Skinny shaming is so accepted

[chickenbhunalambbhunaprawnbhunamuchroomrice]

I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but skinny shaming is so wildly accepted and tolerated due to slim people being at an advantage due to their body size. As if it's acceptable, because they're slim. I've been body shamed my whole life for being slim. Right from when I was at junior school, to now at 30 years old.

I was relentlessly bullied at school and college. I am not an anomaly, I am a 5'5 size 6-8 female with a normal BMI. I don't need to be shamed about my body. The only people who have ever shamed or bullied me about my weight have been fat or obese people. And I'll be honest I'm trying my hardest not to judge them for their eating habits and size, but when it's a running theme I am starting to think that only fat people have a problem with slim people.

'Skinny privilege' shouldn't be an excuse to exempt bullying and shameful behaviour.
Stop trying to normalise skinny shaming just because it's the 'more desirable' image. It's not our fault that agenda has been pushed so much.

AIBU to think that skinny shaming is just as bad as fat shaming, and that slim people aren't to an advantage on this? I don't believe in the whole 'well at least you're skinny and being shamed.' Interested to know others thoughts.

You’re really wrong. It’s biology, not lack of discipline, that makes it difficult to maintain weight loss for the majority of people.

This explains it.

So you don’t know what it is like to be skinny shamed. As I thought.

There isn't a single example of skinny shaming on here that isn't also said to fat women. Every cruel example is something that fat women hear throughout their lives. Every single one - a woman's body size in pregnancy, her ability or otherwise to lose weight post partum, her fitness to be a mother, her health, 'concern' about what she eats, monitoring of intake, rude comments about her size and shape, her attractiveness and ability to function, blame for illnesses, on and on - all this stuff is used as a weapon against fat women every single day. We absolutely do not live in a world where people don't dare say this stuff to fat women's faces; they absolutely DO say it to their fat friends, colleagues, family members and random strangers in public. So why not start a thread about the critiques of women's bodies, the toxicity of diet culture and beauty standards and the ways in which this harms us all whatever our size?

It's very revealing of the OP's intentions that instead of doing that, she says she wants slim women to share unpleasant things said to them especially by overweight and obese people. Why specify you want the terrible stories to only have a fat villain and a thin victim? What possible reason, except to try to engineer a thread in which you paint fat women as mean, bitter, jealous, unkind as well as being lazy and greedy and therefore responsible for their own inferior bodies (you have to cast fat bodies as inferior if a crucial part of your narrative is that they're envious of slim women) oh and on top of that you want to insist that fat women are the majority and therefore wield the privilege and are even worse because they're attacking from a position of power.

It's warped, false and really vile. If you want a thread of fat-bashing, they come up on Mumsnet nearly every day. Just start a thread about how pathetic it is that fat women are taking weight loss drugs, or how you saw a fat child eating a burger and wonder if you should call Social Services to report his fat mother for child abuse. These threads are all over this website; there are so many ways in which you can insult and decry fat people on here if you want - go fill your boots, OP! But apparently you want one about how fat people are really mean to slim people in addition to all their other crimes. It's absurd.

Do you know what its like to be fat shamed?

@TinyRowboats I agree with every word of that

What I do know, is that I am morbidly obese due to disabilities, medication and not being able to move.

I'm pretty sure most skinny people won't have been screamed at in public places about how if they weren't so fat, they wouldn't need disabled parking. Or sworn at in restaurants because they dared to eat in public. Constantly laughed at and targeted by abuse from completely random strangers, vile language, assuming I'm thick, that I smell, that my house is unclean, that I don't shower, that I'm greedy and gluttonous and lazy. Shortlisted for jobs, then see them given to someone else with less experience and qualifications, because once they saw me they decided I was too fat for the role. Not being able to get clothes on the high street. And many other instances.

I'm sure it hurts when skinny people are shamed, but it's incomparable to the hate that fat people are the target of. And yes, I have been skinny, and had the piss taken out of me for it 👍

I have been thinking about this, as someone who has been slender and not so slender over the years 😁

If someone body shamed me as a slim person, I would feel annoyed that they felt they had the right to comment on my body, but I would brush it off, because my self esteem was ok.

When I was overweight, I had two under 3 to keep alive and well, and very little time to look after myself. I felt self conscious about my appearance and my mental state was more fragile due to chronic sleep deprivation. Luckily no one openly body shamed me then, but if they had I would have felt more wounded by it and probably have taken it more personally.

Can others relate?

As someone who has been both skinny and fat, I can say that I was never once shamed for being skinny. In fact, even when I was very unwell and very thin because of that, people constantly told me how great I looked when when my hair was falling out due to chemotherapy

Being fat shamed, however was very frequent

That’s awful of them 💐

You reminded me of a time when my skinny body shape was praised by a man - I had just left a ten day stay in hospital! Tosser

I was struggling with an eating disorder and was told that I looked like I’d come back from a concentration camp. People thought it was funny and back then my fucked up brain took it as a compliment.

No. But I assume it is horrid and I would never minimise it or make it out as something to be coveted. I have never fat-shamed or skinny-shamed as I think both are disgusting. You?

Loads of replies on this thread have pretty much just confirmed the OPs point.

