“Can You Believe They Called Her Fat?” - Why These Viral Posts Miss the Point

You might have seen them too - the viral social media posts declaring, “Diet culture was so bad in the 2000s, this is what we called fat!” They show images of pop stars and actresses (like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson) who were thin, but who were relentlessly called “fat” by tabloids and TV shows. These posts get tens of thousands of likes and comments from people rightfully outraged at the media’s treatment of women’s bodies. They spark important conversations about how toxic beauty standards have shaped our self-image. However, they also convey a subtle, yet harmful, message in the unspoken part that needs to be called out.

Not actually a liberated take

At first glance, these posts seem progressive and body-positive. But the outrage they tap into is centred on the assumption that being fat is inherently bad. The message becomes: It’s outrageous to call thin people fat — because fat is a terrible thing to call people (ie. it’s a terrible thing to be). These posts challenge calling thin people fat, but they don’t challenge the pervasive underlying stigma that fatness is undesirable, bad or shameful. In fact they exacerbate this view by arguing that these thin celebrities didn’t “deserve” to be called fat.

If we accept that calling someone fat is wrong only because they aren’t fat, we’re still using fat as a slur, as a stand-in for bad, unworthy, or shameful. The posts reinforce the idea that fat is an insult, rather than challenging that unfair and unjust assumption.

So instead of using your platform to shout about how thin women shouldn’t be treated like fat women, how about using it to make it clear that no one should be shamed for their body?

Diet Culture Hurts Everyone — But Not Equally

It’s true that diet culture damages people across the size spectrum, and undoubtably these women and women who look like them were harmed by it. Thin people experience pressure to maintain unrealistic standards. People in straight-sized bodies can struggle with disordered eating and body dissatisfaction. Diet culture fosters food guilt, exercise as punishment, and constant body monitoring for many of us.

But people in larger bodies suffer the same harms from diet culture, PLUS the harms systemic weight stigma and fatphobia. Larger people are judged more harshly, face discrimination in healthcare, employment, education, and even relationships. We are more likely to be blamed for health conditions and less likely to receive appropriate medical care. Our bodies are what diet culture teaches other people to be scared of and disgusted by.

When we centre the conversation only on thin or straight-sized people who were ‘unfairly’ called fat, we subtly give weight to this weight stigma and fatphobia.

We Need to Reframe the Conversation

Instead of sharing posts that only lament how unfairly celebrities were labelled, let’s start conversations that challenge the very idea that fatness is something shameful. Let’s talk about how all bodies deserve respect, dignity, and freedom from judgment. Let’s highlight how diet culture makes everyone insecure, but also recognise how weight stigma and fatphobia disproportionately harm larger-bodied people.

It’s not just wrong to call thin people fat; it’s wrong to use fat as a moral judgment at all. The problem isn’t who gets labelled fat, it’s that our culture still treats fatness as something to ridicule or fear.

Fighting diet culture from a thin-centred position isn’t enough, that only solves the problem for some bodies. Fighting for fat liberation and body inclusion supports every body in the war on diet culture, because if we aren’t fearing fatness, diet culture doesn’t have anything to threaten us with.