athena
athena's JournalWhy Fat-Shaming Is Wrong.
When people fat-shame others, they make excuses that if the person being shamed didn't want to be shamed, they would just lose weight. And they say that fat-shaming is good because being fat is unhealthy.
The reality, however, is that it is impossible to lose weight, and that being fat is not unhealthy.
That may go against everything you have been told to believe, but it happens to be the truth.
Fat-shaming is no different than racism, sexism, or homophobia. When you fat-shame someone, you are shaming them for something they cannot control. When you define fat as "bad" and thin as "good", you are defining one group of people as superior to another group based on nothing more than the genes they were born with.
Here is why it is impossible to lose weight:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/04/why-diets-dont-actually-work-according-to-a-researcher-who-has-studied-them-for-decades
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-weight-on-a-diet.html
And here is why being "overweight" or "obese" is not, in fact, unhealthy, according to decades of scientific research:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/opinion/our-imaginary-weight-problem.html
https://qz.com/550527/obesity-paradox-scientists-now-think-that-being-overweight-is-sometimes-good-for-your-health/
Two wrongs don't make a right.
If fat-shaming is wrong, it is wrong, period. The fact that Trump fat-shames women despite being fat himself doesn't make fat-shaming Trump OK. I suspect that people fat-shame Trump in the hope that he will understand his own hypocrisy or feel bad about his own weight, but that is never going to happen. Trump has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which means he has almost no self-consciousness.
If people want to annoy Trump, they should attack him where it hurts. They should post about how weak Trump is and what a failure he is as president. They should post endlessly about Obama's inauguration crowd size compared to Trump's, and Obama's high popularity compared to Trump's. They should post pictures of Obama being adored by large crowds. Fat-shaming Trump will not hurt Trump, but it is likely to hurt other good people who happen to be fat. Just because you don't mind the fat-shaming of Trump doesn't necessarily mean other fat people don't mind it, either. In the end, fat-shaming anyone propagates the idea that being fat is bad and shameful. And that can only hurt fat people in the long run.
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