Body shaming at its absolute worst... thoughts please.

I_Will_End_You

I agree with her, but I don't think it had to have been said in such a manner. Using "fatty" over and over again...meh. Grow up.


This part is dead on, though:

We live in a society in which it has become OK to shame people for being skinny, but to come out and say 'You’re fat. Not healthy, not a good look' would be tantamount to a crime.

runitskat

I will never understand why people care so much (or at all) about bodies that are not theirs.

jmv7117

Someone being honest on the Internet?? Quick flame her!

I support this article and the author.

While I don't entirely disagree with some of the points that she made, there's a difference between being honest, yet tactful, and being an *kitten*. Calling people "fatties" is ****ish, at best. Her points are largely lost in her tactless writing, and I agree with some of the other people that have stated that it says more about her own insecurities about having any amount of fat on her body. Frankly, I'm glad she doesn't have a daughter. From the sounds of the article, the poor girl would be driven into one eating disorder or another by an overly-critical mother (I've seen just such a thing happen on more than one occasion).

So calling someone anorexic (which is socially acceptable for some reason) is better or more allowed then calling someone who is obese a fatty.

Nope.

My take on it: anorexic = psychological disorder which is perfectly acceptable, even glorified in some situations; calling someone who is obese = stating a fact; calling someone who is obese fatty = derogatory and rude

QuietBloom

The best thing in the article is that the author says she says she doesn't have a daughter.

Thank you for summarizing the article so succinctly. Now I don't have to waste precious time reading it.

Dragonwolf

Someone being honest on the Internet?? Quick flame her!

I support this article and the author.

While I don't entirely disagree with some of the points that she made, there's a difference between being honest, yet tactful, and being an *kitten*. Calling people "fatties" is ****ish, at best. Her points are largely lost in her tactless writing, and I agree with some of the other people that have stated that it says more about her own insecurities about having any amount of fat on her body. Frankly, I'm glad she doesn't have a daughter. From the sounds of the article, the poor girl would be driven into one eating disorder or another by an overly-critical mother (I've seen just such a thing happen on more than one occasion).

So calling someone anorexic (which is socially acceptable for some reason) is better or more allowed then calling someone who is obese a fatty.

Nope.

I never called anyone anorexic, nor do I think doing so, unless they actually are anorexic, is okay. When someone actually does suffer from anorexia, then anorexic is a correct term to use and is no different than using "diabetic" to refer to someone who has diabetes, as both are actual medical diagnoses. "Fatty" is not.

Calling out the red flags for an eating disorder (on either end of the spectrum) probably should be done more often. However, there are still ways to do it tactfully, and name-calling is not one such way.

What I did say, though, is that the attitude portrayed by the article's author suggests that she would put quite a bit of pressure on her daughter (had she had one) that would have very likely resulted in an eating disorder of some sort, for a fear of getting "fat" in her mother's eyes that would likely have ingrained into her. Such relationships between mothers and daughters aren't exactly bastions of healthy relationships with food.

HannahLynn91

Another thread featuring this article is going around too. Yeah... its really bad.

She could have made the same point... in a lot nicer way.

IMO, she lost all credibility by name calling and coming off as disgusted, acting as if overweight people should be banned from being outside and enjoying LIFE.

Also by assuming that all "fatties" are fat because they are lazy or whatnot.

She doesn't seem like a very nice person.

sak20011

I really disagree with the near exclusive focus on women. Women's bodies are always the object of scrutiny--whether objectification or ridicule. And it is probably why women suffer far more eating disorders than men.

This is particularly egregious considering that (in the US at least) the percentage of overweight men is greater than overweight women (74 versus 64 percent) although rates of obesity are exactly the same (36%). Why the hatred for fat girls and women rather than the disgust with a society that makes obesity easy, profitable and cheap, and health hard?

There is a very real obesity epidemic in this country, and elsewhere, but the target should not be (as it is here) shaming women, especially young vulnerable women. Why not the same disgust and vitriol for Big Food companies that put HFCS in everything, even bread and soup? Why not anger at schools that cut physical education out of the day? Why not the companies that make fruit drinks more available, and cheaper, than whole fruit? Why not the marketing of candy to kids? why not the restaurant chains that pump thousands of calories into a sandwich? We need to educate facilities, and communities, particularly lower income communities where fruit soda is easier to get than an apple. Personal responsibility plays a huge role, but so does community, society and education.

Its like blaming the entire housing crisis on greedy consumers who took out too much debt, without taking to task the banks and companies that made profits hand over fist from pushing huge high risk mortgage on uneducated consumers.

JoeCampbell85

I will never understand why people care so much (or at all) about bodies that are not theirs.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

It raises healthcare cost for everyone. Insurance premiums rise. Medical bills rise. That's just the money side of it.

