@Vodkacranberryplease re the fat-shaming actually spurring people on to lose weight, I’ve been fat-shamed many many times and it never once made me assess things and lose weight. It did make me feel utterly shit about myself, loathe myself even more than I already did, and trigger comfort eating. The exact opposite of ‘spurring on your lose weight’.
Thankfully I’m now no longer obese or even overweight, but the motivation to address my weight certainly never came from fat-shamers.
Below is an example of some of the fat-shaming I experienced.
I was mocked and ridiculed by adults who were complete strangers to me yet thought it worth their while to interrupt their day to insult the fat woman.
I got spat at on the street, with insults like “hippo”, “cow” and “elephant” hurled at me as I walked past.
I had a man make “beep beep...wide load” noises as I went past him and his mates (all of whom jeered and laughed)
I had a man come up behind me, grab my hips, then stand there holding his hands my hip-width apart asking his mates to guess how wide I was
I got called “the BIGGEST fan” at a concert
I was in a group conversation once when someone said “I was talking to a friend who had liposuction recently” and someone in the group looked at me, sneered and said “well that clearly wasn’t Sammy”
I was staying in a friend’s house once, with loads of others, after a night out. I was lying on cushions on the floor and trying to go to sleep. A man came into the room, looked at my bulk on the floor and said “WHAT is THAT thing??” in a tone of horror.
That’s only a handful of my experiences. I could be here all day were I to tell you them all.
It is hard to describe how detrimental it is to one’s confidence when that is one’s life and experience, all the fucking time.
A few years ago, while I was still obese, a colleague of mine started texting me more frequently, chatting to me more at work, interacting more with me on social media etc. basically trying to move towards getting together with me- and I was very attracted to him and would have loved to move things on. Yet, despite all the advice from my female friends that he was clearly interested in me I could not accept or believe it and instead was terrified that it was an elaborate pigging set up. Because that’s what I was used to and had come to accept. (Side note, he was a very decent and nice guy and would never treat a woman that way, and while part of me knew that about him I still couldn’t accept that he may have been interested in me) He eventually gave up, as he couldn’t see himself getting anywhere with me. Funnily enough, years later we had a chat about that time and what was going on and he was so bewildered by my explanation of what my perception was. But I knew nothing else other than either being mocked and ridiculed or being invisible to men.
That’s what fat-shaming does. And those who do it under the guise of it being ‘tough love’ are nothing but cruel, ignorant bullies.