Dani Mathers, a Playboy model, got in hot water last week after she posted a photo of a heavy woman changing at her gym to Snapchat with the caption: “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either.”
Yes, this makes Mathers seem like a terrible person. But before we start to feel all high and mighty for calling Mathers out, we should reflect on the awful (and contradictory) things we’ve said or thought about overweight people. Laura Beck, a writer and self-proclaimed “fat redhead,” explained it best in a post on Cosmopolitan. Here’s a quick snippet, but it’s really worth checking out Beck’s whole essay:
But the thing is, when we’re “good fatties” and comply; when we go to the gym in order to shrink our bodies down to a size that’s not deserving of hatred from society, we’re then subjected to people taking our photos and sending them to their friends. Or, as is Mathers’ case, to her entire Snapchat list. It’s easy to hate on Mathers but the truth is, she’s vocalizing what a lot of people think when they see fat people working out: Ew.
