Last night, Lizzo was trending on social media.
Naturally I clicked, hoping that there was not some other scandal involving her being terrible to her dancers, but it turned out instead that she has lost some weight and shared some lovely pictures and videos on Instagram.
That is nice for her if that’s what she wants — she’s obviously stunning either way and always has been. But what horrified me, truly, were all of the people patting themselves on the back and more or less calling themselves heroes for having supposedly “bullied” her into losing weight.
“Would you look at that…fat shaming works!” said Saucy_Texan, a woman I guarantee you Lizzo has never heard of, “She should thank us all for saving her life.”
“It’s always good to see people better themselves,” said user CalebIsntFunny. “Fat shaming works. Keep it up.”
Well, at least one thing in that sentence was true.
“Fat shaming saves lives,” said one Petey B, who also recently tweeted that “Women need to stay out of politics” because “Their mind isn’t created to lead in such instances and easily manipulated by those that seek to destroy.”
Apparently his mind wasn’t created to understand how to properly conjugate a sentence.
This is hardly surprising given the visceral anger many have had for so many years about Lizzo daring to be famous, daring to feel good about herself and feel beautiful, without their explicit permission to do so. I will say — I honestly have no fucking clue why anyone would prefer to only listen to thin women rap/sing, but that’s their loss.
Now, it’s not really hard to understand why people are mean to others about things like this. I get it, it’s not very hard to understand. They do it because it makes them feel good about themselves in some capacity.
When a woman is the target, there is also the added element of betrayal that she has neglected her duty to be a sex object. Some men are angered by the idea of a woman not working hard for their attention and approval, and some women are pissed off that they put themselves through the wringer while other women don’t feel they have to. In both cases, they’re going to be angry at someone who gets famous based on pure talent, without paying that toll. Again, it’s not that deep.
What I do have a hard time grasping, however, is why they so desperately want their cruelty to be seen as kindness when it would be so much easier to not be an asshole in the first place. They want so badly for people to see that their shitty behavior comes from the goodness of their hearts and I don’t understand why that part of the equation is so very important to them.
I don’t think I’m overstating this. I have seen people fiercely defend being shitty to fat people like they defend no other behavior on earth, and I can almost feel the anguish seeping out of the computer as they desperately try to explain that they “just want people to be healthy.”
Now, we all know that isn’t it, right? Like, in what other context do the kind of people who say this shit ever care about anyone else’s health? Because I really, really doubt there’s a lot of crossover between advocates for single payer healthcare and these assholes.
Hell, I doubt there’s a lot of crossover between these asshats and people who believe in vaccines or that pollution is bad.
I don’t buy that these people really believe this either. They cannot possibly live in this world and be under the impression that people who are overweight — women in particular (because let’s be real, they’re always a little more “concerned” about women’s “health”) — are not well aware of the way our society feels about fat people. They also have to be aware that there are many, many reasons why someone may be fat or thin or midsize that have absolutely nothing to do with “diet and exercise,” because this has been explained to all of them time and time again. People could have PCOS, they could be on a medication that causes them to gain weight no matter what they do, they could have chronic pain that keeps them from being able to do a lot of cardio — you never, ever know what people are dealing with, so it is always best to keep one’s mouth shut. (They also may just prefer to eat what they want and not exercise, and that is still no one’s business but their own.)
To boot, you never know why anyone is thin, either. Now that we have things like Ozempic, it would be especially bizarre to assume that everyone who is thin is thin because of “good living,” diet and exercise.
Lizzo did not get in shape because people on the internet bullied her, she did it in spite of them. She did it for herself, because that is what she felt like doing. That is it, end of story. If these people want a reason to feel good about themselves, they should go out into the world and do something that isn’t shitty instead of patting themselves on the bag for their imaginary motivational cruelty.
It feels like there is a correlation between people who want to be seen as “doing good” for their bullying and Trump supporters who want to be able to say objectively shitty things to people without anyone ever telling them that they are an asshole. It also, admittedly, brings me back to my own experiences in school with administrators informing me that the other kids wouldn’t “have to” devote so much time and effort to making my life a living hell if I would just try to fit in a little more. (Good thing I didn’t, because clearly my sartorial eccentricities and tendency to be a tad opinionated have worked out well for me, while some of them are still walking around with crispy bangs.)
There is only one reason to be mean or to make fun of people, and that is in defense of others or of oneself (and even then, there is no need to ever, ever comment on anyone’s body or something else they can’t help). Otherwise, there is no escaping the fact that you are being a dick. And if you’re going to be a dick, at least own the fact that you’re a dick instead of trying to take credit for things people do for themselves in spite of your dickishness.
OPEN THREAD.
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