Ragen Chastain

Alexa Moreno recently found herself the subject of a whole lot of fat-shaming on social media. Normally that would be no surprise since, sadly, there’s tons of fat shaming on social media every day (ask any fat activist), but this was a bit different, in that Alexa weighs 99 pounds — and is a gymnast who had just finished competing in the freaking Olympics.

Amy Schumer, of I Feel Pretty, keeps trying to sell us this narrative that she is fat (and ugly, which she seems to think mistakenly are the same thing).

In the U.S., we are living in frightening times.

Mansplaining is rampant in our culture, and nowhere is it mansplain-ier than when men explain women’s bodies to us.

The herd of misogynist, sizeist cyberbullies who have a lot of issues and seemingly endless free time abused the tool that Facebook has for users to report images that violate their community standards. Facebook rewarded them by banning Julia for 30 days with no explanation — she can log in and see what’s written, but she can’t post or reply to anything there.

For fat people, Weight Loss Surgery is often touted as the magic bullet that will solve everything from sickness to single-ness to stigmatization.

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

This is the textbook definition of discrimination and fat shaming. It’s awful for the teachers involved (apparently there was *gasp* more than one fat teacher at the nursery), though they also probably dodged a bullet avoiding having to deal with this woman.

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.

Alyssa Milano take note - if a fat person has to become thin to find acceptance, that’s fat-shaming. If it requires a fat suit, it’s fat-shaming.