Not to mention, that it causes an enormous amount of pain to families. My uncle died at 55 from obesity-related illnesses. It wrecked his family. We are a member of society. We don't live in these little bubbles where our actions only affect ourselves.

Lalasharni

Linda Kelsey should (IMHO) butt out.
How we dress is totally up to us. I wouldn't dream of telling anyone what to, or what not to wear, if they are comfortable with it in their own skin.
If they look wrong, then so be it. They make their own choices and then, so be it.
I am a 66 year old biker girl (yes - girl) and I wear leather, denim, lace, boots, short skirts and spandex leggings, and I am not skinny Minnie. I wear it because I like it. If anyone else doesn't like it, then tough ti**y. I'll still wear it. That's my style.

Yes - I've looked at people and thought "you really shouldn't be wearing that" but its only in my thoughts - I would never give public voice to those thoughts. Live and let live I say, all down the line.

I agree however that we are in the midst of a melt-down obesity epidemic - that's why we are all sharing thoughts on this site, and I include myself. I am a few pounds away from being "just overweight" and not "obese" but I lose the weight because I choose to and not because I'm told that I must.

If those young ladies in the airport are happy that they will probably be type 2's in a few years, and that they really don't look good in their chosen threads, then fair enough. It's their choice. If you don't like to look, the look away.

Publicizing personal fat phobia is the prerogative of our freedom of expression, but constructively please, and I hope that the photographs published had the subjects' permission.

And one final comment - that's why I never read newspapers. I have plenty of opinions of my own, thank you!

jbrownnolan

I agree with the article.

i was talking about this with my bf the other night, the young generation is mostly fat and they dont care. They are developing unhealthy life styles, it is gross to see rolls and dimples.

Who wants to spend their prime being unhealthy?

And why should the cost of our health care increase simply because people dont care about themselves?

Obesity should be warred on just like cigarettes and drugs, it is an overwhelming epidemic and a sad statement on how society is losing respect for itself.

If it takes shame to make people aware so be it. I wont coddle "feelings."

Put the chips down, cover up approropriately and get on a life style change.

^This, agreed.

It's not just the coddling about being overweight, it the coddling about everything! We are letting out kids grow up in a society where adults feel they have to tip toe around children in fear the may develop some sort of disease because we "accidently" did or said the wrong thing and hurt their feelings (ex. "I made my kid clean his room too many times, so now he has OCD", stupid, yes, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a parent out there claiming that one). Hey, if my kid comes down wearing something I don't approve of, or I see them acting in a behaviour I don't agree with, or if I see then with a food choice I don't think they should have, I let them know, I help them fix it (if they need my help) and then we get on with our lives.

Obesity should be warned, just like cigarettes and drugs, the problem with obesity is, we don't need cigarettes or drugs for our bodies to function property day to day, but we do need food to survive, so we can't just get rid of the food, but we can start with educating our own children and setting great examples so that when they have the chance to make their own choices, they choose the good and to "Just Say No", not to just the cigarettes and drugs, but to the unhealthy foods as well.

Supertact

I will never understand why people care so much (or at all) about bodies that are not theirs.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

It raises healthcare cost for everyone. Insurance premiums rise. Medical bills rise. That's just the money side of it.

Not to mention, that it causes an enormous amount of pain to families. My uncle died at 55 from obesity-related illnesses. It wrecked his family. We are a member of society. We don't live in these little bubbles where our actions only affect ourselves.

The truth!

Skrib69

This is a good article lost in sensationalist vitriol to grab your attention. A shame really because she makes a good point about needing to be healthy, leading by example, and the inequality of the extreme ends of the scale.

stealthq

Personally, I would be happy if general practitioners would grow a pair and inform their actual, clinically overweight or obese patients that they are, in fact, fat and need to take steps to lose the weight for their health.

I know several people who are clinically obese or overweight and their GPs have said NOTHING to them during their checkups. So, these people believe they must be fine to keep on keeping on. WTF?

The rest of us would be better off just keeping our noses out of other peoples' business unless asked.

I will not apologize for privately held opinions of others' appearance, though. Anyone who tells me that they don't ever look at another human being and form an initial opinion about them based on their looks is flat out lying. Unless they're blind.

KnM0107

While I thought the way the piece was written was childish, I completely agree with the overall message. Childhood obesity really hits home for me because I was obese by 4th grade. My family tiptoed around the issue "not wanting to hurt my feelings". I continued to expand to 250+ pounds by high school. I wish my parents would have understood that it was a HUGE problem. I wish my feelings would have been hurt. Maybe then I could have avoided my body being hurt.

