“Lose some weight bitch”: Responses to news reports about fat stigma
A photo from Kenlie's blog of the confrontation between airline reps and fat women
Yesterday a good friend of mine (who is not fat) messaged me on Facebook. She was upset because a facebook friend of hers had linked to yesterdays report of Kenlie who had been given a hard time about her weight when trying to board a flight. The person who posted the article on Facebook wrote as their status:
“Lose some weight bitch”
A number of people then pressed ‘like’ in response to this.
I went and had a look at the article. And I read the original blog post from Kenlie about her experiences. The interesting thing is, that in the blog post Kenlie describes how she has already lost a lot of weight – in fact the whole blog site is about her weight loss journey.
So to the dumb arse who wrote that comment – not that it is any of your freaking business what she chooses to do with her body, but yeah she is losing weight. Happy now?
But the point of this post is actually to look past the comment of this guy to the numerous negative stigmatising and downright offensive comments that are posted on news websites in response to articles like this. For many of you reading this blog, I am about to post a selection of them, so if you dont want to read them… skip over the next little bit.
Here is a selection of the 113 comments on the story:
Kate of Sydney: I think all fat/obese people should be made to sit next to each other on all aircraft. I unfortunately got stuck sitting between 2 obese people once – both of them spilled their fat into my seat.
Adrian: She isn’t fat! She is OBESE – there is a difference
Harry S: Think of the risk too, if there were an emergency. For one they would block the doors and passageways as they slowly ambled out of the plane increasing the risk for other, quicker passengers trapped behind them, and if they were injured or incapacitated how many people would need to be placed at risk to help the injured fat ones out of the wreckage? These questions demand answers!
Slender Smith: Buy two tickets, lose weight, or don’t fly, I say!
Ben of Penrith: Go on a diet. Its not hard. Eat well and exercise and the weight will fall off.
Jane of Melbourne: Being morbidly obese, you will not have a sucessful career, not run after your children (if you can conceive) you will not shop in mainstream stores and you wont FIT IN AIRLINE SEATS!! There is no senstive way to tell someone they are too fat to fit. Accept it!
Stayoffmyflight of Melbourne: Why don’t they use some of their energy on loosing weight rather than making headlines – then they won’t have to worry about the same situation next time they fly. Fat people are fat due to their own making, so ony they can help themselves.
Research (from my own studies and many others) show that fat stigma is increasing dramatically. And it is becoming more and more extreme. The stigma seen in these online comments is referred to in the literature as structural stigma (see Corrigan et al for a good introduction to this in the mental health literature).
And it is very difficult to change.
Whilst these comments are just a small reflection of the wider communities attitude towards people who are fat, I wonder if it is time to step up and start moderating some of these comments? If these comments were about other groups within society would we allow them to be published?
These types of comments come up on thousands of different media reports about fatness. They are particularly prominent when fat individuals try to assert their rights, or tell their story about their experiences of being fat, and the discrimination they receive.
Of course there is always the right of reply. People can log onto the websites and leave an alternative point of view. But to be honest, many people who really try to do that are often belittled, shouted down or shamed. And also, why on earth should fat people be responsible for fighting this stuff ALL THE TIME. The flip side of the argument is that the anti-fat majority is are only offering an opinion. Personally, I don’t think that argument is good enough when you consider the distress that this content causes people.
I don’t know what the solution is here. I just wanted to raise it as an issue that I think needs addressing.
And of course, I know that many of you will have some great ideas about how to do that!
Themocracy
Frankly, I don’t think comments should be allowed on news websites. No matter the source – news.com.au, The Age/SMH or ABC Online – comments on stories about fat (or sexual assault or refugees or…) are always hateful. It does not foster discussion on these issues; it’s just a place for trolls from all walks of life to act like turds.
I don’t know if moderating comments would help stem fat stigma, ultimately. Fat stigma is rooted much deeper. I think the virulent comments are symptoms of stigma, not their ultimate regulators or promulgators. I find them somewhat of a curiosity, a way to see the honest, repulsive underbelly of the moral panic. True, they shame those who aren’t inured to them, but that’s the least of the fat shame the average person gets in a day, though it might be the most brutally honest regarding the true intentions of fatphobics.
