It’s Still Not Okay To Fat Shame People, Even If They Are Really, Really, Really Bad

It is the year 2024 — the future, if you will — and we all now realize that it is shitty to make fun of people for their weight. I was going to make an exception in that “we all” for Republicans, but I don’t think they’re unaware so much as they don’t care if they are shitty or not.

Many of us lived through the fat-shaming horrors of the late 1990s and 2000s, during which we saw too many of our friends hospitalized for eating disorders, too many pop starlets viciously dragged in the media for gaining three pounds, and perhaps even attempted the “Special K Diet” one too many times ourselves — and I’d like to think that most of us never want to go back.

But in case you forget what it was like, allow me to remind you that there was a whole subplot in a hit Christmas movie about this woman being hideously overweight.

We’re in a medium better-ish place now. It’s a place where we can even have female characters on television and movies without their size and eating habits being a plot-line, but still a place where terrible people get very, very mad and upset about those women being on television or in movies or in Sports Illustrated. It’s a place where stores have plus-sized mannequins and yet still have special, yet entirely pointless, plus-size sections? Why? I have no damned idea, but it’s very inconvenient for me as a tall, mid-sized person who can go either way depending on the garment.

Where we are realy failing, however, is with this idea that it’s still acceptable for “good people” to make fun of someone’s weight … so long as that person is a really bad person.

I can’t find the tweet where it came up last week, but someone made the very polite request that, when legitimately criticizing things Amy Schumer has said and done, people kindly refrain from criticizing her for her weight — which has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. It was particularly notable because all of these people, who surely consider themselves wonderful, kind, woke people, reacted quite bitterly and outright refused. Because how can you really drive it home that someone is racist unless you can also call them fat?

It’s also, obviously, been an ongoing issue with Trump criticism.

Now, the last place I would ever want to be is a place where I am defending Donald Trump or seeking to protect his feelings — and that is not remotely what I am doing here. The thing is, there are more people in the world than Donald Trump and when you make fun of Trump for being fat or express disgust at his weight, you are hurting them a lot more than you are hurting him.

But since it’s a hill a whole lot of people seem to want to die on, I’d like to take a minute to go over exactly why fat-shaming and fatphobia — like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. — do not suddenly become acceptable just because a person who really sucks happens to also be fat.

Yeah, there is a 99.99999999999% chance that Donald Trump or whoever is never going to see or hear anything you write or say. But you know who will? People who have nothing the fuck to do with Donald Trump, people who are your friends, your allies and maybe even some people who aren’t, but still don’t deserve that. Because it’s shitty.

I do not! But that is exactly why you should have way more material than just “Ew, they’re fat.” Call me crazy, but I don’t actually want to live in the world where “fat” is the worst thing we could call, for instance, a genocidal maniac or serial killer or racist or the nightmare president from hell. That is a world with some truly fucked up priorities.

And, you know, unfortunately that is often the world we live in, which is why fat shaming is so much more fucked up than other insults, even insults about some other immutable physical attributes (which are not great either!). I have a hard time buying hats, but we don’t live in a world where we consider having a somewhat large head to be a moral failing of any kind. It doesn’t have the same baggage, it doesn’t come with the same amount of venom and vitriol.

A) You can’t tell whether or not people are “healthy” just by looking at them.

B) Fuck off

No one actually believes this and it’s very clear that the people who claim it just want a pass to bully fat people without anyone thinking that they are a bad person.

I promise you. People who are fat are thoroughly aware that they are fat. They are also aware that many people are judging them, regardless of what they are saying out loud. This idea that making fun of fat people is a beautiful mitzvah that will result in them “getting healthy” and later thanking you for saving their very life with your motivational cruelty is absolutely insane and also not how bullying works.

If “bullying” worked that way, I would probably be a devoutly Catholic Trump supporter with straight blonde hair, no opinions about anything, and, I assume, dressing like I have physically been inside of a Talbot’s before … and we all see how well that worked out.

Is it something that involves doing or saying something terrible? Is it a matter of personal choice? Have at!

Is it something someone can’t help or cannot quickly fix (without a lot of money)? Keep your mouth shut.

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We all have blind spots when it comes to these things and we can all, you know, “do better.” I’ve certainly said some things I regret over the years and I’m grateful that people have pointed them out to me — because it’s important to me to be a kind person.

I’m sure it’s important to you as well, so the next time you really, really feel like making fun of a terrible person for being “fat,” consider what actually makes them terrible and go for that instead.

OPEN THREAD.