Is fatphobia a real thing?

[AnxiousApocalypse]

Having watched the Panorama documentary on the Met Police and the police officer making rude comments about a fat woman and how "she was so fat she had two pussies", I'm wondering how much hate and disgust most people truly have against fat people? I'm not excusing it and saying it's not dangerous for your health to be overweight or obese, but surely being rude and ignorant isn't the answer?

No I'm not saying that at all. I am saying we don't know why someone is overweight and there could be many reasons for it, so best not to judge.

yep, 5-10% of overweight or obese people are bigger due to a secondary (medical) cause.

90-95% are other causes which will include eating too much and bit moving enough.

Was the person he made the comment about female though?

When I was younger I briefly dated a misogynist man that I met online, he made a few questionable comments about bigger women before we met. When I met him ( and yeah I shouldn’t have) I was surprised to find he was actually fat himself. Despite his regular gym attendance.

I had seen pictures of him but it wasn’t clear if he was fat or stocky/muscular until I met him in person.

He even asked me if I would ever take WLI, he posed it as a general question but I felt he was dropping a hint. With hindsight I’d have asked him the same question back as he was much larger than me.

So yeah basically some chubby men don’t seem to see themselves as fat or hold themselves to the same standards as they hold women as they will be quick to call out a woman for being fat but think their weight is fine. Thats one of the links between misogyny and fat phobia!

It comes back to women being expected to look “good” according to societal standards but men often get a lot more slack if they’re not considered aesthetically pleasing.

Spot on. People deliberately bring health concerns into the topic when discussing blatant fatphobia to deflect from the issue of how poorly fat people are treated.

I assume that is because the “attractive” people don’t want to lose their competitive advantage?

I think it is something along these lines.

I think some people just have to have an outlet to be nasty or superior in a misguided bid to feel better about themselves.

Rightly, society has now clamped down on so many avenues for these sorts of people to find an outlet; no-one will accept pejorative comments about disability, race, sexuality etc, so the "nasties" in this world have got limited options. For some reason, obesity seems to be a blind spot in this evolved attitude, despite the fact that many overweight people have faced health challenges etc that have brought them to that situation - often in the same way that anorexics have food issues, yet it would be seen as appalling to thin-shame someone battling anorexia.

I think it's time society cracked down on fat-shamers in the same way we make criticising or blaming people for disability, race or gender unacceptable as civilised behaviour.

When I hear someone fat-shaming, I tend to think their BMI is not the smallest thing about them.

Absolutely. It’s a way of justifying the remarks.

Just wait until the summer where endless threads pop up about someone bigger wearing leggings or a crop top.

Exactly. Its a way of justifying an outlet for their bitterness and unkindness.

I think rudeness about someone’s looks is often a sign of low intelligence and low class.

I notice there is almost always an element of this.

I suppose it’s seen as self-inflicted. It’s a much more difficult issue than that, of course.

But strangely nobody is really nasty about heavy smokers who have bad teeth, stink, are actively ruining their health and have made a much more definite choice. Maybe because the smoking helps them stay slimmer.

The measure of “attractiveness” is hard-wired.

All I can say about the negative comments is most of the time they only made the issue worse for me. It felt impossible to get slimmer and so I felt a complete failure. And then that would make me give up because it has always been a big battle against the food noise.

I’ve heard a few people, usually men, who smoke make comments about them only caring about obesity from a health angle and I’ve had to pull them up on it. I have said why aren’t they concerned about their own smoking if that’s the case?

And the thing is you can actually avoid cigarettes altogether and cut it out completely, but you can’t avoid food so arguably in some ways it’s harder to address if there is over eating involved. Food usually does contain some nutrients at least even if it’s not that healthy or eaten in too large quantities. Smoking serves zero purpose.

More evidence that the health concern thing is BS.

At least those ones aren’t usually even trying to pretend they’re being anything other than shallow lol as opposed to the ones who claim they’re only worried about the fat persons health

Scared of fat people

That's just funny

But who cares about the reasons? Should any of us be judging people for their bodies anyway?

Of course fatphobia is a thing, fatism is probably a better term??

My old boss told me he would never hire a fat person because he would assume they were lazy.

Yes fatphobia is a thing. Hits all area ranging from employment to the way people look at you at buffets to the way you can be treated in restaurants

I once told a fried she was "fattist."

She looked so absolutely aghast I thought I had got through to her and she perhaps perhaps did have some sense of conscience about her attitude after all - until it became clear her horror was she thought I meant she was "the fattest."

Ah yes, those ones are reserved for mounjaro threads where ‘all you need is discipline’.

That made me chuckle (sorry) .

You also made me realise that I misspelled 'fattism'!

I think the comment you mention on the panorama documentary is just as much about misogyny as it is about fat shaming or phobia or whatever you want to call it.

I’m 5ft 9. I was a size 16. Now a 12. I was overweight and looked it up

I'm surprised about your comment about heavy smokers. I think they're judged quite heavily these days and, in my circle, really quite rare.

I know if I get into a lift at work that a smoker has been in, I'm mortified thinking people will think it's me who stinks.

I'm surprised about your comment about heavy smokers. I think they're judged quite heavily these days and, in my circle, really quite rare.

I know if I get into a lift at work that a smoker has been in, I'm mortified thinking people will think it's me who stinks.

I am very obese (coming down a bit now thanks to mounjaro but weighed about 18/19 stone for most of my adult life). It doesn't happen often, but yes, I have had random strangers comment on my weight.

I've had a man on a night out shout 'fat cunt' from across the street, and once I was standing on Oxford Street, minding my own business, eating one of the those little cake slices that Boots sell whilst waiting to go into a job interview. A woman came up to me and I thought she was going to ask for directions or something. Instead, she just pointed at the cake and made a pig oinking noise in my face. Great morale booster just as you are going into a job interview...

What I don't understand is why? I'm not asking for all the body positivity stuff (which I can already see people have mentioned and I can assure you that being fat is very much not normalised), but why do I have to be actively abused? It's not like a smoker who is polluting the atmosphere around them, or someone drinking who may have had too much and is causing chaos. In those examples above I was literally minding my own business, causing these people no bother at all. Why does being fat seem to give people the confidence to openly insult a stranger?

And if people are saying stuff like this openly, what the hell are more people saying behind my back?

It's a tricky one. Do lots of people treat obese individuals more poorly than slim people? Yeah I think they do, even subconsciously. Some of the things that are called fatphobia are just reasonable, for example choosing to hire someone slim for a job that requires a lot of fast walking throughout the day compared to someone morbidly obese.

On the flipside, privilege is intersectional and not straightforward. Having the resources, finances, and access to so much food you're able to eat much more than what you need, to the point where you've eaten so much additional food it's now store on your body to get you through lean periods, is a privilege in a world where so many people can't afford or access enough food to survive.

Thin privilege in many respects is fat consequences.

Of course it’s a thing, as every fat person knows - they deal with it all the time and it affects every area of their life.

You see it at play on Mumsnet. There is nothing worse than being fat - according to them.