Ragen Chastain

In case there are people who need to be told this (and there shouldn’t be) fat shaming kids is never, ever ok. And it does not lead to healthier kids.

Recently, Paul Ryan decided that “appropriate attire” for women will exclude sleeveless dresses and open-toed shoes, and pretty soon thereafter, several women reporters were refused entry to the Speaker’s Lobby for showing their arms.

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.

Fat people on Instagram have been noticing a disturbing double standard when it comes to supposed “violations” of Instagram's guidelines.

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.

Keep working, keep pushing, live so that these people call you attention seeking activists every day. You are making the world better.

Mansplaining is rampant in our culture, and nowhere is it mansplain-ier than when men explain women’s bodies to us.

Slimming World (UK version of Weight Watchers) is telling those who have reached their “target weight” to ditch their fat friends.

The fact that fat people are so thoroughly and constantly lied to by diet culture, and so profoundly oppressed by fatphobia, that they would submit themselves to this is not a justification for it. But that isn’t stopping J.D. Roth, the show’s creator. Not satisfied with exploiting fat people once, he is launching a new show called The Big Fat Truth in which he’ll bring back six former contestants for another round of exploitation, false promises, and weight cycling.

In the U.S., we are living in frightening times.