Fat-Acceptance: When liberation becomes self-oppression

There was once a time when Feeding-Men who fatten up their partners as bizarre cases that at best make a headline in the Picturenewspaper. Today, people film themselves fattening up, post the videos on TikTok, and receive horrified and angry reactions from thousands of viewers.

Welcome to the world of fat influencers and fat acceptance. The latter began as a movement to promote the acceptance of obese people, but with the help of social media, it turned into a freak show that glorifies and encourages self-harming behavior. We know that many social media trends are short-lived, but with fat influencers it is more tragic: they often have a short life themselves. Caitlin Clare Cat Pausé, Brittany Sauer, Taylor LeJeune and Jamie Lopez are the names of fat influencers with a wide reach. What they all have in common: They are dead.

Caitlin Clare Cat Pausé was a professor of fat studies and vehemently denies the connection between obesity and chronic diseases. She died at the age of 42. Brittany Sauer also died young, she was only 28. In the last two years before her death, she could no longer leave the house, suffered from type 2 diabetes and severe skin infections that were not cured. Taylor LeJeune filmed himself binge-eating high-calorie foods for his 1.9 million TikTok followers and presumably died of a heart attack. He was only 33 years old.

Jamie Lopez rose to fame as a participant in a reality TV show and founded a beauty salon for obese women to meet their physical needs. She died at the age of 37. Lopez had tried to counteract this and lost an incredible 180 kilograms, but was still overweight afterwards.

Paradoxically, the deaths of some influencers with a wide reach do not lead to a rethink, but rather to a sharpening of the rhetoric of fat acceptance. Anyone who comes up with the idea of ​​questioning how healthy it is to carry around more than a hundred kilos of excess weight is labeled “fatphobic” and racist (because being slim is a white invention). On TikTok and YouTube, fat influencers proudly present their fat aprons.

It is reasonable to assume that such videos – like those in which people are shown binge eating – are a form of Anger bait Or Hate farming If you are not familiar with these terms, I would like to congratulate you: you have not descended into the depths of the Internet.
Anger bait and Hate farming Rely on generating clicks with content that makes viewers angry or disgusted. The content is shared millions of times, commented on and thus made popular. Many TikTokers and YouTubers build their success solely on the hate they generate.

The tragedy, of course, is that people make themselves the target of insults and devaluation. They may emphasize self-love and self-acceptance, but you don’t really want to believe these phrases. Because of the formulaic nature of the constant invocation of self-love. And because you can easily imagine that a body that is so heavy causes permanent pain and discomfort.

On Fat Girl Flow, a website for – well – fat girls, One user reports that she hasn’t been able to wipe her own bottom for years. And that’s totally fine with her.

Worse, her post criticized another, former fat influencer for trying to lose weight. They too had lost the ability to wipe their butts. In other words, weight interferes with everyday tasks. Oh, and speaking of disability, the author on Fat Girl Flow finds the idea of ​​wanting to clean your own butt to be anti-disabled. The author doesn’t even realize that this form of disability is a self-chosen one.