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?

Being alive is the main cause of death - 100% effective. We all only have so long on the planet.

I should add let he/she who is without sin cast the first stone!

I think it's more nuanced than people imply.

Obesity is a public health crisis and health professionals, politicians and others should be able to talk about that and the reasons or it without fear of being seen as "fatphobic".

Fat activists have been telling us for years that excess fat can be healthy (which it can't, obesity in itself is a health risk), we're wrong if we don't find overweight attractive and fat bodies are beautiful. But then the jabs became available and it turns out most of them didn't think they were beautiful enough to keep.

It's also true that we live in a society where not being overweight is a difficult choice that the vast majority of us have to work really hard at and for some it's harder than others. It's not all about individual choices to be fat.

It should be OK to discuss the risks of obesity, it's OK to worry about a family member carrying a lot of overweight (in the same way as we worry about family members who smoke or drink too much) but it's NOT OK to make fun of people's bodies. Bullying and using rude language is never OK. Someone's body shape or size is completely irrelevant to the police unless it's in descriptive terms to locate or identify someone. They shouldn't be commenting.

To despise is to hold in contempt, which doesn't imply outright hatred to me, and I agree that would be a bit much.

It's not connected to my ideas of beauty and attractiveness.

I have respect and admiration for obese people who are actually making efforts to sort themseleves out, and they should be freely given as much help as they need.

As someone who was fat from the beginning - infant school onwards - I never felt it was a case of letting myself go and allowing this to happen, it was how I was. I always wanted a fat jab. Now there is one. It’s not what I’d prefer - one shot and you are miraculously slim - you have to still work at it and of course pay for it. Even with the jab it’s not been a sudden dramatic change for me, I was working at it for a couple of years beforehand. But it’s an improvement for sure.

But the problem with obesity isn't that it kills you early, necessarily. It's that it might result in you having a very poor quality of life for the final 10-20 years of your life, struggling along with joint pain, a bad back, sleep apnoea, breathing difficulties, diabetes and so on. I'm witnessing it with my inlaws unfortunately.

That's simply not true.

Smoking is reviled by society. It can't even be shown on TV before the watershed and is banned in most public places. Smoking carries a massive stigma. It's absolutely socially acceptable to say that smoking is disgusting and tell people to quit than it would be to say being fat is disgusting and fat people need to lose weight, even though quitting smoking is also very hard to do.

The same for alcoholism, alcoholics are mocked, insulted and looked down on by most of society. It's seen as a huge moral failing and not as a valid illness.

And bikers also get a lot of flack. I believe many A & E nurses refer to motorcyclists as "organ bags". Outside of health issues, bikers are widely associated by society with being scary, criminal and violent. See numerous jokes about Dads having aneurisms when their daughters meet boyfriends with motorbikes.

If you'd said "horse riders" and we were looking at types of risky behaviour associated with the upper classes, you might have something of a point...

@StripyShirt it seems odd to me that you would meet an obese person and immediately hold them in contempt and despise them, simply because of being obese. Before you know anything else about them, and presumably after you've interacted with them and they've behaved normally. There are so many delightful, lovely, kind, helpful, compassionate, competent, intelligent, thoughtful etc etc people who are also obese. None of those other things about them matter to you, only their weight and the character flaw you perceive in them as a result of their weight?

P.S. Re mounjaro, I think it's obvious why people have an issue with it. Most women have spent their whole lives trying to get and stay slim with varying degrees of success. The jabs are (wrongly) portrayed as a "get thin quick" scheme where you can just instantly lose weight without trying. If you've spent your whole life exercising, denying yourself junk food and feeling superior because of it, you're going to find it irritating that now everyone can be slim, apparently without all the effort you've put in.

But they are the same people. The women who are obese have mostly also been battling for years. And the biggest weight losers with jabs are the people who are not obese but lie about their weight in order to shed those precious last pounds to become model-thin.

@Looploop would you say your parents posed as positive role models when it came to your dietary habits as a child?

Couldn’t agree more, it’s a quick fix and lazy way to lose weight if changing your diet and lifestyle would do the same thing.

I’ve seen multiple “influencers” ‘what I eat in a day whilst on munjaro’ and their diets are horrendous. No average person would be able to maintain a healthy weight eating such things. They are not nutritious or low calorie meals at all.

I think this has multiple facets.

firstly some people are simply abusive, they will find a reason to abuse. Weight, skin colour, religion, whatever, they will find a reason.

Two thirds of people in the uk are now overweight or obese. It is the majority, in general obesity is not viewed positively by society, even though most are in that or the overweight category, irrelevant of the body positivity movement. It is seen as unattractive and unhealthy, something we do to ourselves. Even by the people suffering from it there is often self loathing.

This is separate from those choosing to be abusive to the person suffering from obesity, Because the abuse is about the fact the person is simply an abuser.

slim women also get their fair share, I see a lot of comments on “ the teeny tinies” competitive under eating, massive salads, etc. I read a thread on here the other day where people were hurling abuse at Kate Middleton, saying she as skeletal, had an eating disorder, was addicted to laxatives, it was very unpleasant, and it was likely women hurling that abuse. And yes for a different reason, envy. But ut was still abuse. And not ok as she is slim. She doesn’t deserve it for that reason, nor should it be seen as acceptable for that reason.

ultimately abusers will abuse. Which is seperate to the health issues associated with obesity or general society view, which is often perpetuated by the people who suffer from it.

