What Do You Do When You're Handed A Card Fat Shaming You?

What Do You Do When You're Handed A Card Fat Shaming You?

Monday 30 November 2015

First thing's first all I want to do in this post is yell AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NO. JUST NO at the idiocy of "Overweight Haters Ltd"... yeah, that's a thing now. If you thought that Nicole Arbour video was bad, brace yourself.

Now that's out of the way, the disgusting story was first brought to my attention on twitter when a photo of a card was shared multiple times with the same amount of horror as my own that humans had been actually handing these to other humans in public. The card stated "Our organisation hates and resents fat people. We object to the enormous amount of food resources you consume while half the world starves. We disapprove of your wasting NHS money to treat your selfish greed. And we do not understand why you fail to grasp that by eating less you will be better off, slimmer, happy and find a partner who is not a perverted chubby-lover, or even a partner at all. We also object that the beautiful pig is used as an insult. You are not a pig. You are a fat, ugly human."

Karla Florish told stylist magazine "When I first read the card I thought it was a joke so put it on the seat next to me. I'm a size 12/14, what people call curvy but I don't consider myself fat. I'm active, go to the gym at least twice a week, don't smoke, hardly drink and don't do drugs. I have no health issues that I know of, have never been seriously ill or in hospital so don't consider myself a drain on the NHS. In fact, I'm currently employed by them." Another woman was handed the card and broke down in tears.

Nobody has the right to ever shame someone, especially not in such a public embarrassing manner. You never know what's going on in someone else's life nor do you know the effect in which statements like this can have. If I'm honest I'd rather be any size and be a decent human being than someone who values themselves so highly to treat other people in such a way. 

My friend Lauren put it perfectly. "I'd like to think my reaction to this would be to give them a paper cut/punch them when in reality I'd probably just accept it as another piece of fat shaming that happens so very often that it's kinda normal by this point. It's not OK to say disgusting, personal things about a woman/man's body no matter how much you think it's an 'education' Fat people are at higher risks of certain diseases, correct, there is no denying that. However, can be in general perfectly healthy. People need to worry about themselves and let doctors deal with how much of a burden fat people are to society, which by the way... WE ARE NOT. I'm ready to go find those dickheads on the tube and shout at them, let me go, I'm fired up and have insecure fellow fatties to defend"

The card was responded with this, which sums it all up basically.

@technicallyron

Transport for London have asked commuters to report any anti social behaviour.

main photo sourced from weheartit.com