Again with the fat and the health

There is a lot of fat-hate out there. A lot of it. People feel free to say really horrible shit about fatties, especially fat women. I’ve posted about the gendered aspect of fat hate before. I have also written about how fat is seen as voluntary and thus worthy of scorn; if the fat person is just a lazy glutton who won’t bother to take care of themselves then they deserve ridicule. However, todays post isn’t about the socio-cultural reasons people use to justify their denigration of fellow humans based on excess adipose tissue. Nope. Today we are looking at the “concern trolls” who indulge in fat hate out of the goodness of their heart.

Concern trolls are the people who say that the disgust they feel for fat people is a direct manifestation of how unhealthy fat it. These are the people who say the fat people SHOULD be castigated for their own good, theoretically so they will be shamed into becoming healthier. Usually, concern trolls are completely ignorant of the fact that you cannot tell how healthy a person is at a glance. Slender does not mean healthy, and fat does not mean unhealthy. Concern trolls are blissfully ignorant of the fact that fat people who exercise are as healthy as the thin people who exercise. Just because a person is thin, that doesn’t mean he or she has been hitting the gym and is a paragon of health. Just because a person has a big ass, doesn’t mean that he or she wasn’t in Zumba class this morning, and it doesn’t mean that the fat person is axiomatically unhealthy. 

Concern trolls don’t want to hear that shit. They don’t know about studies that show that limiting calories won’t make you healthy, and if someone tries to tell them any different they will not believe it. They know the formula they have heard all their life about calories in v/s calories burned is the key to weight loss and therefore to health and studies that say otherwise must be wrong. They know diets are good for you, and information showing diets make you fatter and less healthy must be wrong. They KNOW that gross fat people are repellent because they are avatars of ill health and nothing will change their mind. 

So, if you are a fat person, when some asshats sees you eating a salad and says something along the lines of how he or she is glad you are eating  ”healthy” or “doing something about the weight”, they are body shaming you because they a fat-haters. For one thing, they assume fat people never eat a salad because they like them or think they taste good. Nope. Fat people never eat fruit and veggies! They are too busy washing burgers down their gullets with milkshakes, which thin people never EVER do! For another, they are making it clear that you should be on a diet, because of you are fat and thus unhealthy. They are concern trolls.  Don’t let them bully you. Call them on their bullshit.

Concern trolls are not being “nice”, they are being asshats. I have a friend who is being concern trolled by her skinny therapist and I think she needs a new, non-dickweed therapist.

I really don’t like concern trolls. 

About these ads