When members of a society are told from the time they’re small that they need to diet, diet, diet, and they’re fat and greedy and evil, and that their appearance is 95% of what matters, they will lash out when their preconceptions are threatened. But the stigma isn’t rooted in any one source: it’s a combination of patriarchal, parental, religious, and healthist pressures.
Fat is a feminist issue; it’s an issue of familial control; it’s a moral issue; and it’s a health issue. Each of those areas is a breeding ground for stigma. Attacking internet comments is cutting a head of the Hydra, in my opinion. They’re horrible, but for every moderated comment thread are a 1000 more unmoderated threads, or a forum like MFS.
The real issues are patriarchy, moral panic, and fear of death: fat is a stand-in for the out-of-control woman, the evil corrupt greedy person, and the ticking time-bomb of our collective mortality. Those are powerful concepts that speak to the human condition so fundamentally that I fear they cannot be solved, and will rather move on to another scapegoat once history has deemed bodysize to be off-limits. Moral panics feed so, off of death and fear. We are unlucky enough to be its current (but not only) victim. I’m afraid only time, and standing our ground, will make any real kind of difference. I wouldn’t even expect it in my lifetime, since it seems not yet to be quite at its problematic peak.
But now I’m getting into futurist territory, so I’ll leave it there.
Great discussion, fantastic topic.
sadly, many very socially progressive folks join in on the vitriol and overt prejudice and do not even get a whiff of the injustice that is woven throughout their belief system. Most of my family do not share with me what they think about my position on my weight, because at this point, they all know I will leave if they start talking about it. I am not going to piss in the ocean to try to get my loved ones to see the cruelty in the very positions they believe are based in compassion and concern for my health.
It doesn’t matter to many if the person in question is losing weight. All they see is a picture of a still fat person so they ignore what’s actually being said and written so they can get their spiteful and stupid comments in.
When we have to travel by plane, sorry haters, there’s no getting around us. We have to put up with things we don’t like either. It’s not just all about you. We’re not going to stay home, so deal with it.
We’ll never be thin enough for the hatebags. Never ever. The airlines will keep making the seats smaller and smaller, and it will always be a woman’s fault for not being able to shrink enough to fit them.
And personal n.b. to Stay Off My Flight in Melbourne: Why don’t you spend as much energy learning how to spell as you do bodysnarking people whose individual situations you know nothing about? “Lose” is spelled with ONE ‘O,” dumbass.
I think when it comes to this particular issue of being ‘too fat to fly’ we can’t dismiss the whole thing as being purely fatty bashing. Don’t get me wrong – the commenters on these stories are usually vile, hateful creatures that are frothing at the mouth to call fat people disgusting/lazy/slobs etc etc. There is no denying that and that IS pure fatty bashing. I also agree with BigLiberty’s analogy of the Hydra – these sorts of trolls will ALWAYS talk about fat people like that, even if they can’t comment directly below the news article they’ll post it elsewhere, on an unmoderated forum, or they’ll speak about it to their friends, post it on facebook/twitter etc. Their beliefs about fat people are deeply rooted in their upbringing and the way our society enforces the stereotypical fat persona.
The other part of the issue though, which I discussed with you Samantha last night on Facebook, is do the airlines have safety concerns about fat people flying? My (totally unacademic) example I described in that FB discussion -
“im just trying to work out if airlines have any overall weight limits when it comes to flights – do they think that by having a fatty that weighs say 150kg in one seat REALLY equals 2 75kg ‘average’ people, and if that’s the case do they think by sharing the fatty between 2 seats will help ‘even out’ the total weight capacity of the flight so the plane doesn’t think there is one extra person that ‘shouldn’t be there’..”
It sounded offensive to ME, as a fatty, to write that, but I can’t help think is that a possible, logical explanation to why the airlines are doing this? There will always be fatty bashers admist it all, but is there so boring old logical reason why the airlines are making it such a big deal?
