Ragen Chastain

The point of fat acceptance is to be clear that people of all sizes have the right to exist without shame, stigma, bullying, and oppression.

As a fat woman on the internet I know, “Don’t read the comments. Never, ever read the comments.” But this time was different and it was awesome!

It is a very difficult and dangerous job, and it does require officers to have the ability to make good split second decisions. None of that should mean that it’s OK to be incompetent, or that we should all rush to justify, ignore, or excuse incompetence, racism, ableism, and the inappropriate use of force.

In the face of funding shortages, Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has decided that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, as well as smokers, will be barred from most surgery for up to a year. But don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about health, or healthy behaviors – this is about money, and it’s about the people in charge deciding whose blatant oppression the general citizenry will tolerate. Years of campaigns suggesting that it’s fine for people to stereotype fat people and blame us for their problems have led to a situation where people are comfortable with us being denied the same medical care that they receive. And that should horrify you.

Food shaming as a form of fat shaming has happened to every fat person I know. Here are some examples of when fat people clap back at fatphobes.

Giles Coren writes a column about fatherhood for Esquire UK. His most recent column is full of fat-shaming including shaming is own son.

The fact that fat people are so thoroughly and constantly lied to by diet culture, and so profoundly oppressed by fatphobia, that they would submit themselves to this is not a justification for it. But that isn’t stopping J.D. Roth, the show’s creator. Not satisfied with exploiting fat people once, he is launching a new show called The Big Fat Truth in which he’ll bring back six former contestants for another round of exploitation, false promises, and weight cycling.

We are passing our unhealthy obsession with thinness onto girls and it’s causing them to have issues with food, movement, self-esteem, and body image that can last a lifetime.

Slimming World (UK version of Weight Watchers) is telling those who have reached their “target weight” to ditch their fat friends.

Fat shaming is wrong in any guise, and people who are trying to be funny (and/or trying to cover for a woefully incompetent press secretary) will just have to do better than relying on cheap stereotypes, shaming, and bigotry.