Guy Wants To Know If He's The A**hole For Fat-Shaming His Teen On Her Birthday

Happy birthday to this guy’s poor daughter

Reddit’s “Am I the Asshole” subreddit is a constant gold mine for finding the worst society has to offer. There, people share their stories and ask the internet if their behavior makes them the asshole, and the fact that some of these people are so clueless as to think there might be a question whether they’re the asshole can make for some entertaining reading. But not today. A post that’s blowing up on the subreddit today just makes us feel sad for this dude’s daughter, after he asked if he was the asshole for spending her entire birthday fat-shaming her.

The man starts his story by saying, “My daughter is overweight.” He then goes on to say she’s 19, around 5’4″ and 155 pounds, so just to set the stage here, she’s about 10 pounds away from an “ideal” weight for her height no matter how you slice it. If she’s a naturally curvy or muscly person, that probably is her ideal weight for her body. So right off the bat, this guy is way too obsessed with his kid’s weight and should probably chill out.

He goes on to explain that for her 19th birthday, he took her hiking. Oh, and made sure to point out that his wife is “also overweight.” What a guy.

“She complained about it literally the entire time. She didn’t like that it was hot, she didn’t like the incline, she didn’t like the mosquitoes. I still encouraged her and pushed on, I think she was satisfied with having exercised at the end of it,” he writes.

After the birthday hike, he says she asked to stop at a Dunkin Donuts that was on the way home to pick up a treat to celebrate both her big day, and the big hike she had just completed.

“I said no,” he writes. “She was upset about it, saying she just wanted a donut and she’d just done this long hike to please me on her birthday. I argued calmly that she didn’t want to undo all the work of the hike by getting a donut. She said the one she wanted is 350 calories (which I doubt is true) and would fit into her day. I pointed out she’d probably be eating cake later. We didn’t stop and she sulked about it on the whole ride back. When we got home, she told her mother, who of course sided with her and went on a rant about how our daughter’s birthday shouldn’t be a time I’m preaching healthy eating.”

Hoo boy. Where do we even start to unpack this one?

For one, it’s the girl’s dang birthday. Let her have a donut for crying out loud. The way she can recite the number of calories in that donut and insists it will “fit into her day” is a serious sign of disordered eating, especially for a teenager. She tells him she did that hike to please him, so it obviously wasn’t how she wanted to spend her birthday. This guy is absolutely militant in the way he treats his daughter, and it’s causing way more harm than good.

Luckily, the internet agrees, and has overwhelmingly declared this guy is a giant asshole.

“You’ve got to be fuckin kidding my man,” the top-voted comment reads. “On her birthday, you forced your daughter into an activity I suspect you knew she would not enjoy, and then denied her a 75 cent treat. Beyond that, you didn’t even pretend you took the hike for time together, or– God forbid– her enjoyment; you made it clear that your focus for this event was getting her to exercise. You’re a huge asshole.”

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.