Fat Shaming

Greetings friends.  The primary goal of this blog is to reassure and build self-confidence in the members of the plus-size community.  However, I also have a secondary goal of showing the ‘normals’ what Life in the Fat Lane is really like for us big girls.  What follows is an example of the kind of thing we deal with on a regular basis.

Last week Playboy model Dani Mathers posted a picture on Snapchat body-shaming a complete stranger.  While in the locker room of her gym, Mathers took a picture of a naked woman showering who was not, as they say, beach-body ready.  Mathers captioned the photo “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either” and posted it to Snapchat.   She justified her actions by saying she thought she was sending the picture to one person, not the world.  The gym in question, L.A. Fitness, has permanently banned Mathers from all of their facilities and she has been suspended indefinitely from her regular radio show.  Torrents of people flooded her social media accounts with hate messages causing Mathers to delete her Twitter and Snapchat accounts.  The LAPD is now asking the unknown woman to come forward so that they can press criminal charges against Mathers.

It would appear that Mathers’ life is unraveling before her very eyes, and it should.  Body-shaming in not okay.  But the truth is that Mathers is not the first, nor the last, person to use social media to body-shame.  The only reason we’re talking about her is because she has a small element of celebrity.  Every plus-size girl who has had to change in a school locker room has endured shame and fear.  I remember almost failing gym in high school because I would purposefully ‘forget’ my gym clothes in order to avoid the dreaded locker room.  According to a survey done by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.  81%.  These are kids in elementary school and they’re already well aware of body-shaming.

I’ve tried to have conversations with my ‘normal’ friends about what it’s like to be obese.  They laugh.  They roll their eyes.  They tell me things like that don’t happen.  They insist I’m exaggerating.  But I’m not.  And I didn’t know how to show them.  I didn’t know until now. 

This exercise is for all you ‘normal’ people out there; first I want you to think of that one feature of your body that you absolutely hate.  Maybe it’s a surgical scar.  Maybe it’s stretch marks from pregnancy.  Whatever it is, focus on that flaw.  Now I want you to picture yourself showering in a public place.  Imagine someone taking a picture of you and posting it online along with a caption criticizing your disgusting flaw.  Imagine the media catching wind of the incident and re-posting your naked picture on every outlet available.  You, naked, in front of the entire world.  Now, imagine that happening to you when you were 16.  Imagine the picture spreading through your school like a virus.  Scary shit, huh?

Fat-shaming is real and it happens every day.  I’m happy to see so many people taking a stand against it since the Dani Mathers scandal broke.  Maybe society is making progress.  But the everyday reality for most of us big girls is very different.  People make snide comments all the time.  Strangers would rather stand on the bus than sit in the empty seat next to you.  Travelers get anxious and annoyed seeing their seat on the plane in next to you.  Strangers stare at you while you eat in public restaurants.  You aren’t allowed to sit in your friend’s foldable camping chairs because you exceed the weight limit.  You try to strike up conversations with cute boys but they just look at you with disgust.  These are all real things that have happened to me.

I think I’ve beleaguered this topic long enough.  I’ve made my point.  For all of you ‘normals’ I just ask that you try to see things from our perspective now and again.  If we don’t feel like going to that party, or we know it would be way too painful to try to talk to that cute boy, please don’t push us.  You may not know what the end result will be, but we do.  We know it all too well.