It does frustrate me when I see overweight and obese parents raising obese kids. I hear parents brag about how much "Junior" can eat, while he is clearly obese for his age (this is going on in my family now). The same parents then criticize the other kids in his class as being sticks, or malnourished or assume they don't get fed. They are actually healthy weight kids. I don't say what I want to because I know the war it would start. The kids are really the ones who suffer and if something doesn't change they will continue to suffer into adulthood.

bidimus

I'm going to caveat this with the fact that I'm not going to read the article based solely on comments in this thread. What I will share are some relevant opinions.

Is obesity attractive? Not really. Is it ugly? Not really. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Should anyone feel ashamed of their body? Never and I say that as someone who wouldn't even wear shorts until his late 30's because I was embarrassed of my body. Even today after a lot of weight loss you'll never see me in a tank top or shirtless.

It is NEVER ok to shame anyone for who they are regardless of who that is.

With that said, I am astonished when I see people justify their obesity in the name of self respect. They tell themselves that everything is ok because they're happy. Then they pile up their plates with bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, and tater tots two inches thick walk across the cafeteria to their seat, sit down, and catch their breath before cleaning their plate. (This is a true story btw. I see this regularly.)

I'm a hypocrite too as I was this person once upon a time. I was ok with being obese because I learned to love "who I was". I became comfortable and complacent in my over sized body. Once I started losing weight (as a side effect of wanting to become a runner) I discovered that I was trapped in my skin all that time and there was an adventurer in that body wanting to get out.

I was lucky that I learned the secret that I didn't have to live that way. These people need that message too but not by shaming them into it. In my opinion they need encouragement. For starters we need to set an example by living the best life we can and not forgetting about where we came from. Then we need to educate them of the value of a healthy lifestyle.

We can't force them to get healthier but we can help them see they have other options. They are the ones that need to take that first step and when/if they do, they'll need our support. Not our criticism.

stealthq

I will never understand why people care so much (or at all) about bodies that are not theirs.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

It raises healthcare cost for everyone. Insurance premiums rise. Medical bills rise. That's just the money side of it.

Not to mention, that it causes an enormous amount of pain to families. My uncle died at 55 from obesity-related illnesses. It wrecked his family. We are a member of society. We don't live in these little bubbles where our actions only affect ourselves.

The truth!

Yeah?

Unless you are protecting yourself in the aforementioned bubble (this one of safety and health), you are almost guaranteed to be practicing something in your life that also contributes to increasing medical insurance rates whether you realize it or not. We all do. Obesity just happens to be nice and visible. Makes a good target.

Dragonwolf

We live in a society in which it has become OK to shame people for being skinny, but to come out and say 'You’re fat. Not healthy, not a good look' would be tantamount to a crime.

It's about time we stopped tiptoeing around the size issue, stopped kidding ourselves that anorexia, however serious, is the biggest eating problem we face, and started to tackle fat for the problem that it is.

Not because celebrities and models are worthy of emulating but because fat is a blight on both individuals and society.

One way to start might be by calling a fat girl a fat girl. No apology required.

^This.

Fat adjective \ˈfat\: having a lot of extra flesh on your body : having a lot of body fat

When it really comes down to it, its a descriptor. I'm not insulting you by saying you are fat if you are indeed fat. It's not a personal attack, its a fact. It's not like most people don't know it...of course I would never go up to someone and tell them, hey, you're really fat! But it should be ok for a doctor, or a family member, or close friend to say to someone, listen, you have a lot of fat and it's not healthy. I'm worried about you.

Saying that someone is fat should not mean that they are a bad person, lazy, disgusting, etc...it just means that they have extra body fat, which is unhealthy and should not be ignored. Step one of the problem may be reclaiming this word for what it truly should mean, so people can start to have honest conversations about it!

I had a doctor do pretty much exactly that. Given that the reason I had that appointment in the first place was because I was doing everything "right" and still not losing weight, it drove me nearly to suicide. My saving grace was that I was going to my martial arts class right after, where I could spar with people and test my strength and skill (and take out some frustration).

The problem with the idea of telling people they're fat is that it assumes they don't already know. Maybe some people genuinely don't know (though I honestly can't fathom how you can't know when you're 50 or 100lb or more overweight), but most people generally do. They also generally feel pretty powerless to change it, either due to medical reasons, or just lack of knowledge. Telling them what they already know doesn't fix anything.

Yes, I know I'm about 80lb overweight (at least according to the BMI chart, my LBM puts me more at about 50lb of excess body fat). I see it every time I look in the mirror. I see it every time I see someone's weight loss success story. I see it every time I step on the godsforsaken scale and watch as it plays hopscotch around the same median number for months on end. I see it every time I measure myself and find the measurements haven't moved. I see it every time I walk by a "regular" department store, knowing that it's hit-or-miss (at best) whether they'd have anything that I could fit into. I see it every time my husband just thinks about losing weight and manages to drop 10 pounds without really trying. I see it every time I put on something even remotely form-fitting. I do not need to be told this. I am already surrounded by reminders.

