“I make it LOOK easy. This is a physical skill that I have honed for 20 years.”
Being physically active is orthogonal to fatness
This TikTok video, by user @madisondancelife, shows an excellent rebuttal to an unsolicited comment. Content note: mention of eating disorder.
- As a fat dancer, Arielle Juliette receives a lot of negative comments on her TikTok about how she “should” be thinner, look “fitter,” etc. In this video, she overlays her dancing with a negative comment she received, followed by her reply.
- Dancing is a difficult physical activity. No one could do what she is doing, right now, if they were “not physically fit,” as the commenter asserts she is!
- Despite her own physical fitness (strength, endurance, precision), the poster does not shame fat people who are unable to exercise or are otherwise “not fit.” It’s great to see people refuting arguments like this without devolving into “pick me” culture! All of us are valid, no matter where we fall on any arbitrary spectrum.
- (CN) And, finally, the dancer reveals that when she did focus on her body’s appearance (thinness), rather than simply her own ability to dance, she developed anorexia. This story is repeated constantly – mostly for women, but sometimes for men as well. As a culture, we need to stop focusing on unrealistic expectations of weight and appearance.