In any case, if it IS such a safety concern for the airlines, surely there could be a more sensitive way of dealing with the issue?
Anyway…… for the commenters on these sites that think their world is ending because a fat person sat next to them on a flight – A BIG FAT FUCK OFF. How do you think it feels being a fat person that has to sit next to a giant turd-burger like YOU the whole flight? I mean seriously, shouldn’t you have checked in your douchecanoe as additional baggage before you sat down?
No. The margins on commercial airliners are not that tight.
And it’s about fat, not about scale weight per se. A 6’4″ man who weighs 250 pounds is not asked to buy two seats, whereas a 5’1″ woman who weighs 250 pounds may be. (Even though the 6’4″ man may be more of a violator of his neighbor’s airspace, thanks to broad shoulders and long legs and arms!)
Thank you for clearing that up for me! So really the airlines just don’t have a leg to stand on do they? Is this whole issue really just about other passengers not wanting fat people next to them? How very, very sad. Surprising? No not really.
Thanks for that info it is always helpful to know the science behind things.
Actually, on most planes (the airbusses, 747s, and other huge airliners excluded) having someone thats weighs twice as much as other passengers on one side of the plane is a safety concern, whether that person has a high bmi or not. I have been on several flights that have been delayed because the airline has to rearrange luggage or passengers to accommodate the uneven weightload.
I don’t have anything useful to say right now. I just wanted to say that somedays when I read this stuff it makes me sad. I get so sick of having to defend, and be ready to defend, against all these fat-hating, ignorant trolls.
Hi Dan, I know how you feel, I get like that too, on my less than good days. Hugs to you.
Thanks Jan – yes I was having one of those days today. I had been reading papers about fat stigma all morning, and this tipped me over the edge!
Hugs to both of you. And to Kenlie who was extremely brave in calling people out on this b/s. It cant be easy to have your story in the public domain and to have a whole bunch of complete hatred in response.
I think passenger weight really only comes into aircraft safety when you have tiny planes, e.g. 50 seats or less. Passengers’ weight is only a small percentage of the total weight of the plane and its cargo. For example a 747-800 has a max takeoff weight of around 430,000 kg, a 737-400 has around 68,000kg I think. Even if 10% of the passengers were extremely fat and all sat on the one side or section it would not be a safety issue. Airlines that run smaller aircraft generally distribute people around the plane for best loading regardless of the individual’s weight.
This is really sad that this is going on. Even if it is opinion, it is being put in an inapproritate way, and i would imagine that these people would perhaps be reluctant to say such things if they were face to face with the so called’fat’ person.
Anyone who says such comments as you described must be pretty perfect in their own appearences! But I wish this world was less image consious…
I hope that it is the minority that feel the need to say personal comments to people who they do not know, and that the rest can continue to spread positivity!
As I wrote above to Dan, there are days when I don’t comment or say much because the will is week, but this particular issue pissed me off last week when it came to my attention, after my DD emailed me the article and the nasty posts. I read many of the comments before deciding that I could not punish myself further, as these comments do hurt. But worse than that they also add to the general fat hatred that exists out there.
Bigliberty’s comments are interesting and go some way in explaining was is behind fat stigma.
I have checked out that blog Sam and am going to go back and have a longer read.
Thanks
Hey you!!
I’m always interested in why family members feel like they need to draw this stuff to peoples attention. Like Ivan was talking about above as well (Hi Ivan!!)
You know the thing that really does my head in. That people take it out on the fatties rather than the industry. And they feel quite comfortable using the anonymity of the screen to express all of this hatred too.
The only other time I see this type of online commentary is with asylum seekers. We did a study on this recently (we are just waiting for it to be published).
I wish someone, somewhere with a lot of influence would start to take this on as an issue.
Sending you heaps of hugs Jan!!
S xx
Hi Sam
Well to answer your question as to why my daughter chose to point out this article to me, she was for the first time showing publicly her support for me. She had actually written a response to send but chose not too after considering that it most likely would not make much dent in the heads of the fat haters.