What I do need, and what we do need to do for others, is support and suggestions for ways to tweak things. "Eat less and move more" only goes so far as useful advice (I think we can all agree that eating 800 calories and burning 1500 is bad). I need doctors who are willing to work with me to do the tests necessary to rule out medical issues, instead of just assuming that I'm a lazy glutton and lying about my activity level and food intake. I need someone that can objectively review a food journal and help make adjustments if the "eat whatever you want, as long as you're in a calorie deficit" isn't working (either for sustainability reasons or for actual weight loss results).

It also assumes that they got that way because they were lazy gluttons (maybe it shouldn't, but it does). Again, while some certainly did, not everyone did. And even some of the ones who got to their highest weight by being lazy gluttons, haven't stayed at the higher weight because they're lazy gluttons (but rather, because of medical issues caused by their weight or previous way of eating that then hinder the weight loss).

Dr. Peter Attia, for example, exercised for 3-4 hours a day, including swimming the Maui channel and back. He was still overweight, though.

What caused it? Metabolic syndrome.

Basically, his body couldn't tolerate the amount of carbs he was eating (which was the rather typical athlete high-carb diet) and become insulin resistant. Once he decreased the amount of carbs he was taking in, he was able to reverse the metabolic syndrome and lose the weight he had put on.

http://eatingacademy.com/why-i-decided-to-lose-weight
http://eatingacademy.com/how-i-lost-weight

He gained weight not because he was a lazy glutton, but because he was eating a diet that his body couldn't really tolerate and function properly on. Once he changed the way he was eating, he was actually able to eat more food and lose weight, because he got his body working properly again. (And no, I'm not saying he defied physics. I'm saying that dysfunction can affect the actual numbers of the equation such that weight is stored, even when the calculations say it shouldn't be.)

So no, we don't need a blanket "the fat people need to be told they're fat," because you have no idea unless you know them whether they already know. If they really don't know -- and you know this -- then yeah, making them aware may be a necessary thing to do. If they do know and are complacent, then yeah, making them aware of the health implications may be what's necessary. But a lot of people already know they're overweight and are trying to do something about it, and telling them what they already know doesn't solve the problem.

JoeCampbell85

I will never understand why people care so much (or at all) about bodies that are not theirs.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars; the medical costs for people who are obese were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

It raises healthcare cost for everyone. Insurance premiums rise. Medical bills rise. That's just the money side of it.

Not to mention, that it causes an enormous amount of pain to families. My uncle died at 55 from obesity-related illnesses. It wrecked his family. We are a member of society. We don't live in these little bubbles where our actions only affect ourselves.

The truth!

Yeah?

Unless you are protecting yourself in the aforementioned bubble (this one of safety and health), you are almost guaranteed to be practicing something in your life that also contributes to increasing medical insurance rates whether you realize it or not. We all do. Obesity just happens to be nice and visible. Makes a good target.

This is 'almost' a good point. I don't do much that isn't required. I drive a car. I could of course ride a bus but transit in American sprawling cities is a must.

The economic impact is also notable: the lifetime costs of crash-related deaths and injuries among drivers and passengers were $70 billion in 2005.

http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/

I don't really drink. Though, excessive drinkers are most certainly criticized but not as much as they should be. Only stats I can easily find are for excessive alcohol consumption which I don't fall into. But the cost listed is mainly from "lost productivity." Not the same.

The cost of excessive alcohol consumption in the United States in 2006 reached $223.5 billion or about $1.90 per drink

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p1017_alcohol_consumption.html

I could keep this up for awhile but of course. This article is about me and the argument is silly to begin with.

Driving is necessary and I don't drink. I can keep looking up stats if you like.

Obesity serves zero purpose and causes tremendous damage to the economy and society and should be open to criticism just like any other habit of excess (drinking).

Igotthatcake

'One was wearing shockingly skimpy crochet shorts, as seen on size-zero models in adverts'

This line stood out to me and after this I didn't want to read the rest... When have size zero models depicted HEALTH? Why can't big girls wear crochet shorts?. I am also shocked by how many people on here agree with this article. Aren't we supposed to be body confident and encourage each other to feel good about ourselves in the process of out weight loss journeys? I think I signed up to the wrong forum.

JoeCampbell85

'One was wearing shockingly skimpy crochet shorts, as seen on size-zero models in adverts'

This line stood out to me and after this I didn't want to read the rest... When have size zero models depicted HEALTH? Why can't big girls wear crochet shorts?. I am also shocked by how many people on here agree with this article. Aren't we supposed to be body confident and encourage each other to feel good about ourselves in the process of out weight loss journeys? I think I signed up to the wrong forum.

This isn't an article or statement about being supportive during a weight loss journey. In fact, it's quiet the opposite. It's an article about the acceptance of overweight in America.