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fat shaming

A mother confronts her daughter for judging her friend's weight.

A 42-year-old mother wondered whether she did the right thing by disciplining her 18-year-old daughter, Abby, who disinvited a friend from vacation because of her weight. The mother asked people on Reddit for their opinion.

For some background, Abby had struggled with her weight for many years, so she went to her mother for help. The two set up a program where Abby was given a reward for every milestone she achieved.

“Four months ago, she asked that I don't get her any more rewards and add it up to her birthday gift, and for her gift she wants a vacation I will pay for, for her and her friends instead of the huge party I had promised for her 18th. I said OK,” the mother wrote.


So, instead of a series of small gifts, Abbey wanted one large one, a vacation with two of her friends. The vacation would also celebrate Abby’s 18th birthday. The mother agreed and booked the trip for the 3 girls.

“Fast forward to last weekend, we started preparing for her vacation,” the mother wrote. “I called the other two girls' parents to confirm the girls would be and learned Abby's best friend Betty isn't going. Betty loves traveling and was looking forward to the vacation, so I asked why. Apparently, Abby uninvited her because ‘she is too chubby to look good in pictures.’”

When the mother approached Abby about the situation, she doubled down on her comments to Betty. “I calmly talked to Abby and reminded her how Betty would feel being left out for such a reason, and she went off with, 'I didn't work so hard for this vacation so my pictures will be ruined,'" the mother wrote.

Abby then asked Betty to contact her mom and say that she decided not to go on the trip because she wasn’t feeling well. Betty refused to lie, and Abby sent her a “ton of hateful texts and body-shaming insults.” Betty shared screenshots of the texts to the mother, and she promptly canceled the entire vacation.

Now, Abby’s father, who shares 50-50 custody with the mother, is livid, and Abby won’t speak to the mother. The mom asked the Reddit AITA forum to see if she was in the wrong, and the commenters overwhelmingly said she did the right thing. "Some of my friends agree on my approach, while others think I should have put my daughter first,” the mother said.

The most popular commenter was short and to the point.

"Teaching your daughter to not be a horrible human being IS putting her first," Due_Laugh_3851 wrote. "I commend your strength and parenting skills. This was the right thing to do and would've been hard to do. Well done, you deserve to go on the holiday yourself," Loud_Wallaby737 added.

"... uninviting someone because you only want skinny people in your pictures is a disgusting attitude frankly. Sorry, I just don't find a nicer word for it. I am totally with you that this needs to have consequences, and while I'm very much against breaking promises, I do believe this is an exception. Like you said, your daughter knows what it feels like. She (but anyone really) should be supportive of friends wanting to lose weight if that is the case and if it isn't they she should just mind her own business body," SensitiveSires wrote.

One of the few people who thought she was in the wrong believed that the mother set her daughter up for failure.

"[You're wrong] for giving your daughter who is a child rewards for weight loss. Her behavior of value based on weight shows she likely has developed disordered eating patterns and attitudes and this will cause her a lifetime of pain," tamtheprogram wrote.

The silver lining to the story is that many people who commented said that even though her daughter did something very hurtful, she’s still a teenager and there’s a chance she’ll realize the error of her ways.

"The daughter is just a teenager, she still has a lot of time to learn and grow up. Writing off her entire future as a mean girl when it’s very rare to be the same exact person you were at 18 as you grow up is a lot," Stephapeaz wrote.


This article originally appeared on 9.18.23

Identity

Women share the unbelievable ways they were treated on planes for being fat

"The most important thing that fellow passengers can do is just acknowledge the humanity of the people they're traveling with."

Canva

Plane rides can be a dehumanizing experience for many

Before moving to London to pursue a degree in anthropology, Stacy Bias had to decide if it was worth getting on the airplane.

"As a woman over 300 pounds, flying was pretty anxious for me," Bias says. Over the years, Bias came to fear being stared at, subjected to rude comments from seatmates, or asked to purchase an extra seat. The anxiety got so bad that at one point, she stopped flying altogether.

With a little determination and encouragement from her partner, who had recently relocated to the U.K., Bias faced down the fear and got on the plane to London. Soon after, she started a Facebook group to offer discussion, support, and tips to other fat travelers who had encountered similar roadblocks. The group quickly grew to nearly 4,000 members and Bias, in conjunction with a research project for her undergraduate dissertation, presented the group with a survey, encouraging members to share their experiences in the air.


"I had to take the survey down after three days because I was overwhelmed with respondents," Bias says. Like Bias, the overwhelming majority of survey takers reported feeling leered at, harassed, and like an unwelcome intruder in a public space.

Bias interviewed nine of the respondents. The result was the short animated documentary "Flying While Fat," which Bias posted to YouTube in 2016.

"The goal of the animation is to humanize fat people," Bias explains.

"I think fat people are talked about a lot — especially fat passengers are talked about a lot — but rarely spoken with."