But I took her response as a bridge of understanding toward me and my existence as a very fat woman living in a society that is hostile towards fatness.
We have had some long term issues due to my weight and all the shit that goes with it. I felt she was finally letting me off the hook, and it felt such a relief.
One less battle to wage.
On another train of thought, I tend to not continue with a discussion if it is weigh loss related. Last week a very dear long time friend came over and started talking about the new diet she was going on-tony ferguson or soemthing like that. I told her not interested thanks, she is tall, slim and fairly active yet she still strives to be smaller.
*shakes head*.
Jan
Hi Jan,
I’m probably taking a too abstract position on this particular issue. I know for many people this is very real and needs a more pragmatic approach. I enjoy some privilege in that though I’m “deathfat” I rarely fly, haven’t gotten the ‘weight’ spiel from doctors, and I look like a female Andre the Giant so I’m pretty sure I intimidate the hell out of your average fat-hater-catcaller.
I can imagine the internet comments on a news article being what could send some people who get loads of shame elsewhere over the edge. We build up these thick skins but I know I’m not immune to some of the nastiest stuff, especially if it gets into how fat people are “stupider” than thinner people (for some reason intelligence-shaming makes me see red every time).
I think it would be very helpful to bring the emergence of hate over fat issues in these kinds of comments threads to public attention. Sam, are you thinking about conducting formal research into the issue?
We are doing an analysis of the Marie Claire mike and molly comments at the moment. Thousands of comments to go through.
I think this needs a more systematic look though. We did a similar one on asylum seekers. I will think of who I can get to do it
Hi everyone! not sure if there has been talk of this before but I have this roughed out vision of a live clearing house of fat hatred. something like a twitter feed that gets moderated onto a face book page. Every time you see fat hatred you can click a button, and a screen shot and url’s and IP’s are automatically collected and the hate filled comments from a blog to a sketchers for girls ad is seen on TV the shows that these ads target are recorded. All this info is then used to work strategically to effect a change in the way the stigma is spread.
Of course in my fantasy this all works itself organically without me having to do a lot of work. sort of how #thingsfatpeoplearetold unfolded.
or maybe during sweeps week on TV we keep score to see which network had the most instances of Fat Hate/Shaming/Stigmatizing
Hey if you are in NYC this Saturday, check this out… I hope I don’t flake on myself and not show up. http://www.bodylovewellness.com/2011/05/18/dancing-with-body-positivity-workshop-redress-brooklyn/
Hi Ivan, what about a Tumblr like this: http://fucknofathate.tumblr.com/
Hi Bigliberty I am immune to some of the shit comments, but every now and then and probably depends on the day, it goes through to the keeper.
I too think that it would be helpful to take the fat hating comments to the greater public, surely it couldn’t make things worse than they are now?
And yes let’s bring these keyboard warriors into the public, shine a light on them and their fatphobic rants.
Yes, I think that would be a wonderful way to start attacking this. Ivan has a great idea. For everyone who uses Tumblr, there’s a “share” feature that allows you to share a quote/video/comment/link from whatever page you’re on at the moment. You can bookmark it in your browser menu, so in effect you can ‘click a button’ and have some information about whatever you were just reading fed into a text editor that’s hooked up to your Tumblr account. It just takes a bit of Javascript to create something like that, I believe. Then of course one needs a repository site (the Fat Hate Clearing House), and logins for that site (perhaps it could be Tumblr-based?). Just a thought. The technology might already exist to do this, actually.
yes something like that… Although I have to get over the fact that I cant figure out how to work tumbler…. PLEASE!!!!! if someone knows of a good video about how to tumble send it my way…..
anyway, at first glance, the fucknofathate tumbler is the exact kind of thing I was thinking about. also the button you spoke about that clips whatever web page you are on is great.
the thing that will be tough is that it is so so so much admin work. I have to figure out how to navigate this tumbler so I can see how this team of activists are doing the admin.
