It hasn't been a good week for fat-shaming. Or it's been a very good week for it, depending on how you look at it. First, talk show host Bill Maher called for people to 'bring back' fat-shaming on his show.
James Corden then stepped in, saying, 'It's proven that fat shaming only does one thing. It makes people feel ashamed and shame leads to depression, anxiety and self-destructive behaviour - self-destructive behaviour like overeating.'
And yet the debate rumbled on.
Good Morning Britain hosted a debate yesterday titled 'Can Fat Shaming Help Cure Obesity?'. On one side of the argument was Danni Levy, who works in fitness. During the debate she said something that is still causing outrage online 24 hours later: 'The more we fat-shame, the more people will keep their mouths shut and stop overeating.'
She the went on to claim that she's heard many of her clients say that they 'got stuck on a waterslide, everyone laughed at them', which was the trigger for major weight loss. The only problem with the theory that being cruel to people about their weight makes them thinner is that it's not true. It has been disproved by multiple academic studies conducted by people who are actual experts.
A 2014 study of 3,000 people, conducted by UCL, found that people who were fat shamed were actually more likely to gain weight than lose it. A 2012 study by the Norwegian College of Science and Technology found that teenagers who were made to believe they were fat (even if they were a healthy weight) were 60% more likely to end up actually being overweight as adults.
Comments about fatness and other people's bodies are often dressed up as 'concern' - a kind of concern that never extends to smacking cigarettes out of people's mouths
If you want to find evidence that fat-shaming makes people lose weight, you'll be confined to a short list of anecdotal stories. But even if it did 'work', that still wouldn't make it OK. It is not your right to 'cure' someone else's obesity with cruelty any more than it's your right to tell a smoker that they stink, a drinker that they're boring or an addict that they're annoying.
The rules of general social behaviour still apply. You should try to avoid saying things that are hurtful, especially on purpose. Comments about fatness and other people's bodies are often dressed up as 'concern' - a kind of concern that never extends to smacking cigarettes out of people's mouths or only serving Diet Coke at parties.
If you feel the need to say something about a fat person's body then you need to ask yourself why – because all of the peer reviewed evidence demonstrates that it's really not about concern for their health.
Other people's health is none of your business. Even if you could force someone to lose weight by making them feel bad about their body, it would still not be within your remit to do so. If you are actually 'concerned' about someone's BMI, then the best thing you can do about it is say nothing.