(FYI, this post is a follow up to the video I posted in this blog on September 5th, 2015 post, Fat Shaming for Sport & Views)
I watched that previous and very moving video of a young woman with an eating disorder (in Great Britain, I believe), asking people who identified with eating disorders and self-esteem issues to draw a heart on her body. I cried as I watched it.
Then, I read a post written about that video. The writer, a health at every size advocate like myself, wondered whether the loving response to a black bikini clad woman, practically naked in public, would have been any different if the woman in the bikini had been a larger, fatter woman.
Then, a middle-aged Mom in Boise, Idaho, answered that question for us.
What follows are her two videos—first her experiment in a downtown public market–followed by her sharing of her experience doing so. I know it could have gone differently. We live in a world where weight bias and weight stigma, and fat jokes are aplenty. But I am so glad both experiments, one across the pond and one here in the US, went the way they did.
I am crying, again, as I write this (Yes, I am a crier!). But this time they’re tears of hope! Maybe, just maybe in our lifetime, we’ll see an end to fat shaming? Wouldn’t that be amazing!
What was your reaction to these videos? Did they stir up any feelings, any judgments, any weight bias–about other people’s bodies…or your own? Feel free to comment below.
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I’m Ellen Shuman and nothing makes me sadder (and angrier) than Fat Shaming! I am a Coach who specializes in helping people overcome body dissatisfaction and shame, as well as emotional eating, compulsive eating, binge eating disorder, and food addiction. I am the founder of A Weigh Out Life Coaching (an end to emotional eating and weight obsession) & Acoria Binge Eating Disorder Treatment (1993-present), Past President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (2011/2012), and Co-Founder of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”. Ready to do some work on these issues? Get in touch! ellen@aweighout.com, 513-321-4242.
