and expect to see a wide range of options in your size, you are thin.

— Cora Harrington (@lingerie_addict) July 22, 2018

Harrington’s thread mostly focused on evidence of thin privilege in daily interactions. As a thin person, she writes, no one sneers in disgust at her eating junk food or groans when they are seated next to her on an airplane. Evidence of systemic weight discrimination has also been extensively documented.

Michigan is the only state in the U.S. with an explicit law banning weight discrimination in the workplace. This means that in 49 states, an employer can legally fire people based on their weight. And while this technically means people can be fired for being thin, that’s unlikely to be the case.

A study published in the journal Plos Onefound that women are more likely to face weight discrimination in the workplace than men, even when their body mass index is within the healthy range. The researchers had 120 participants rate photos of equally qualified men and women based on hireability. While no statistically significant difference was found between original and “heavier” photos of men, “heavier” women were evaluated negatively.

It’s common knowledge that obesity is correlated with serious health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and certain types of cancer. But oddly, obese patients receive worse care than patients with a healthy BMI. Research from Obesity Reviews found doctors spend less time with and fail to order diagnostic tests for obese patients. Instead, they tell them to lose weight. And more than half of primary-care physicians in a 2003 survey admitted viewing obese patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly, and noncompliant.”

This was the experience of cancer survivor Rebecca Hiles. In an essay for Cosmopolitan, Hiles wrote about doctors telling her that years of severe coughing fits were due to her weight. By the time she was diagnosed five years after her symptoms started, her left lung had to be removed.

Thin privilege is really just a symptom of fatphobia, an insidious form of prejudice that permeates the lives of about 1 in 3 Americans. While some people may argue that being overweight is a choice — ignoring how poverty and food deserts contribute to obesity — that is still no reason for Americans to be discriminated against in the workplace and denied life-saving health care. By starting a conversation about what thin people don’t have to endure, activists are rightfully bringing attention to the ways overweight and obese people are unfairly treated as second-class citizens.