You wake up, have your breakfast, go to work and back to your house. It is just another normal day until you read today’s top news. Oh gosh, you have gone viral on Internet, but under the news category of “funny” and with hundreds of awful fat-shaming comments left behind. It is just a bad dream? No, this is what actually happened to Paul Moore and Hale Goetz.
Paul Moore, a man whose photos are used in the cruel fat-shaming memes has spread over the net where he is sitting on the shoulder of his friend at a music festival held in Australia. And like a wildfire, his name spreads quickly across the net and different social media right after their photos was published in ‘Australia Zoo Magazine’. The photograph of the 26-year old man was also accompanied captioned with a meme ‘make extra money by renting YOURSELF as a human FOOLKIT for less mobile punters’, which on the other hand received more than 10,000 comments while 30,000 shared his meme online.
Same story goes for Hale Goetz with her instant stardom across the net when her photo was posted on Reddit. Same as Moore, Goetz also suffered from the harsh prejudices and derisions from other people when someone posted her picture from high school next to her current photo of herself. Her photos also gone viral and had earned not more than 750,000 views online. Her noteworthy fat-shaming photos has become a trending topic online just because she had gotten fat—far from the skinny girl that is seen on her high school photos. Furthermore, the photo was taken and published without even her permission.
“They published our photo without our permission and the photo caused many awful fat-shaming comments. Why will our weight be so noteworthy to someone? Why does it seem that it is a criminal to gain some weight? So as an overweight people, we should hide our passion and joy when enjoying music? We should try not to go out to meet people if we gain some weight? That’s ridiculous!”
But what worries us most is that large-scale fat-shaming attacks are not just for celebrities. It may happen to any of us over-weighted people, at any time. And facing these awful fat-shaming words coming from nowhere and for no reason, what we can do is just to be strong enough to endure it?
See Also:
In Response to “Fat-shaming Cards Handed To London Tube Passengers”