A few weeks ago, a fitness enthusiast, blogger, and young mother named Maria Kang posted a photo of her, her three kids, and her ripped abs with the caption “What’s your excuse?” written on the top of the photo.
The Internet got real mad and accused her of fat-shaming. Kang quickly released a half-hearted apology that basically read, “I’m sorry you all are so jealous of me,” and said she just wanted to inspire people to be “healthier.”
For every one person that got mad at her so-called self-righteous attitude, scores more said she was right and that the fatties were just jealous haters.
Kang’s example is just one of hundreds I’ve seen online. Pinterest and Tumblr are plastered with “motivational” pictures of women—some men too, but I think this is mostly a trend among women—with athletic figures and inspirational quotes falsely attributed to Gandhi or Marilyn Monroe.
The bottom line of Kang’s and these bloggers’ messages? If I can do it, so can you.
It’s not news that the Internet really likes fat-shaming people, especially women. A particularly disturbing example came up a few months ago, when Lindy West, a comedian and feminist blogger, wrote about her qualms with rape jokes in the world of comedy.
Internet commenters attacked her ruthlessly over her weight, some saying she was “too fat to get raped.”
When people like Kang come out and put their perfectly spray-tanned bodies on the Internet telling people they have no excuse to not look like her, fat people are bombarded with the message that their weight is a problem that needs to be taken care of, and ultimately, a problem they brought on themselves.
The greater problem with the message of most online fitness bloggers is that everyone can be in perfect shape, and perhaps more importantly, not everyone wants to be.
Not everyone can for a plethora of reasons, money and health issues being at the forefront. Gym passes cost hundreds of dollars a year, and those are the cheap ones without the personal training benefits.
In many, but not all cases, it’s more expensive to eat healthy, unprocessed foods than it is to eat junk.
Being able to find the time to work out at all when you have three kids implies that Kang has class privilege and doesn’t need to be working long hours at multiple jobs in order to feed those kids, and has the means to have either her husband or someone else take care of them while she goes to the gym or works out at home.
Then there are health issues, like heart conditions or fibromyalgia that would make it very difficult to do any kind of strenuous exercise.
Further, this may be shocking but, some fat people are actually totally okay with the way they look and don’t need any excuses for not looking the way Kang, and the world, tells them they should.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t want to be healthier, stronger, more athletic or whatever else. If you want to, and if you’re working towards it, good for you! And by all means, use the Internet to talk with other people who are working on the same things as you for support and inspiration.
But before you tell people they have no excuse to not be as thin or as fit as you, consider the factors in your life that have made it possible for you to do the things you want to do and to look a certain way.
Consider what messages you’ve gotten before that have influenced you to do these things. And then consider that not everyone wants the same things you want, and that’s great too.
What do you think? Is the way the Internet talks about health and fitness problematic or is it just another way of finding support and like-minded people in the same community? Send a letter to oped@charlatan.ca with your thoughts.
—@eissacaylward
