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.

In my experience people who are skinny are praised not bullied. The only time I get annoyed is when a skinny person (ok someone specific I know) claims she doesn't know how she's so thin when she eats so much, when we all know she eats like a fly, skipping meals, not ordering starter or dessert, salad for a main. I couldn't care less about what she orders but don't claim you eat so much when it's obvious it's a dig at us 14+ ladies who enjoy eating

It's funny that there is total acceptance that people can be naturally thin - and actually unable to put on weight, whatever they do. No one is ever challenged when they say that - a thin woman's account of her own body and what she eats or how she exercises is accepted as truth.

But fat people can't be naturally fat. CICO applies without exception - even though the thin women who describe how they have tried eating more to gain weight and never been able to at all are apparently exempt from this otherwise infallible rule. When it comes to fat women, it's choice. When it comes to fat women, it's all about blame. Fat women can't be trusted to give an accurate account of their food and exercise; as well as being lazy, greedy and stupid they're liars too. But that's never applied to thin women (and neither should it be).

I've asked upthread - what about the socioeconomic contributors to weight? What about the impact of dieting, something reliably proven to make people fatter long term - yes, having a history of dieting is a major predictor of being overweight or obese! So making that choice to lose weight, for most people actually makes them gain weight in the end. If someone is fat because they're poor, because they have an eating disorder, because of their natural body shape, because of multiple other reasons that factor into weight gain - are these people choosing to be fat? Or is that just what people tell themselves to justify their own prejudice?

Any advert from a clothing brand using larger than average models are met with a chorus of “it’s great to see normal women”, as if naturally slim women aren’t “normal”.

Thats not what is meant by a normal women though. Naturally slim is also normal, they just mean not looking like a model. And of course models are normal women too but they aren’t too representative of the population because most people aren’t that tall, facially attractive & with good body proportions.

You can’t claim that skinny people are not bullied unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Plenty of people (including me) have given very real examples of bullying on this thread alone.

I could have written your post OP.

Skinny/slim shaming is more than acceptable. Apparently.
I was once told that I was 'fair game for abuse because I was lucky to wake up every morning a Size 10'.
Yes REALLY!

It sucks but I've learned to embrace it especially because, as I've got older, I've realised life could be worse: I could be fat and bitter!

In my 70’s now and bigger but I used to get so many comments. ”Don’t you eat..” “Why are so skinny” etc. and far worse. In a crowd it was far too personal and I found it embarrassing. Wanted to say “why are you so fat” but that would have been very rude.

You’ve missed the point a little bit, as a naturally extremely skinny person and with a seemingly ridiculous metabolism when younger I could eat literally everything in front of me. Weight ‘would not’ go on despite a massive intake of calories. Fast forward to being mid 30’s, my metabolism has slowed and for the first time ever I had to watch what I ate. Eating poorly for a week would literally see the pounds add up.

So I’ve reduced the amount I eat, and do a little more exercise. My BMI is normal but I have to have the willpower to watch what I eat. Let’s be honest here, in the massive majority of cases people are overweight due to a lack of self restraint and/or poor excessive. Love your body, we’re not fat, we’re curvy, you be you.. all ridiculous tropes to mask the fact that as a society we are getting progressively unhealthy.

Being overweight has been normalised, to a point where you can be made to feel as though there is something wrong with you for being a healthy weight.

Some influences aligned with the "fat acceptance" movement in the US actually maintain that being slim is unhealthy and they seem to see it as an implicit form of fat shaming.

You’ve literally proved their point.

@TinyRowboats i had to lose weight because I became diabetic. I did not want to be diabetic as it was going to adversely affect my health. If I was black I would not be able to become not black. If I was disabled I could not become undisabled. I did have a choice. I did not assume everyone has a choice outright anywhere for all circumstances but I had a choice to make. We all to a degree have choices over our own lives. They may be difficult ones and be very challenging, no one chooses to have an eating disorder and no I did not actively choose to be fat either - but I became fat, and unwell and I had to make some hard choices and I had more control over my fatness than I understand someone may have over a restrictive ED because I was able to become no longer fat and no longer diabetic. I did not pay for any treatments or surgeries.

I find it very hard to put obesity as a concept alongside race or disability as they are circumstances of which you have no control over at all and suffer discrimination. Obesity is complex but it has a degree of choices entangled with the decisions people make, which in a lot of cases can be reversed. You can’t reverse your race or a disability

I...don't think it's me who missed the point here!

Because while many people, fat people, think being 'thin', ot 'skinny' is their ideal, so when they see somone naturally that size, they can't deal with it, they only seem sympathetic of the skiiny person has been previously fat.
Not everyone wants to be skinny and shapeless, particularly when not trying to diet

Virtually no one can reverse obesity. It's an extremely tiny minority of people who successfully maintain weight loss. There is no intervention that works long term.

I'm uncomfortable equating obesity with race directly; my argument is more that when white people imagine themselves as victims of racism, they are displaying a profound ignorance of the concept of privilege and the structural problems in society which reinforce prejudice and discriminatory treatment. The same ignorance is evident throughout this thread whereby slim women recount individual experiences of cruel treatment for their weight without ever acknowledging that everything they describe happens to fat people too and fat people also have to face unequal treatment in the workplace, in healthcare and in many other aspects of their life. So they get all the shaming and unkindness along with other very real forms of prejudice and disadvantage.