The activism stuff like this, the very very admin heavy stuff requires a commitment and time and energy that I sadly struggle to summon sometimes. I have a lifelong history with severe depression. It comes and goes without warning. When it hits, I struggle to read my emails, let alone respond to them. So while I love the idea of the clearing house, I know that I can only commit to helping on a daily basis. I try to stay away from any long term commitments because of the depressions and the difficulty in predicting when it will hit me.
My blog has not had any new posts in a long time because of a severe episode of depression. I dont even wanna get started about how the weight and stigma does its dance with my depression and how difficult it is to seperate out my clinical depression from the weight and stigma etc.
okay gonna go try to figure out how to navigate the tumbler site and see the meat and bones of fucknofathate tumbler page.
Ivan, I’m more than happy to hand over the site to you whenever you want. I suggest registering your own Tumblr first and playing with it a bit to get a sense for how it works. I don’t have the time to do the admin work myself, as my day job + two blogs + novel + twitter have taken up nearly everything I’ve got.
BigLib yeah, I know myself and I definitely couldn’t handle the admin of something like this. Depression makes me an unreliable admin, I have tried many times to figure out tumbler on my own, playing around with it only confirms that I can’t figure it out. Sad too cause it looks like there is a lot of good stuff there.
In an ideal world, what I have in mind would unfold organically sort of how the tweet trend of #stufffatpeoplearetold from a few weeks ago,
when I hear fat hate I have a nails on chalkboard kind of reaction.
PS this is a side issue, but when will airlines actually provide seating for ‘real’ people (aka people of ALL body shapes), instead of providing generic seating for a homogenous population which does not exist?
I can squeeze myself into airline seating, but if at any point I can’t I will be asking THEM to explain to me why it is that they are discriminating against ME and other people like me.
It has and continues to annoy me no end.
Dan, I don’t think that is a side issue at all. I think it’s a real issue. I sat between my very tall and muscly husband and a representative rugby league player – neither fat, but both very big men – from Sydney to Hong Kong then to London, and the three inches the two of them left for me made for an absolutely hellish trip (topped off by the rugby player being a leg jiggler!). Economy seats ARE small, but all the same, it’s not unreasonable for travellers to expect to get the seat (and level of discomfort) they paid for, so finding that you’ve only gotten part of it because the rest has been taken over by someone else, is only going to breed resentment, especially on a longer flight. I know bigger seats = less of them = higher fares, and I know there has been an airline price war on forever. I don’t have an easy answer to that, but – ! – there has to be a better way, and I think airlines need to grapple with it, because the issue isn’t going away.
My horror-trip shows that the space-on-planes issue is not limited to overweight people. Still, I am prepared to bet anything that if the same thing had happened to my “too big” husband and the “too big” rugby player, they wouldn’t have gotten the rude responses that the overweight woman did.
Secondly, if airlines need to pull anyone aside about anything, there needs to be a way to do it that is not public. It should not be publicly humiliating. I think it would be hellish enough, without being subject to the judgment of the lounge. I wonder the degree to which airlines teach *how* to deliver messages like this, or just teach the policy. I suspect the emphasis is policy.
And thirdly, while I definitely agree that fat stigma is alive and well, you don’t need to read too many comments on newspaper websites to know that there is a lot of nastiness out there – it’s not limited to fat. That there is so much hate and whatever being kept under wraps, and sneaking out on the keyboard when we think no one is listening – now THAT is scary.
Absolutley, why not make bigger seats so most people can travel, surely my money is as good as the next person’s? I have never been on an airplane, except a grade 7 joy flight and one scary trip in a Royal Flying Doctor plane many years ago.
I would love to fly somewhere and see some of the world.
I go to extraordinary lengths to squeeze my entire 300lbs into airline seats without encroaching on the people beside me. I will spend all my time and concentration trying to keep every part of me in my seat, with the armrests digging painfully into my legs… and I spend the entire flight extremely uncomfortable just so the people next to me aren’t. So to these fat-hating fucktards I say a hearty “Screw you!”
Hi All,
I am a Russian Kettlebell Instructor / Personal Trainer. I help people get strong and healthy.
