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.

Disgusting - and outrageous! Sadly, very believable. Pretty sad how people have to mock and deride, and put other people down for doing things to improve their health, because they have such a bee in their bonnet about being too weak and pathetic to do said thing themselves.

DH is teetotal, and has been Royally mocked so much over the past 7-8 years (since he went teetotal,) that he stopped going out with the people who mocked him ... According to some, you're not a real man if you don't drink 13 pints in one night - or neck half a litre of whiskey in one sitting. Looking at the state of some of the men who 'like their booze,' and looking at my teetotal DH, I know which one I prefer.

As for the subject of this thread; the hatred and bile aimed at thin/slim people is disgusting. Even when I lost weight several ago - and went down 4 dress sizes, I always had some arsehole trying to shove cream cakes and chocolate on me, because they were sooooo jealous that I was losing weight, and they didn't have the willpower to do it.

I am still quite careful with what I eat - as I don't want to regain the weight, and when I'm out for a meal, (with a number of people, like work colleagues,) there is always some twat who has to comment on me not having a huge portion of food. I can only imagine the outrage and anger if I pointed at their plate and said 'fuck me! Look how much foooood you have on that plate! That would feed a small African country for a week.'

I disagree. I have a friend who is perimenopausal. I spend loads of times with her. She eats a tiny fraction of what I eat. She once went on a liquid diet for a week and didn’t lose one pound. She simply cannot lose weight and is a couple of stone overweight. What she eats is healthy too. She doesn’t drink any alcohol and has early nights etc.

She is definitely ‘naturally fat’. And never describes herself as big-boned.

You can keep saying this as much as you like.

It is still absolute nonsense.

@SixNewThreads Despite your friend apparently not losing a single gram even after being on a liquid diet for a week, there is still no such thing as being naturally fat.

FFS, what is wrong with people on here today?! Surely NO-ONE thinks this in real life. This thread has gone batshit now. If you said that to anyone in real life - that people can be naturally fat - they'd take the piss. Because it's nonsense!

Utter drivel, have you considered that perhaps she is not being honest? If someone wants to lose weight and there is no underlying medical condition, they can.

So it's impossible for some people to gain weight...they could eat endless chocolate bars and chips and other high calorie food and never ever put on weight. But it can't work the other way round?

Why is it that more poor people have a slow metabolism and 'choose' to ignore it than wealthier people?

Why is it that 98% of dieters regain the weight they lose?

If someone obese has chosen time and time again through their life to lose weight and been on countless diets and tried medical interventions and of course tried 'changing their lifestyle' by eating less and moving more and has lost several stones multiple times in their life, why is it that the process gets harder every time and they gain more weight back every time? We all know that diets do not work long term, and we know that eating less and moving more is a diet - there is no quantifiable difference between a diet and a lifestyle change - and it's proven over and over that dieting makes people heavier over time, except for a tiny minority who do keep it off for more than five years. People engaging with this cycle are not CHOOSING to be fat, they are devoting a lot of time and energy and money and effort to losing weight but it doesn't happen for most people - within five years, that weight comes back for nearly everyone.

Correct. FINALLY you are getting it.

@TinyRowboats

Nice long rant, but still NOBODY is naturally fat! NOBODY!

Fuck me I've had enough. This thread is fucking bonkers. I'm off for a walk in the sunshine!

I mean, there are plenty of social, emotional, economic, cultural, genetic, physical and medical factors involved in determining a person's weight but if you don't understand that, then it's fine, you can carry on believing what you want. It doesn't make you right.

Nobody is naturally obese without a medical condition but surely some people are naturally chubby at least? I definitely know people who seem to eat less/better than me but are heavier… people have different metabolisms don’t they?

This still doesn’t make any sense to me. Fat or thin people are not asking for other people to make comments about their bodies. Just because someone thin might be telling you the comments are hurtful doesn’t mean the solution is… to put on weight? Why would that be the solution? The solution is for other people to stop commenting! I’m not telling anyone who is fat to lose weight to stop the comments because I am living proof it bloody doesn’t matter, someone will find some way to put you down. No one should change their weight for other people’s satisfaction.

Also do you have zero awareness of things like fortified meals and how people who are underweight might be given a diet plan to follow to gain weight including supplements, it’s not mainstream as we are in an obesity epidemic according to statistics. If we had an epidemic of people with a dangerously low BMI i.e some kind of catastrophic world wide famine event (possible in nuclear war) there would be this help available to them to help them gain weight and prevent all kinds of deficiencies. I feel like you are reaching so deep into the fat phobia topic you are in Australia now. No I don’t want to be fat again as I got diagnosed with a health condition that was able to be treated/reversed by lifestyle changes but according to your logic I should prefer to have diabetes than comments on my thinner body.. so stop complaining?

