I’ve been off social media for a while now, but that didn’t prevent me from knowing that the last 24h witnessed a major quarrel on Twitter due to some comments made about singer, Lizzo.

Aries spears, a comedian, was asked about the singer, and he went on a ramble discussing her looks and body and how she, according to him of course, looked like the “Shit emoji”. He continued to say that she didn’t need to flaunt her “fat” body all the time for everyone to see, and finished by calling out the hypocrisy of celebrating overweight women.

I suggest you listen to his words yourself. Though, I can assure you prior to doing that, that they do lack grace and are spat with zero consideration for the hurt they were evident to cause, not just to Lizzo herself, but to many others. Thus, the backlash he received is somewhat justifiable.

www.youtube.com

Now, as acknowledged above, I didn’t find his way of addressing the matter to be proper in the slightest of ways; I do however, differ from the large majority attacking him on twitter. I believe that his opinion bears some merit underneath the ugly words verbalising it, and I’d like to assume that I can shed a light on the message he’s trying, and utterly failing, to spread due to a very intimate experience of my own.

A few years ago, I had the misfortune of experiencing several traumatic incidents. Everything happened at once, and I drowned in a sea of unprecedented misery. At the time, I truly believed I’d never live to see another happy day, it all seemed astoundingly bleak and during that period; I resulted to the company of a sole friend: Food.

I spent my days stuffing myself with whatever food available at a hand reach, and when I wasn’t eating, my thoughts revolved exclusively around the next thing to consume. My eating habits did nothing to improve the horrible mental state I was at, they only managed in helping me gain weight and develop an eating disorder.

The struggles I was facing were becoming more evident as my physical appearance quite shockingly attested to the horrendous way I was feeling inside. There was a time when I was truly convinced that I was the only human to ever feel such deep sense of inferiority; surely no one has hated themselves as much as I did, I thought.

I am not going to tell you about the sentiments I experienced upon not fitting a dress, or upon getting judged by complete strangers for my choice of a meal at a random restaurant down town. All of that was background noise, and none of it really affected me.

What truly hurt was that I didn’t like the person I was morphing into, I didn’t enjoy that version of myself. I didn’t like that my whole day centered around what I was about to eat or the thing I’d just consumed. I hated the reality of struggling to walk up a few stairs, I loathed that my breathing patterns changed and became so unbearable especially at night where I battled to sleep soundly. And I remember despising the apologetic look my doctor gave me when informing me of the many potential risks I was developing due to this new weight of mine.

The other side of my life comprised of a bunch of friends hyping up the “New Me”. They’d all say they loved me for not abiding to the impossible beauty standards forced down our throats by the patriarchy. They’d tell me I was beautiful whilst trying to convince me within the same sentence that weight didn’t matter.

I tried my best to believe them, I worked so hard to accept this version of myself and I was beginning to think that a future where I was even obese did exist, and I could go on leading a happy, full -no pun intended- life in it.

But everything changed when someone close to me bluntly, some would say rudely, pointed out that this route I was embarking on was not going to result in me celebrating a happy ending.

This friend approached my situation from purely scientific lenses, something many deem to be bigoted nowadays, but due to her background and work in the medical field, she succeeded in explaining, in excruciating details I might add, how I would come to regret the decisions I was making regarding my eating habits if I didn’t switch them for healthier ones as soon as possible.

She also explained how due to the family history I had, many of my relatives struggled with various chronic diseases, I was more likely to suffer a grim conclusion to a very short life if I didn’t act soon.

I don’t know why her words echoed louder than those of the doctor; though very similar. I guess when truth is uttered by strangers, we could dismiss it quite easily, but when voiced by those closest to us, it somehow stings and runs deep.

Whatever it was, that interaction changed me whole. It didn’t just lead me to seek help and work on my body, but it had a more profound impact for it completely shifted the way I perceived and thought of things.

I ended up fostering a new way of living, one that led me to exist in a far better place than the one I occupied all those years ago. Life is by no means perfect, but I sure like and enjoy it far better now than I did back then. And here’s what I would say to anyone struggling with this issue.

Beauty is subjective, the whole “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” thing is indeed a factual statement. I happen to originate from a country where fat women are more desirable and where those Victoria’s Secret models look-alikes are scorn down upon and laughed at. So yes, beauty differs from a person to another, from one culture to the next; and equating it to thinness depends solely on where you’re from.

However, no one could debate the fact that being fat is unhealthy. You could desire a fat or an obese person, but you cannot deny factual, scientific intakes simply because you like them. And that is the root of the issue, it is our inability to differentiate between two non-identical concepts.

When you tell someone being fat isn’t healthy, most would automatically perceive the statement as an attack on their physical appearance, and don’t get me wrong, that could very much be the case, but even if it is, which would be mean and uncool, it doesn’t negate the truth it holds.

The “Yes queen” and “slay” crowd at its core is trying to achieve an amiable thing, being accepting of everyone, but when it comes to the obesity debate, it is only helping a serious problem fester. These fans are trying to shield the feelings of the fat person from getting hurt whilst exposing their body to potential menacing damages.