For people on here to argue that discrimination is acceptable because fat people can just stop being fat if they try a bit harder only doubles down on the ignorance, to a degree that is pretty shocking. It shows a lack of understanding of social factors, of eating disorders, of the mechanics of dieting and weight gain in themselves.

What we have here is thin women clamouring to be heard, while totally refusing to hear anyone else. I can hear and accept the stories thin women are telling about their own lives, but the same courtesy is never extended to anyone talking about fat women's experiences.

This is like me with size 8 feet saying to a woman with size 10 feet that "it's not true that I can buy shoes from a standard shoe shop because they hardly ever have my size in stock".

There's a world of difference between a size being out of stock (and size 8 shoes almost always are unavailable because only one is ordered versus a size 4 or 5 where two or three pairs are ordered, despite the average women's foot size in the UK being a 7) to women's shoes simply not being available at all on the high street in as size 10.

Having to order something from a standard shop is annoying. I do it all the time for my big feet.

Not even being catered for in a standard shop makes you feel like an abomination.

And that's what bigger women face all the time.

It may well be that most people are overweight or obese. But that isn't reflected in the offering in shops, on public transport, on planes or in society's beauty standards. If it were, most models would look like Tess Holliday, most shops would stock size 24, and most plane seats would be 50pc larger. That's why skinny privilege is a thing and fat privilege isn't.

This thread is ridiculous? So, are the countless other threads about fat people posting about being fat shamed also ridiculous?

If you don't believe that bullying happens to thin people, then lucky you. Or maybe you're not slim. But please don't me so fucking insulting, to say you don't believe me when I've posted on this thread about my cancer diagnosis / being under weight. What do you want me to do, possibly 52 staple laparotomy scar just for you? I can if you want!

Lucky you that you've never experienced such a thing. Stop projecting.

You don’t believe people’s stories of negative comments they have received for being thin? Because it hasn’t happened to you? Are you normally so limited with your thinking?

My Asian relatives made my life hell when I went through a very thin stage when I was under stress. I avoided weddings and big Asian events because of the constant critical and unpleasant comments.

Dont be silly.

I fundamentally don’t believe that someone with the body in the photos the OP posted is constantly getting comments about being too thin.

It’s a totally normal body. Looks a lot like mine. Looks like the body of a lot of people I know. Slim and culturally approved, but not unusual.

If people have made negative comments about my body - maybe some have, but I’d be surprised - I don’t even remember them. My body is the ideal for most. Whining about the odd comment when I’ve won the metabolism lottery would be tone-deaf.

The other thing I don’t believe is that the OP is really upset by these comments, if they ever happened. The chemo comments yes, but everything else is so obviously just fuelled by jealousy and insecurity that you’d have to have no emotional intelligence to actually take them to heart.

I agree @PeachTree500
I said upthread, OP looks entirely unremarkable. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I am wondering what environment OP has found herself in to have had all those things said about her body.

I believe you that shaming others happens in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons. I was called “Annie” at school by a group of girls. I was different to them and they used this as a way to create a stronger clique between them and I was ‘othered’. I believe this happens in many ways. It hurts I imagine even more when what you’re being targeted for relates to something traumatic or which is deeply important to you (like your baby).

Saying that, I’ve noticed some ‘othering’ within this thread and creating a distinction between “fat people” and “thin people”. Wouldn’t it be great if we could relate to each other as individuals rather than project our difficult feelings of pain, anger and envy onto each other?

(I won’t go into where this all comes from!! The objectification of women/ the male gaze/ girls being socialised to be “pretty” etc etc… arghh!)

Wouldn’t it be great if we could relate to each other as individuals rather than project our difficult feelings of pain, anger and envy onto each other?

I think most people do, in real life. Well, in my life at least.

I think this is true. I am a small size 10 now at 40 but in my mid 20s I was a small 6. I certainly was a bit underweight from being that age, work and lifestyle etc but not sick or starving or anything. (I have a narrow frame). I had nasty looks and shaming comments and my weight commented on in public. I'll never forget the look of utter loathing one random woman gave me at the swimming pool.
I remember also not being able to get good clothes; teenagers' shops would do but grown-up shops didn't stock anything small. The plus side to that is that I learned to do alterations quite well!

Completely agree with this word for word. There's such an undertone of 'it's fine as fat
People don't want to be fat, they want to be skinny.'

Doesn't justify the bullying and insults!

It happened. Cameras send to make you look about a stone heavier, remember.
I'm not really bothered if you don't believe me. These comments have been happening for probably 25 years of my 30.

I've said many times on this thread, that I don't think I'm too thin. I am normal, normal height and slim but normal built. I didn't post for people to believe me that I'm skinny. I posted to see if other slim people had been body shamed. Especially from overweight or obese people.

What do you mean what environment? He written my examples on here about where in was when the comments happened.

Many many people who have commented that they have a similar build to me and weight, have also experienced the same.

It's not up to anyone to police what I / we have experienced. If you don't believe or haven't experienced it, lucky you.

Thin people get unpleasant comments. It can affect their self-esteem. It affects my teenage daughter. Skinny shaming is real. However many times overweight people say it isn’t.

I couldn’t give a shit if internet randoms believe it’s a thing or not.