Please Stop Commenting On People's Bodies. You Don't Know Shit.

Listen up, folks.

Please, please, please stop acting like you care about the health of strangers when your comments are limited to assessments based on their body shape.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume they don’t eat healthy or never exercise.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume what diagnoses they may/may not carry.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume you know how their body negatively/positively impacts their life.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume you know how they got to the size, shape, current state they are in.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume to know that they are not happy, healthy, and confident.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume that they hope to be anything other than who they are.

You don’t know shit.

Don’t assume that they don’t have a full, thriving life.

You don’t know shit.

If you ever look at a person, and based upon your initial intake, you assume any of the the things mentioned above, then you are an asshole. Flat-out.

Here’s the thing: You don’t actually care whether they are healthy or not. You have a personal problem with their size. You can talk all day long about how you are concerned about their livelihood, health care costs, and wax poetic about how you don’t judge people for their size, but nobody believes you. Because you are a lying liar who lies.

Being fat is okay. Being chubby is okay. Being plus-sized is okay. It’s OKAY.

Stop attempting to admonish or punish or shame people who don’t have a body that you find personally attractive. They don’t exist to please you.

And don’t crash every single conversation about this with the “skinny shaming exists too” comments. That’s not what we are talking about right here, right now. That is like running through the ICU ward of your local hospital while yelling, “Hey, I’ve been sick before too!” This isn’t about you. Write a different essay for that.

This is about the fact that we are rejecting these patriarchal bullshit boundaries society has placed on us that say to be attractive, or beautiful, or strong, or healthy, or worthy of love and praise, you must look this way, and dress this way, and weigh this much, and be this size, and talk like this, and move like that.

Fuck it all, for real. 

We deserve to exist in whatever form we wish. You can think whatever the hell you want about that, but you need to keep it to your damn self. Do not project your bullshit onto others.

And hopefully you don’t express these judgments in front of your children because we have enough assholes in this world, and we need to raise good people. Kind people. Loving people. Empathetic people. People who don’t make assumptions based on the size of someone’s body.

Body positivity shouldn’t be a trend or a movement. Body positivity needs to be a fact of life. We are not there yet, not even close, but we can keep pushing forward and refuse to be held back. We can pave the way for our children to live in a world that appreciates folks for who they are, the content of their character, not only for the size of the body they reside in.

So, remember, unless you are talking about yourself…you don’t know shit.

Here’s to a generation of kids who will love themselves.