Those loud screams will only cheer an overweight person into an early grave, and if not, they’ll support them all the way into a health crisis and that is by no means what friends ought do.

Those who love and care about you most are meant to be the first to point out your problems when you’re too self indulged to detect any. They’re meant to spit the hard facts and offer you the help required to overcome them.

Lying wouldn’t help anyone; especially not the overweight person. Maybe it actually helps them, the liars, for it makes them feel a bit more virtuous, “Oh look at me, I am the fat-accepting friend, I’d never judge your choices even if they’re actually going to prevent you from celebrating your 21st birthday” .

Those aren’t your friends, far from it. Surround yourself by people who aren’t afraid to stand up to you when mistaken, who are willing to put themselves in a bad light if it means it could help you. People who aren’t concerned 24/7 with looking open-minded and understanding, appeasing to the broader cultural standards of acceptance, but ones who are willing to risk looking less the woke cultural warrior and more like a true friend.

You can be beautiful whilst fat, you can be desirable and loved, those are all true statements, or we can at least debate them and agree that at the end of the day, their merit is a matter of opinion. However, you simply cannot be healthy whilst obese; those two are in fact mutually exclusive.

And because I am sure some folks will try to argue that some skinny people are unhealthy, I would like to save you the trouble of commenting or sending angry emails, for I agree and so does science. But just because this is a fact, it doesn’t negate the validity that obesity will never be healthy. These two statements can, in fact, coexist.

Feelings and emotions have been elevated to such high status in our modern society and if any dare mess with them, the angry cancel cops will come knocking on your doors. We care so much about preserving one’s feelings that we are willing to ignore the fact that they’re literally leading an unhealthy existence that would eventually condemn their bodies to a gruesome end.

And an even crueller truth resides in the fact that so many of those “Acceptance Warriors” and the “Body Positivity” movement folks are not truly that concerned with the feelings of the fat person as much as they’re obsessed with establishing and maintaining their virtuous, exemplary image.

We also neglect the undeniable fact that being physically unhealthy will eventually result in having mental and emotional struggles. So by ignoring the numerous negative realities being overweight poses on a person, we are only gaslighting people into reaching a stage where everything we thought we were shielding them from by lying to them will manifest alongside many other awful dangers we didn’t even know existed.

I am not condoning being mean to someone regarding their weight, but if looking fatphobic is the only option to save someone from the many dangerous ramifications of obesity, then I’d very much prefer it to silence because I am sure if I wasn’t told those hard truths all those years ago, I probably wouldn’t be here, sharing this very unpopular opinion.

I’ve been off social media for a while now, but that didn’t prevent me from knowing that the last 24h witnessed a major quarrel on Twitter due to some comments made about singer, Lizzo.

Aries spears, a comedian, was asked about the singer, and he went on a ramble discussing her looks and body and how she, according to him of course, looked like the “Shit emoji”. He continued to say that she didn’t need to flaunt her “fat” body all the time for everyone to see, and finished by calling out the hypocrisy of celebrating overweight women.

I suggest you listen to his words yourself. Though, I can assure you prior to doing that, that they do lack grace and are spat with zero consideration for the hurt they were evident to cause, not just to Lizzo herself, but to many others. Thus, the backlash he received is somewhat justifiable.

www.youtube.com

Now, as acknowledged above, I didn’t find his way of addressing the matter to be proper in the slightest of ways; I do however, differ from the large majority attacking him on twitter. I believe that his opinion bears some merit underneath the ugly words verbalising it, and I’d like to assume that I can shed a light on the message he’s trying, and utterly failing, to spread due to a very intimate experience of my own.

A few years ago, I had the misfortune of experiencing several traumatic incidents. Everything happened at once, and I drowned in a sea of unprecedented misery. At the time, I truly believed I’d never live to see another happy day, it all seemed astoundingly bleak and during that period; I resulted to the company of a sole friend: Food.

I spent my days stuffing myself with whatever food available at a hand reach, and when I wasn’t eating, my thoughts revolved exclusively around the next thing to consume. My eating habits did nothing to improve the horrible mental state I was at, they only managed in helping me gain weight and develop an eating disorder.

The struggles I was facing were becoming more evident as my physical appearance quite shockingly attested to the horrendous way I was feeling inside. There was a time when I was truly convinced that I was the only human to ever feel such deep sense of inferiority; surely no one has hated themselves as much as I did, I thought.

I am not going to tell you about the sentiments I experienced upon not fitting a dress, or upon getting judged by complete strangers for my choice of a meal at a random restaurant down town. All of that was background noise, and none of it really affected me.

What truly hurt was that I didn’t like the person I was morphing into, I didn’t enjoy that version of myself. I didn’t like that my whole day centered around what I was about to eat or the thing I’d just consumed. I hated the reality of struggling to walk up a few stairs, I loathed that my breathing patterns changed and became so unbearable especially at night where I battled to sleep soundly. And I remember despising the apologetic look my doctor gave me when informing me of the many potential risks I was developing due to this new weight of mine.

