My perspective on "Fat-shaming" as a formerly obese person.
I don’t understand why people insist that fat-shaming doesn’t work to get people to better their health.
For years and years, I was obese. I started worrying about my weight and going on crash diets with my mother when I was fourteen years old. I kept packing on more weight, and eventually, just gave up trying. After enough time passed, I was stuck at 230 pounds for years, my heaviest weight, but it stabilised.
I almost fell into the HAES trap of Tumblr, and you know what finally fucking got me to pay attention to just how wrong I was? Fat-shaming. A forum I read regularly had a thread on the main page, called “Fat is Beautiful.” I clicked on it, expecting the nice, “you are perfect the way you are”-type sentiments people display here. Oh boy, I was wrong.
That thread was the complete opposite - filled with grotesque pictures of morbidly obese people, leg fungus that escalated so badly looking at it made me want to puke solely because a person got so big they couldn’t reach their own shins to clean themselves (!!!), autopsy photos, people having to be removed with cranes from their houses/apartments, the list goes on.
But it also had some slap-in-the-face hard truths. All these posters were very intelligent people, posting truly useful, unbiased scientific research about the simple truth of thermodynamics and how that translates to the calories in, calories out way that a human body works. They posted endless guides on how to track calories, what exercises to do, how to lift weights properly. If anyone came into the thread to post a picture of a fat person straining in a gym to mock, they in turn were run out of the thread for being assholes. There was a great respect for anyone who was genuinely trying to better themselves. But pictures of people eating a pizza the size of an entire table while guzzling 2L bottles of coke? Yeah. They were subject to some very, very brutal comments.
Body positivity as a whole is a GOOD THING. People should not feel ashamed of the things they cannot change - physical disabilities, scars, quirks they may dislike about their own face or body - but there is a line to be drawn. I’m sorry, but you should feel ashamed if you eat thousands of calories a day while complaining that you “just can’t drop the weight.” You should feel ashamed if you haven’t gotten off your couch for days short of the bare minimums of movement to get food or use the bathroom. You should feel ashamed for discouraging other people from trying to lose weight because you lack the willpower to do it yourself, claiming “diets don’t work” and “fat does not equal unhealthy” (hint: it does. You know you’re bullshitting yourself if you believe this. Deep down you know you are).
Fat-shaming is what made me drop 100 pounds and realise just how full of shit I was trying to convince myself I was fine. I feel a thousand times better physically. I get compliments constantly. People who haven’t seen me in years don’t recognise me. It’s like a new start. A new life. The most frustrating part of this is now, when people ask me what I did to lose the weight and I tell them, they don’t want to hear the truth of “lifestyle change and calorie tracking.” They want a quick fix. A fad diet. This is why people claim diets don’t work. It’s not scientific. It’s laziness and lack of willpower. They don’t want to hear that it took me a year and a half to get where I am.
But guess what? Even I still need true body positivity. A post weight-loss body is not perfect. Beneath my clothes you cannot see the loose skin, the stretch marks, the sagging and nearly-empty breasts, the things I cannot fix short of surgery. And I’m still a thousand times happier now than I was. I want to live this life.
You only have one body, one vessel to carry you through the years. Don’t you think it deserves better?
