It’s a pretty well-known fact that it’s not a good idea to talk about someone’s weight, and it’s especially not okay to say something bad about it. But unfortunately weight-shaming can and does happen. Now, one woman is speaking out about her experience—and it’s probably very different from many weight-shaming stories you’ve heard recently.
Redditer Kelchunyan, who says she’s 162.5 centimetres and 57.2 kilograms, took to the site to open up about the weight-shaming she’s faced as a thin person.
“When I was 78.5 kilograms—about 14 kilograms overweight—nobody commented on my body,” she wrote. “I had MAYBE one comment from my mother saying it wasn’t healthy to carry so much at my height and age.” But no one ever insulted her or commented on her eating habits, “even when I knocked back litres of cola or stuffed my face and constantly ate.”
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Kelchunyan says she eventually lost weight and is now healthy—and people are shaming her for being thin. “Or more correctly, thinner than them,” she wrote. “I’ve been called ‘anorexic’ (pisses me off to no end), I’ve been called a skinny bitch, I’ve been called ‘lucky’ in a condescending way, I’ve been called an idiot for believing the BMI scale and MY DOCTOR, I’ve been picked on for my smaller portion sizes, I’ve been called a rabbit for eating so many vegetables.”
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According to Kelchunyan, the shaming is coming from people who love to talk about being body positive. “But why is it that these people feel like you’re only allowed to love an overweight body?” she said. “It’s as if you’re healthy, you’re inherently offending everyone else with your existence.”
Luckily, she says the people she’s been getting shamed by aren’t close friends, but still.
The comments on Kelchunyan’s post revealed that this is more common than you’d think. “My best friend has always been very tall, thin, and naturally beautiful. And she used to be very insecure,” one person wrote. “When I first met her I didn’t understand why, but quickly realised that many people who first meet her assume she’s anorexic. I’ve walked into a party with her and we both heard some girls who we had never met before call her a ‘skinny bitch.’ That kind of stuff happened to her constantly. Her looks and weight were the first things people noticed and oftentimes all they were willing to see. No wonder she was insecure—that’s uncomfortable! People are jerks to all sizes, unfortunately.”
Some suggested that people have issues with the fact that Kelchunyan was able to lose weight. “People overall don’t react well to change,” one person wrote. “If the fat kid all of a sudden becomes the skinny kid everyone loses their sh*t… Just keep in mind that you aren’t the problem here.”
And another Redditor said she also had never been fat-shamed when she weighed more, but she has been thin-shamed. She recalled a recent trip to a kids’ museum, when she sat in a booth while her daughter pretended to make waffles in a kitchen section. “This lady looks right at me and says to her friend ‘Yeah, you have to be anorexic to fit into those booths,’” she wrote. “I was so uncomfortable, I turned like 15 shades of red. Like, WTF was that about? I didn’t do anything to that lady. I never even saw her before! What was her issue with me?”
Luckily, Kelchunyan says she’s been able to brush off the comments. But seriously—weight-shaming is weight-shaming, regardless of a person’s size. And it’s never okay.
This article originally appeared on Womenshealthmag.com.
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