Ragen Chastain

For fat people, Weight Loss Surgery is often touted as the magic bullet that will solve everything from sickness to single-ness to stigmatization.

For many white people, our first reaction to hearing about racism is to immediately look for a reason to say “That’s not racist!” That said, in conversations I’ve had where people are struggling with this, they have asked for specific ways to work through this. So if you find yourself in this situation, here are some steps that you can take yourself through.

NBC's The Biggest Loser might be cancelled after allegations of abuse and fat-shaming. Here's why it would be a GOOD thing if the show never aired again!

Reinforcing an oppressive sexism system so that you can get what you want is an option, but perhaps not one to be quite so proud of.

Fat is not a feeling you have. Fat is a body size you are. Fat people have as many different feelings about our bodies as thin people do. Suggesting that feeling bad about your body means that you are “feeling fat” is fat shaming AF, and it adds to the ceaseless fatphobic messages that permeate our society.

It is a very difficult and dangerous job, and it does require officers to have the ability to make good split second decisions. None of that should mean that it’s OK to be incompetent, or that we should all rush to justify, ignore, or excuse incompetence, racism, ableism, and the inappropriate use of force.

Food shaming as a form of fat shaming has happened to every fat person I know. Here are some examples of when fat people clap back at fatphobes.

Fat shaming is wrong in any guise, and people who are trying to be funny (and/or trying to cover for a woefully incompetent press secretary) will just have to do better than relying on cheap stereotypes, shaming, and bigotry.

How are kids going to have any chance to develop a lifelong love of movement when we teach them that exercise is either punishment for having a body that is “too big” or something to be done in order to keep kids from looking like their larger classmates?

People are using #TheySaid to tell their stories of experiencing body shaming. Sally Bergesen kicked things off by talking about her own memory of body shaming, and hundreds of Twitter responses echoed her story.