Yes, skinny shaming is a thing.
Yes, people can want to be skinny at the same time as making inappropriate comments on a skinny person's body
No, the fact that they may be jealous / that the skinny person is actually happy with their weight doesn't mean that the skinny person should just shrug it off and not let it bother them

The OP posted about skinny shaming. Lots of posters have answered with obersvations about fat shaming which is a different topic

Just because another group 'have it worse' doesn't mean that you should just ignore bullying. Eg it's not acceptable to shame someone for their ginger hair, just because people with afro hair may get worse comments directed at them

@TinyRowboats why are you so pressed about me starting a thread about skinny shaming? Why do you feel the need to race to the bottom?

@JubileeJuice

Did you not read my comment about people telling me I look like a 'road map with speed bumps for bones' when I was going through cancer and chemo at 23? Or when a group of girls would steel and hide my uniform during getting changed after PE, stood there in my underwear in front of a class of 30 and laughed at? That me puking my guts up in a toilet just having chemo and accused of being bulimic?

What you have gone through is awful, but it doesn't discredit or counteract what I've gone through. It's not a race to the bottom, which is what I'm commonly seeing on this thread. What you've been through is horrendous, but I'm just as entitled to feel shamed as you are. Even if I'm in a 'desirable' shape. If my shape was so desirable, then why have I had bashing comments and bullying for the best part of 25 years.

I wouldn't want to walk a mile in your shoes, and I know you wouldn't want to walk a mile in mine.

👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 this!

The OP explicitly compared skinny shaming to fat shaming in her opening post. This was never a thread just about skinny shaming. The OP also explicitly blamed fat people for doing the skinny shaming in her first post.

I have absolutely no problem with a discussion about the ways in which women's bodies are judged, objectified and found wanting in myriad ways. I have no problem hearing the stories of thin women and how this has impacted their lives.

What I do have a major problem with is the OP's insistence on casting the blame at fat women, and at the constant minimising and invalidation of fat women's experiences on this thread. The false claims repeated throughout that fat women don't experience these comments because 'no one can say it to a fat person or all hell breaks loose' - try being a fat person and see if that holds up (it doesn't!). Thin women can talk about skinny shaming but it should be acknowledged that nothing on here isn't also something that's been said to a fat women on a regular basis from childhood for the rest of her life. Fat shaming comments are rife throughout this thread - people purport to condemn body shaming and then say that fat people have brought it on themselves through lack of discipline - the ignorance and double think there is pretty astonishing!

The OP has deliberately set up an anti-fat thread from her very first post. It's not been hijacked by fat people - she attacked them from the beginning and she herself started the comparison of who has it worse!

I've had an ED in my teens/early - mid 20s, and now I've been a healthy weight for 20 years. The thing most people comment on a lot is my height (I'm very short)

I don't think its OK to shame any body size (including height!)

However , and I'm not saying this about the OP, I have seen a lot of almost pro Ana type stuff on MN and I think there are lots of posters with ED. I saw a thread once where there was a poster of a very very thin model, and the poster was questioning whether this was healthy. (Reality, the model could have been naturally extremely thin or they might have had a raging eating disorder and starting a thread about it was a bit pointless)
Almost every other poster was falling over themselves to say they were 5'10, naturally size 4 and had a figure just like the model....but they also happened to love exercise and salad and didn't have a sweet tooth....

Your first post asks the question 'AIBU to think that skinny shaming is as bad as fat shaming?' It’s right there, a direct request to compare the two experiences in your own words.

You started the race to the bottom, not anyone else.

I'm fat but feel enraged for skinny people when I read certain comments on social media.
So there might be an ad with an overweight woman in. And you'll see 'oh at last, an ad with a real woman.'
Ummm, what?
Since when were skinny or slim women not real women And sometimes it's women writing this shit!
It drives me MAD.

@TinyRowboats

You're deliberately cherry picking bits from my thread. I have said time and time again that what fat people go through is awful. I've said time and time again that NO ONE should have comments on their bodies. I've said time and time again that what some of the counts on here that fat people go through, is awful.

The vast majority of bullying and comments I've received are from fat people. That's a fact. I can't change that and nor can you. I am well within my rights to describe the type of people who have been bashing me. I'm not going to not talk about it just because fat people also get shamed. There are many threads on here about fat shaming, I'm perfectly entitled to write one about my experiences.

@TinyRowboats 😂😂😂😂 my god it's like pulling teeth

There's a lot of it on Facebook, lots of men and women writing 'where are the real women' or 'no one wants an ironing board' - awful!

And it's equally as awful when the bullying is on the other end of the spectrum too. It's all just needs to stop.

Well, you asked why people wanted a race to the bottom @chickenbhunalambbhunaprawnbhunamuchroomrice and I'm just pointing out that you did put the question in your first post and people will respond to that question. It's not cherry picking to say that you invited comparison of fat and skinny shaming in your first post and that's why people have compared the two experiences in the thread.

Later, on one of your most recent posts, you upped the ante, asking for slim women to give examples of skinny shaming especially from overweight or obese people - again, your own words. So you don't just want to share your own experiences of being bullied by fat people, you actually want other people to share how fat people specifically have bullied them. Why is that?

This thread is interesting.

Posters like myself are being challenged on why we let skinny hating comments get to us. Questioned about why we should feel bad. Some even comparing us to the All Lives Matter brigade.

It's like some people think we should suck it up. Because it's not as bad as other things. I mean in reality we do because we have to but the lack of acknowledgment that these comments can really sting and be very formative (especially when you are younger and it's from other women, as if you are somehow betraying the Sisterhood) but a surprising me.

The grass isn't greener.

Just the other week I got a comment about if I turned side ways, I'd disappear.