The Online Fat Shaming of Women

When looking at the media, it seems anywhere I turn there is commentary about the latest health trends, fad diets, weight loss hacks, and so forth. Although living a healthy lifestyle has become a common goal in our society's culture, the media does a poor job of approaching these topics. Currently, the media addresses this new societal “health kick” with a “fat”-shaming lens that tends to target women and it needs to stop.

In the current media, everyday celebrities are being documented on every move they make regarding their weight. Whether it's figuring out what their newest workout is, photographing them eating “unhealthy” food to ridicule them later, commenting on changes in their bodies, and more there is an obsession being documented by the media. And although there are many problems with this, one of the main faults is that the media has concluded that not only is heavy undesirable but that heavy means unhealthy - which is far from the truth.

Take Lizzo for example - she exercises often, eats healthy (she recently became vegan), and even shows tons of energy on stage during live performances yet people are constantly commenting on her size in a negative light and suggesting that she is unhealthy. In a world where healthiness is desirable, it is quite disheartening and ironic that the media hasn't learned to separate body size from health.

Yet it is especially frustrating that women, like Lizzo, are the topic of discussion whereas male counterparts tend to go unscathed. Although "fat"-shaming is detrimental to society as a whole, it is important to note that women are experiencing these negative messages more than men. According to the Obesity Action Coalition (OAC), women "experience weight discrimination at significantly higher rates than male peers...[and] report weight discrimination at lower levels of excess weight than men." These heightened vulnerabilities occur in the workplace, social media comments, beauty campaigns, movie/television tropes, etc. It has become the norm to applaud those with slimmer bodies and dismiss those with heavier ones because of a universal idea created by the media that presumes that heavier women are unhealthy, not feminine, and ultimately undesirable.

Aside from the mental health impacts body shaming creates, the idea that heavier women are not desirable is super dangerous. It can promote real violence against heavier women with rituals such as “hogging”, which is where sexual abusers claim that they were doing the woman a favor by having non-consensual sex with her.

When looking specifically at social media, it is not to say that this medium is the only medium to blame, but it does open the doors for more ridicule against women. As James Zervios, director of communications for the nonprofit Obesity Action Coalition, told Healthline in his interview, “[the internet] has definitely played a significant role in amplifying the voice of people who are perpetuating the stigma and the bias and the shaming.” Social media allows people to post comments online that they would never say to a person’s face and have it be reached by thousands instantaneously. People forget that there is a human behind the image they are ridiculing.

Although it is great that society has aimed to become healthier, we need to keep in mind that women's bodies are not objects that can be easily altered and maneuvered to fit society's ideal image.