Move more eat less is said to fat people and eat more move less is said to thin people. You can’t blame everyone thin for what is in the MSM or for creating beauty standards, all women are in the same boat together, next year it might be the BBL’s back in fashion and all of us with pancake asses are back on the MSM scrap heap again. It’s well researched that men’s ideal shape is the hour glass figure - I don’t have one of them, I don’t meet this standard either. Ashley Graham is one of the most beautiful women in the world and she isn’t skinny. Maybe if we all worked together we could stop being raging jealous and resentful about each other competing for who has it worst and what we don’t have and learn to all just accept each other for all our individuality and that as WOMEN we experience a lot of negativity about our appearances and stop commenting either way. That would help

There must be a medical condition for this. Her body needs energy to work. This comes in the form of food. If you don't have enough food, the energy will be taken from your body.
It also doesn't matter what form the calories are in - liquid or 'healthy', if you take on enough you won't lose weight.

If anyone wants to put on weight and there's no underlying health condition, they can

Fact is, most thin people enjoy being thin. They can tell us that they can't put on weight but most people if they hugely increased their calorie intake could. Stop pretending. Just own it, you like being thin. There's no shame to it for heavens sake.

As for people being rude about you, tell them to piss off but don't pretend that your self esteem and feelings have being entirely decimated. You're pissed off at the rudeness understandably but that's about it. Their comments haven't left you hating yourself

Where were all the naturally fat people fifty years ago?

Some people have larger appetites than others plus different genetics and metabolism. So people can be naturally bigger or thinner than others. Bullies are going to find a way to insult someone no matter what they look like let’s be honest.

We don’t tend to live in vast food deserts in the U.K. and we have a benefits system. I can absolutely see why countries with these issues have problems but we are a much smaller island and obesity was prevalent in the U.K. before the current cost of living crisis but it’s clearly linked to poverty and deprivation for lots of reasons. The tories got rid of all of labours efforts with healthy start etc in the 2000’s but if you look at the factors, they do all come back to over consumption not under consumption. Under all the social-economic reasons, it’s CICO - I agree it’s the governments decisions that push people towards faster, easier, cheaper options but the science is the science in thermodynamics.

Over consumption -
-UPF and fast food accessibility and cost
-Brexit - pushing up cost of food imports

• lack of cooking equipment, lack of cooking skills

-Poor Education on nutrition -people working more jobs and more hours to make ends meet, less time to prepare food -lack of time generally for self care due to work, children etc -income, lack of cars to get to decent shops for fresh produce -the way food is advertised -people drinking more alcohol to cope with life -lack of mental health services to help people with depression and anxiety -genetic factors, predisposition to health conditions -lack of access to good healthcare -lack of physical activity due to long hours in desk jobs or cars or disability

It’s cheaper and easier generally to feed your family frozen pizza and chips, a working parent exhausted - this was me for a long time. Being stuck on universal credit while working and paying high rent, couldn’t really give any energy to my food intake. There are people who have health conditions or disabilities which are major contributing factors. But science is science it’s just not enough to solve the issue by eating less and moving more until you solve the complex social and economic issues around over consumption of food. So it is a pointless trope that goes nowhere

It’s ok to frame this in wider context rather than just jabbing away that people are too stupid and vapid to get it. It clearly is not all down to health and genetics. I wish people would stop harbouring on this one point. Move more eating less is the basics of the science entangled with so many other factors as to why it’s not that simple

Swap “thin” for “fat” in your paragraph. Not so nice, is it?

Actually, it’s not as simple as eating more calories. Some people have a really fast metabolism and/or their bodies just burn the extra calories. I’d like to put on some weight, but even logging my food intake on an app and aiming for a high amount of calories day after day after day, I still didn’t put weight on. I have to eat lots to maintain my weight. If I take my eye off the ball or have two or three days illness, the weight drops off.

But most fat people don't actually like being fat so changing the word thin to fat is irrelevant. Thin is revered in society and being fat is seen as something you need to change.

She is honest. We are close and I have been away with her. We are in our fifties and have no reason to lie. She didn’t even lose weight when she had an op and was nil by mouth and on fluids for days.

Maybe eating got her to this point once. But for the last four years I can swear she is ‘fat’ despite all efforts. She does more exercise and is fitter than me. Like my daughter cannot gain weight whatever she does. I don’t see what’s hard to understand about this.

If I eat less for four days, I lose a few pounds. Despite only being just over seven stones. We are all very different.

I was watching TPTV on Sunday night. It was a short documentary about coach trips around the country made in the sixties. Most of the trippers were larger ladies. I'm not sure where we get this idea that nobody was fat years ago, but it isn't actually true. I am 50. My great grandma was a large lady, I remember her clearly. As was my lovely great aunt.
What WAS less common was larger children.

Yes middle aged post menopausal women decades ago were often pretty large...like you I've seen it on old TV shows etc. My own grandmother was like that too.

I read a book about famine and interestingly middle aged women are generally the ones who are most likely to survive it. Make of that what you will.

Agree with you, OP. Nobody should be making comments on anyone's weight. I was criticised a lot for being 'skinny' when I was younger. It was my natural build and I couldn't put weight on even if I tried. The comments made me feel incredibly self-conscious and insecure about myself. I started to hide my body under clothes. It was awful.