The other side of my life comprised of a bunch of friends hyping up the “New Me”. They’d all say they loved me for not abiding to the impossible beauty standards forced down our throats by the patriarchy. They’d tell me I was beautiful whilst trying to convince me within the same sentence that weight didn’t matter.

I tried my best to believe them, I worked so hard to accept this version of myself and I was beginning to think that a future where I was even obese did exist, and I could go on leading a happy, full -no pun intended- life in it.

But everything changed when someone close to me bluntly, some would say rudely, pointed out that this route I was embarking on was not going to result in me celebrating a happy ending.

This friend approached my situation from purely scientific lenses, something many deem to be bigoted nowadays, but due to her background and work in the medical field, she succeeded in explaining, in excruciating details I might add, how I would come to regret the decisions I was making regarding my eating habits if I didn’t switch them for healthier ones as soon as possible.

She also explained how due to the family history I had, many of my relatives struggled with various chronic diseases, I was more likely to suffer a grim conclusion to a very short life if I didn’t act soon.

I don’t know why her words echoed louder than those of the doctor; though very similar. I guess when truth is uttered by strangers, we could dismiss it quite easily, but when voiced by those closest to us, it somehow stings and runs deep.

Whatever it was, that interaction changed me whole. It didn’t just lead me to seek help and work on my body, but it had a more profound impact for it completely shifted the way I perceived and thought of things.

I ended up fostering a new way of living, one that led me to exist in a far better place than the one I occupied all those years ago. Life is by no means perfect, but I sure like and enjoy it far better now than I did back then. And here’s what I would say to anyone struggling with this issue.

Beauty is subjective, the whole “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” thing is indeed a factual statement. I happen to originate from a country where fat women are more desirable and where those Victoria’s Secret models look-alikes are scorn down upon and laughed at. So yes, beauty differs from a person to another, from one culture to the next; and equating it to thinness depends solely on where you’re from.

However, no one could debate the fact that being fat is unhealthy. You could desire a fat or an obese person, but you cannot deny factual, scientific intakes simply because you like them. And that is the root of the issue, it is our inability to differentiate between two non-identical concepts.

When you tell someone being fat isn’t healthy, most would automatically perceive the statement as an attack on their physical appearance, and don’t get me wrong, that could very much be the case, but even if it is, which would be mean and uncool, it doesn’t negate the truth it holds.

The “Yes queen” and “slay” crowd at its core is trying to achieve an amiable thing, being accepting of everyone, but when it comes to the obesity debate, it is only helping a serious problem fester. These fans are trying to shield the feelings of the fat person from getting hurt whilst exposing their body to potential menacing damages.

Those loud screams will only cheer an overweight person into an early grave, and if not, they’ll support them all the way into a health crisis and that is by no means what friends ought do.

Those who love and care about you most are meant to be the first to point out your problems when you’re too self indulged to detect any. They’re meant to spit the hard facts and offer you the help required to overcome them.

Lying wouldn’t help anyone; especially not the overweight person. Maybe it actually helps them, the liars, for it makes them feel a bit more virtuous, “Oh look at me, I am the fat-accepting friend, I’d never judge your choices even if they’re actually going to prevent you from celebrating your 21st birthday” .

Those aren’t your friends, far from it. Surround yourself by people who aren’t afraid to stand up to you when mistaken, who are willing to put themselves in a bad light if it means it could help you. People who aren’t concerned 24/7 with looking open-minded and understanding, appeasing to the broader cultural standards of acceptance, but ones who are willing to risk looking less the woke cultural warrior and more like a true friend.

You can be beautiful whilst fat, you can be desirable and loved, those are all true statements, or we can at least debate them and agree that at the end of the day, their merit is a matter of opinion. However, you simply cannot be healthy whilst obese; those two are in fact mutually exclusive.

And because I am sure some folks will try to argue that some skinny people are unhealthy, I would like to save you the trouble of commenting or sending angry emails, for I agree and so does science. But just because this is a fact, it doesn’t negate the validity that obesity will never be healthy. These two statements can, in fact, coexist.

Feelings and emotions have been elevated to such high status in our modern society and if any dare mess with them, the angry cancel cops will come knocking on your doors. We care so much about preserving one’s feelings that we are willing to ignore the fact that they’re literally leading an unhealthy existence that would eventually condemn their bodies to a gruesome end.

And an even crueller truth resides in the fact that so many of those “Acceptance Warriors” and the “Body Positivity” movement folks are not truly that concerned with the feelings of the fat person as much as they’re obsessed with establishing and maintaining their virtuous, exemplary image.

We also neglect the undeniable fact that being physically unhealthy will eventually result in having mental and emotional struggles. So by ignoring the numerous negative realities being overweight poses on a person, we are only gaslighting people into reaching a stage where everything we thought we were shielding them from by lying to them will manifest alongside many other awful dangers we didn’t even know existed.

I am not condoning being mean to someone regarding their weight, but if looking fatphobic is the only option to save someone from the many dangerous ramifications of obesity, then I’d very much prefer it to silence because I am sure if I wasn’t told those hard truths all those years ago, I probably wouldn’t be here, sharing this very unpopular opinion.