Some of Bias' subjects love to fly and to travel, but they express frustration at having to endure "the expression" — the look of disappointment and anxiety that crosses their potential seatmates' faces as they walk down the aisle. Others describe having a "hyperawareness" of their bodies at all times, constantly evaluating how much space they take up. Verbal harassment, threats, even physical abuse are common threads in the interviews.

For one participant, the struggle over fat peoples' access to plane space fundamentally comes down to fairness.

"Everyone is fully aware of how much money they spent on those cubic inches," she poses. Because of the ever-shrinking size of airline seats and aisles, fellow passengers, she hypothesizes, are primed to go to the mat over how much room they believe they deserve.

For smaller people, one person's ability sit comfortably in an airplane seat may seem trivial. But for Bias' subjects, it's anything but.

"It's a topic that people feel strongly about," Bias says. "It really impacts the ability of people to partake of the world, to see family, to travel internationally, to go to funerals, to go to weddings. It's a thing that really impacts peoples' life in a profound way."

policy, standardization, customer, disabled

Animation showing the different shapes and sizes of airline travelers.

Image via YouTube video.

Fat flyers, she contends, frequently feel like excess baggage and a problem to be solved — and that, coupled with hostility from fellow passengers, can make them think twice before purchasing a plane ticket.

Bias believes the solution to the problem starts with standardizing customer size policies across the industry and creating more accessible spaces on aircraft.

Currently, those policies are a patchwork. Some airlines, like Alaska and United, require passengers who can't put both armrests down comfortably to purchase an additional ticket. Others, like Delta, simply "recommend" that customers who can't fit comfortably in a single seat do so.

Airlines "need to prioritize the well-being of passengers over profitability so that people literally can fit into the bathroom if they need to," Bias says.

This lack of concern could pose real health risks for some fat flyers. According to Bias, roughly one-quarter of her subjects reported dehydrating themselves before boarding so they wouldn't have to walk down the aisle or attempt to fit into the restroom.

Fat people, she believes, aren't the only ones who could benefit from an industry-wide policy review.

"It's disabled people, it's people with injuries, it's people with long legs. Everybody is deeply uncomfortable on the plane. It's getting more so."

Bias hopes to publish the results of her study in the coming year.

In the meantime, she hopes the film helps smaller flyers understand the frustration and helplessness their fat counterparts often feel in a space where cruelty can sometimes erupt subtly and without warning.

community, sociology, obesity, health and fitness

Animation of various physical shapes each with a heart.

Image via YouTube video.

For passengers of any size, Bias believes a little empathy and respect go a long way.

"The most important thing that fellow passengers can do is just acknowledge the humanity of the people they're traveling with."

This article originally appeared on 12.07.16

Jax's Victoria's Secret song on TikTok has more than 13 million views.

Ah, summer. The glorious season of barbecue parties, beach picnics and perpetual body image issues.

If you're a human living in our society, you've likely been impacted by messages about what your body should look like in a swimsuit. And if you're a female, those messages have been compounded by a multibillion dollar beauty industry designed to make you feel insecure so you'll spend more money on "fixing" your "flaws." Add in a culture of competition and mean-girl immaturity that weaponizes size and shape, and we have a perfect recipe for all kinds of body image-oriented disorders.

There's nothing wrong with our bodies, but there is something very wrong with the messages we get about our bodies. Thankfully, we've come a long way in recognizing the need for body positivity to counter those messages. However, according to Harvard researchers, it takes five positive comments to counteract the effects of one negative one. That means we have to meet the ads, billboards and magazine covers that constantly tell us we're not good enough with a tsunami of body-positive content.

And that's where a viral "Victoria's Secret" song from TikTok songwriter Jax comes in.


Jax has created a devoted following by sharing snippets of silly songs she makes up on TikTok. But her latest ditty isn't just a silly song—it's the summer anthem we didn't know we needed.

Jax introduces Chelsea, the kid she babysits, and they share a story about how a girl had told Chelsea that the swimsuit she tried on at Victoria's Secret made her look "too fat and too flat."

First of all, seething rage at that comment. Second of all, the mom in me is blinking twice at the idea of a preteen shopping for a bikini at Victoria's Secret, but let's just move on past that part. Third, it was meant as an insult of course, but even if it were a totally neutral descriptor, no one in their right mind would ever describe that child as fat. Why do girls do this?

So many WTHs going through my head before Jax even gets to her point, but when she gets there, it's awesome.

"I wrote a song for you," she tells Chelsea, "because when I was your age I had a lot of eating problems and I wish somebody would've said this to me."

(Jax also shared in the comments, "🚨Triggerr Warning🚨 for girls, guys, and whomever going through ED, this song is meant to make you smile but I know it’s much deeper than this.")

It's so good. Watch:

@jaxwritessongs

I wrote a song for The Kid I Babysit. It’s called Victoria’s Secret 🤫 ❤️ 👙 @TheLascherFamily #victoriassecret #fyp #bodypositivity #originalmusic

The "old man who lives in Ohio" is Les Wexner, the billionaire founder of Victoria's Secret's former parent company, L Brands. He stepped down from his role in the company in 2020 after buying the then little-known lingerie brand in 1982 and spending more than five decades at the helm.