This is huge topic. Here is the key: People. We are all people; some have more fat, wear glasses, have implants, red hair…
This is PREJUDICE. Perhaps “fat” people should sit in the back of the plane and use separate water fountains…
Haven’t we outgrown this bull mess yet?
Trainer Steve, RKC
I hope you’re wrong about the peaking thing, but every time I think I see things improving, I hear one more piece of fat hatred that makes my heart sink.
I’ve amassed a collection of old medical books, and one thing that strikes me is how moral panic dictates the pathological explanations of the time in every era. In the 1870s, the big thing that would cause all manner of disease, insanity and death was overindulgence in sex. By the 1930s, people were obsessed with the functioning of their bowels and believed that constipation was the root of all evil (such that magazines of the times actually advertise laxatives as cures for what we’d identify now as depression, especially in women). And today, it’s fat. The most chilling parallel between the Victorians’ panic over sex and ours about fat, in particular, is, for me, the fact that surgery on healthy organs was/is used to get rid of ‘excessive’ appetite in both cases.
I’d like to think that one day, our own culture’s obesity scare will look just as weird and barbaric. But, barring the invention of some radical new life-extending drug, or a visit from a guy in a blue police box, I’m not sure I’ll be around to see it. Which is no reason not to keep fighting.
Oh Emerald that is facinating, would love to read some books like that. Can you give me some title names please, I love reading.
That was supposed to be a response to BigLiberty’s comment further up. For some reason it wouldn’t post there. Sorry for any confusion, guys!
on this subject you may be interested in
growing obesity increases perils of childbearing ny times, june 5, 2010.
I have decided to write about the article Growing Obesity Increases Perils of Childbearing – a piece that discusses the ways in which obese mothers are burdening society on an eating disorders blog because I believe it is important we talk about all women, all mothers – no matter what they weigh – in a manner that is inclusive and respectful.
That to target, classify and talk pejoratively about any one group is rarely productive – whether it is mothers who are seriously overweight or mothers who are seriously underweight – to objectify and talk about them pejoratively en masse is unacceptable. Yet this is precisely what this article does. And what is even more astounding is this article – published in a mainstream global newspaper – seems to have gone without comment. Without an uproar.
Why it is disturbing and unacceptable
First, read the article carefully and take notice how the story is told. For example, why are we told “Hospitals, especially in poor areas have been forced to adjust.” Why has the word forced been used?
Is it because it is undesirable to have to spend more money on the poor? On the poor who are burdening us? Unreasonable for staff to have had to undergo “sensitivity” training?
Why couldn’t the sentence have been written: Hospitals have had to adjust.
Do we need the words poor and forced?
If so then let’s think of a way of describing the situation that is more respectful. Less likely to inflame the situation and simply yet again blame the poor and the overweight.
Ms Garcia
The story focusses on Ms Garcia, her obesity, her stroke and how she had to spend several weeks in hospital. We are told details such as she was given a general anesthesia because “her bulk made it hard to feel her spine to place a local anesthetic.” We are also told, “a flap of fat covered her bikini line, so the doctor had to make a higher incision.”
On and on the description goes, giving the reader a chance to be “horrified.”
It is this horror, the way we are told these details that concerns me – instead of it being par for the course for this pregnancy, a complicated pregnancy, Ms Garcia is objectified and presented to us as a complicated pregnancy that unlike all other complicated pregnancies is unjustified.
Her complications were avoidable – if only she had lost weight, if only she been responsible. If only she ate less. . .
We are told the problem with women like Ms Garcia is acute and it may be necessary to create obese maternity units – to segregate these women and their babies – to use specialized equipment to manage this category of women.
A separate unit to manage veins that are hard to find, provide bigger equipment (forceps etc) to pull babies out and delivery tables that won’t collapse under the pressure.
The problem is however if you go down this line of thinking, if you keep presenting the problem as these women are at fault it is only a jump, step and a hop away from saying – perhaps obese women shouldn’t be allowed to have children? Shouldn’t be allowed to burden us.
Separating women out into groups is discriminatory and unhelpful. More worrying though once accepted as permissible, it can so easily be applied to other women.
Women, for example, who have eating disorders.
Should they be given treatment to fall pregnant if their eating disorder has affected their fertility? Should they be assisted during a pregnancy if issues arise? Would they make good mothers?
On and on.
In summary
How we talk about women and how we talk about their bodies and their weight matters.
http://eatingdisorderhopeculture.blogspot.com/2010/06/vilifying-obese-mothers-why-this-is.html
Ivan, Big Liberty… I would be totally up to be involved in something like this…
Ivan I am like you with tumbler…. I cant work out how to use tumbler either.
Big Liberty, did you just set that up??? It is fantastic.
Thanks! I just set it up after seeing Ivan’s comment, yet. It would be fairly easy to set up a shared admin email, gmail or yahoo, and then a set of admins that all had access to both the email (for alerts) and the Tumblr administration.
As for the Tumblr tutorial, I don’t know how good this one is, but there are plenty more in the Related Videos, perhaps you could find one that is good? I suggest you set up a personal dummy Tumblr to play with and then destroy it when you’ve got the lay of the land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBMS-vi7ouM
PS I need to sort out this website so the comments can go more than a few deep on each thread… I will work on that!!!
Sam, go to your Dashboard -> Settings (sidebar) -> Discussion -> “Other comment settings” has the nesting levels for comments. You can set them up to 10 levels deep, but I suggest no deeper than 6 since the comment boxes will get very narrow with this particular theme.
thank you honey!!!!
This story was on NBC Nightly News tonight. A few passengers were interviewed and all came to the consensus that if a fat person can fit in the seat, the airline should back off, although one of the three interviewed did say that passengers of size should buy two seats if they can’t fit in the seat. I really wasn’t offended by that—I think if I had to fly, I would go ahead and purchase two but definitely request a refund if it turns out I can fit in one seat, while reminding them that all fat bodies are not alike and that their policy of harassing them AFTER they’ve purchased tickets and getting ready to board the plane needs to stop.
I stand with Bree on this. I can understand the public policy position that public transport should make accommodations for all, yet I don’t think it is unreasonable to buy two tickets when traveling by air. , first and foremost for my comfort!!!! and a close second with the comfort of anyone seated near me.
You know, firstly, the comments you’ve posted from the article are actually fairly mild compared to some I have seen (or received on my own blog). But even those shouldn’t be seeing the light of day. I’m with Frances, I don’t see the point in allowing comments on news articles. The only people who comment are usually spewing hate and ignorance, because everyone else has better things to do. It only creates further problems, no matter the subject of the article.
But that’s not where it ends. Because people read those hateful comments, that ARE published (and they ARE moderated – the moderators let them through) and think it’s acceptable to carry that crap on into the rest of life and mistreat fat people in general.
“The stigma seen in these online comments is referred to in the literature as structural stigma (see Corrigan et al for a good introduction to this in the mental health literature).”
Dr. Sam — if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to request a link to this, please? There are some people I’ve been really struggling to explain this to (or maybe they’re really struggling to accept it as something that really exists; I’m not sure which).
Anyway, I think it’d be a powerfully persuasive piece of supplementary information.
Not at all…. http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/56/5/551
If you want the full paper let me know
Just makes me sad that this kind of thinking even exists. I find I often am the only one pointing out this bias among friends, family, others and I get almost torn to shreds for even suggesting this thinking is wrong. These people reel off stats and headlines they have seen and chatise me because my ‘attitude’ might encourage people to stay fat. They shouldn’t stay fat, not if they were responsible citizens who cared about their health and cue all the stereotypical comments here. Some of these are quite educated people which is even more disturbing, some of them have overweight partners, friends, children and feel quite morally justified in shaming, blaming and guilting them into changing their behaviour. Of course it doesn’t work. My point is if people do it so easily to those they maintain they love and care about, how much easier is it to attack a stranger?
Kenlie’s story is quite inspiring, her conditions seems to be out of hand but she definitely took control of her life and obtained success. nothing is impossible if you are are determined, keep your eyes on the price!