If you haven’t seen it just yet, James Corden recently addressed a Bill Maher segment on his show after Maher requested a comeback for fat-shaming. He noted that being fat was now “good” and that we needed fat-shaming in order to help people lose weight. I don’t want to link to his segment so much, but I’ve added James Corden’s response below:

I respect James for this clip. He didn’t need to do this and I appreciate him fully for using his platform to raise awareness to the fat-shaming problem people already face. Because we do already face it. Fat-shaming never went away, and it is a form of bullying we face in everyday life. It can be lethal, especially for celebrities, and James really put himself on the line for doing this. If you scroll through the replies to the thread above, you can see just how much fat-shaming is still prevalent and even dominant on social media.

“It’s proven that fat shaming does only one thing, it makes people feel ashamed. And shame leads to depression and anxiety and self-destructive behaviour. Behaviours like overeating” — James Corden

If fat shaming went away, we wouldn’t see role models like Jesy Nelson from Little Mix discussing her suicide attempt due to the vile comments made by trolls and bullies about her weight on her recent documentary.

Fat shaming is so ingrained into our society that I can actually forgive Bill Maher for thinking that it ever went away, when really it just became passable. In 2013, Katie Hopkins fat-shamed Jesy Nelson after a comeback X-Factor performance on Twitter, showing thousands of her followers just how normal this type of bullying had become. We also see it every day in the likes of Piers Morgan and his personal vendetta against Tess Holliday. When even “celebrities” are contributing to fat-shaming, it should say something to you about how okay we are as a society with belittling and shaming fat people already.

This was in regards to a cover shoot Tess did with Cosmopolitan magazine, where she didn’t promote obesity in the slightest… But I digress.

The Real Effects Of Fat Shaming

It really is a proven fact that exposure to fat-shaming and bullying in regards to our bodies has an overall negative effect on the way we address our eating habits. In a study of nearly 100 women, it has been found that this exposure made them eat more and feel less in control of their eating habits altogether.

Now, I could sit here and link you to study after study of just how much weight stigma affects people, but I don’t want to lecture you. I want to show you that your actions have consequences. I’m no different. We all say things that sometimes we don’t think about. But when you believe or deceive that your comments are helping others, this is where we’re going to have a problem.

My case and point is JaackMaate. A YouTuber with 300k followers:

“Looks about one yumyum away from a heart attack.”

There is no context to this video. For all we know, she’s showing off her outfit. This woman could have had her first “good day” in a long time, and someone with over a quarter of a million followers decided to say this. He then had the audacity to follow it up with the following:

“Also, I think to tell somebody that they’re eating themselves into an early grave is arguably more sensible and more ‘from a place of respect’ than to clap and put them on the front cover of a lifestyle magazine.”

So he went from making a joke to making out like he was coming from a good place. This is problematic in so many ways that I don’t even know where to begin.

Too many times I’ve seen tweets like this from celebrities. Too many times I’ve heard it from strangers, and too many times I’ve let it push me into a place of complacency. This behaviour is wrong. It’s bullying, and to say otherwise is uneducated and shameful. This man is not a doctor, let alone her doctor, but on his thread, he discusses health as if he knows exactly what she needs.

Fat Shaming In The Media

I think for the first time, fat-shaming is being taken seriously. Because as James Corden says, it’s bullying, it doesn’t work and we need to address obesity in a way that discusses fat bias in healthcare and in the workplace.

However, I also believe that we’re giving the wrong people platforms. For example, this morning on Good Morning Britain, a guest furthered the idea that fat-shaming is a good thing:

Not one mention of mental health, eating disorders or even how to lose weight in a healthy way. Just uneducated fatphobic comments that didn’t really go anywhere. I really like that fat-shaming is being talked about in a more open way, but we need to give platforms to advocates who understand fat-shaming, weight stigma and are educated in ways in which fat people are bullied.