So when Jax says she knows Victoria's "secret" is that she was made up by a dude, it's true. In fact, even the original Victoria's Secret was founded by a man. Businessman Roy Raymond wanted to buy his wife some lingerie, but was embarrassed when he went to the department store to look for some. He decided to create a store for women's underwear where men would feel comfortable shopping.

As Naomi Barr wrote in Slate in 2013, "Raymond imagined a Victorian boudoir, replete with dark wood, oriental rugs, and silk drapery. He chose the name 'Victoria' to evoke the propriety and respectability associated with the Victorian era; outwardly refined, Victoria’s 'secrets' were hidden beneath."

After Raymond sold the brand, with its catalog and six stores, to Les Wexner, the focus shifted. Wexner recognized a huge opportunity to market his brand directly to women, and thus the Victoria's Secret juggernaut was created. For decades, Victoria's Secret has been synonymous with men ogling models in sexy underwear and women hopelessly trying to fit themselves into those unattainable model bodies.

Jax's video has gotten more than 13 million views in less than a week and the comments are raving.

"Thank you! I have 2 teenage daughters who are struggling with eating disorders all bc of social media and mainstream media," wrote one parent.

"This is perfection. This song should be a commercial or PSA or something," wrote another commenter. Couldn't agree more.

"The inner 13 year old me needed this. This was the best," wrote another.

I know Victoria's Secret, and girl you wouldn't believe … she's an old man who lives in Ohio, making money off of girls like me.

It's the message we all need to hear, wrapped up in a boppin' summer anthem. You can find the full song on Spotify, Apple Music and more. Follow Jax at @jaxwritessongs.)

Image via Pixabay.

Airlines pack the passengers together.

On May 14, 2018, one of Savannah Phillips' most dreaded flying fears came to life.

"I’m not the biggest person on the airplane, but I’m not the smallest," Phillips explained in a Facebook post. "My worst nightmare is someone being uncomfortable because they have to sit next to me."

Fearful of the harassment and even threats people with bigger bodies can face while flying, Phillips usually tries to buy a seat where she's not sitting next to another passenger.


But on a flight from Oklahoma to Chicago, Phillips was assigned a seat at the gate and wasn't able to sit alone. Unfortunately, the man who ended up next to her embodied the very worst.

"I can't believe this, I'm sitting next to a smelly fatty."

Those were the words the stranger, an older man who claimed to be a comedian, texted someone else — while sitting right next to Phillips on the plane. A setting on the man's phone enlarged the text, according to Phillips, and the screen's brightness was turned all the way up.

It was unmistakably about her.

obesity, decorum, strangers, heroes, airline tickets

​Phillips describes her experience during an interview.

Image pulled from News Channel 5/Youtube.

The nasty comment immediately brought Phillips to tears.

"I don’t even know what the rest of his text said," she wrote in her post. "I turned my head away as fast as I could. I was shocked and it was like confirmation of the negative things I think about myself on a daily basis."

Phillips continued:

"Before I knew it, I could feel hot, salty tears coming down my face. I sat and cried silently, hoping this guy didn’t try to make small talk, because I didn’t trust how I would react and I didn’t want to get kicked off the plane. I was so hurt. The pilot came over head and said there would be a 30-minute delay before he could take off — great. Just more time I would have to sit next to this creep."

Fortunately, that's when things took a turn for the (much, much) better.

Fellow passenger Chase Irwin sitting nearby had spotted the incredibly hurtful text and decided to step in.

He couldn't believe what he was witnessing.

"I actually got really sick to my stomach," Irwin explained to News Channel 5.

new, health, air travel, bullying, community

Irwin describes the uncomfortable situation on the news program.

Image via News Channel 5/Youtube.

Irwin tapped the "comedian" on the shoulder and demanded he change seats with him, according to Phillips. The "comedian" agreed to switch, but then asked why.

Irwin did not hold back. "I said, 'because you're a heartless person,'" Irwin recalled. "I read your text, and the girl next to you crying also read your text. And you should really take into consideration other people's feelings.'"

I am only sharing this story of what happened to me today in hopes that the person who stuck up for me will somehow be...
Posted by Savannah Phillips on Monday, May 14, 2018

Phillips and Irwin got along great, chatting about their families and jobs on the flight to Chicago. The flight attendant, who learned about what happened, kept trying to give Irwin free drinks and said that he was her hero, according to Phillips.

"He wasn’t her hero," Phillips wrote. "He was mine."

Fortunately, Phillips' story had a happy ending. But for passengers with bigger bodies, that's not always the case.

"Flying while fat" can truly be a daunting affair. There's the staring, the rude comments — not to mention navigating a patchwork of guidelines that complicate purchasing a ticket for an increasingly small seat on a plane.

But as Irwin showed, employing some basic empathy for your fellow passengers can go a long way. We should all keep that in mind when we travel.

Watch News Channel 5's segment on Phillips' story below: