this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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That fat is the devil. No, don't have loads, but a bit isn't an issue
Yeah, fatphobia is rife, as are armchair doctors who know nothing and yet claim to in order to shame others and feel better about themselves.
Fat is much worse for men, but you don't see anyone fat shaming them.
Yes you do. Men are not immune from fat shaming.
Immune, no. But an average woman puts on 5kg and they're talked about as if they're suddenly the fattest thing that ever fatted. Man puts on a proportional amount and ... silence. Men have to start flirting with actual obesity to start getting the shit women get if they gain 10%.
Example from my life: there's a Canadian TV show I kind of thought was nifty called Lost Girl. It starred Anna Silk as Bo, a succubus who didn't know about the supernatural world she was part of until early in the series. Even in the earlier seasons of the show (1 and 2) there was some rumbling—mostly from men—about how she was a bit "broad in the beam". Come season 3, however, even men I liked and, more importantly, some very catty women, were talking about how she'd "pudged up" starting from the very first episode.
Even "worse" she visibly gained weight (and a lot of it!) as the season progressed.
Because, you see, Anna Silk was pregnant in season 3. The production team worked around her visible-weight-gain-for-obvious-reasons to keep the show on the air. But there were actually men in some of my circles saying the show should have taken a season-long hiatus so that Anna wouldn't look fat.
I can't think of any lead male actor who'd gained the little bit of body weight Anna had gained at the beginning of season 3 who took the shit she took.
Coincidentally, I was recently trying to remember which show starred a succubus, so thanks for referencing that!
I love Marvel, but they've done their share of fat shaming men. Chris Hemsworth wore a fat suit for Endgame and wasn't even that big, but took a lot of guff. Chris Pratt as Peter Quill got told he was "one sandwich away from fat." I'm not arguing that men always get fat-shamed in the same way or to the same degree as women, but they absolutely get it, and I think it's unfair to the men who are respectfully abiding by the rules and not commenting here to insinuate (or actually directly state) that they don't experience this. Also unfair to the women who love them and have to watch as they experience this pain.
Just for context, I am not the one downvoting these comments.
Oh, absolutely men do get fat-shamed. It's just that there's no comparison across the male/female divide. A man gains 5kg and he's got a "dad bod". A woman gains 5kg and she's held to hard criticism by men and women both. It's actually kind of horrific.
That being said, post-COVID, around October '22 or so, my own reaction to the intense distress and, frankly, utter terror of living through the world's largest and most comprehensive quarantine in all of history had me eating a whole lot to settle my nerves. I did put on weight (and not only 5kg...) and I'm actually very happy that one of my former students who saw me suggested I come to the gym he owned and start working out. So sometimes commenting on someone's weight is a good thing. It's all in how it's presented and the attitude that's paired with it. (Oh and who does the commenting. Random Internet losers can DIAF.)
Now I'm back to where I was before (still considered "heavy" by those idiot BMI charts) but I'm far healthier and stronger for it.