I became obese, I lost the weight with wli, I didn’t feel I looked attractive, I certainly wasn’t healthy, obesity is the biggest killer in our society today, the leading cause of cancer. I never abused, looked down on or judged other fat people, but I can hand on heart say I did not like the way I looked, nor did I like rhe way I felt.

This ^

I was fat for a few years and now I am not and I its noticeable how differently I am treated

I have also been called a cheat for using weight loss injections its interesting how angry people feel about these injections

But factually most people are fat themselves. Statistically two thirds of uk adults.

My parents often pointed out my need to lose weight and I was very sensitive about it so often their attempts backfired. I feel the pain to this day. They were average sized and had been war kids so grew up on rationing. We had healthy home-cooked meals but I was always being warned of the danger of having pudding and offered smaller portions of everything and if anything felt deprived. As I said I only worked out later in life that I need to eat a LOT less than everyone else to lose weight. Regular diets don’t work for me - I had to eat just 800 calories a day for a very long time and exercise like mad. At one stage I got to merely overweight - similar to how I am now - then I stopped over focusing on it and I piled it on again. I’m back to where I was now which is about as good as it gets. Even with the jab, a strict exercise regime and restricted eating can’t lose any more.

This is a good example , people keep saying most folks hate fat people. But statistically most people are actually fat. No way round this, so if it’s most folks then it is fat people judging other fat people, maybe judging fat people who are even fatter than them, but healthy weight people in the uk make up the minority, one third of the adult population. The other two thirds are fat. So if the majority hate fat people then that includes a hell of a lot of fat people hating other fat people.

Now that I've lost weight, I've noticed the reverse. People, and men in particular, are much nicer and pay me more attention. It is so shallow.

What about "hating" or "despising" them like @StripyShirt ? Is that ok? 🙄

There are many problems in this world and actually far more of them are caused by hateful people than by obesity.

Many are overweight but being fat is different

I am still overweight, look slightly chubby but I am no longer fat

when you are fat you are treated differently, you are looked down on, judged, considered lazy, a slob being slightly overweight (and many people are but do not look it) you are not judged in the same way

I don't believe the majority of people do hate fat people.

I'm not fat: I don't.

I think the haters are a vocal minority

I didn't say that they weren't, I was saying that the perception is that now it's really easy to just lose loads of weight and for people who have worked really hard not to gain weight or to lose weight they feel annoyed by that. Personally, I don't care and I think if it reduces obesity and makes weight loss a bit easier, that's great but as someone within a healthy BMI who would like to be a little slimmer as there's maybe a little bit of me that wishes there was an option for it to be a bit easier for me. I know that's not fully logical and that there's a difference between being obese to the point it's a health risk and just not loving how my clothes sit around my tummy.

It's not limited to obesity though.

I posted on MN a while back about some of the aesthetic treatment I had after chemotherapy and how life changing it was for me and still is.

I got told I look like a prostitute, I have no class, that my face would look awful and no work can ever be subtle and done right. Trout pout. (Didn't even state where I had work done or upload a picture fwiw)

every one of those comments came from women.

so it doesn't matter if you're fat, thin, natural, not natural, women are just held to criticism no matter what the topic or subject is.

however what I do notice, is that overweight and obese people will always always race to the bottom and say it's always worse than every one else. I wonder why that is.

i see it on here all the time.

women as a whole get scrutinised, especially by other women. It's everywhere and it's not just obese or fat people.
most people don't find overweight and obese people attractive. I absolutely don't. I wouldn't sneer and ever say anything to anyone but as I said previously 90-95% of obese people are obese due to overeating. Medical and secondary causes only make up 5-10%. So people will judge. Especially when the vast majority of obese people blame the world / other people / other circumstances than themselves.

I think its not necessarily about being fat hating its holding opinions that people often unintentionally express. The judgements are there and us fat people can and often do pick up in this

and it can feel at times very hostile, look at the opposition to the weight loss jabs and the constant articles in the media

we all pick up on peoples reactions, we all judge at times and have opinions that we give away without saying direct words

No, definitely not.

But for any of us that grew up in the 90s we spent our childhoods having the message ruthlessly enforced that anything bigger than "heroin chic" was disgusting, that all food had a moral rating (a cupcake wasn't just bad for you body but you were a bad person for eating it) and started getting tips for weight loss from our pre-teens, all whilst having the food industry relentlessly push high-calorie and UPF filled food on us at every turn, so it's not surprising that so many people are full of self-loathing and loathing for others who represent what they are terrified of being.

I would like to say I don't judge or despise fat people, and on the whole I wouldn't say I do, but I probably pay slightly more attention to what my overweight friends eat and do sometimes silently judge, although I would like not to and know it's a failing in me, not them. It's the bias that I have been programmed with and I can unprogramme it with enough work.