Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/24/macys-pulls-fat-shaming-dinn.html
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2 Likes
I’m not sure how I’d take this. I certainly have experience with being grossly obese (on my 50th birthday, I weighed 295 lb). I’ve managed to get myself down to about 212 or so by using the Eat Less Diet, and now I take long bike rides. That’s great for building muscle mass, but I’ve hit a wall on weight loss.
Maybe numbered zones would be better for a plate that would encourage portion control?
11 Likes
You don’t think it’s funny they pulled the plates?
5 Likes
Shame and mockery don’t help with weight loss.
If people just want to organize portion sizing, different size dishes are a method. Big empty dishes can make smaller portions look smaller, which is the worse way to go.
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You’ll all be jealous of my ability to pack on weight when all the bees die and climate change causes wwiii so everything is rationed
12 Likes
I’m fat but I don’t feel offended by the plates, although I can see why some people might be.
I’m more concerned about the small business that has lost what seems like a great opportunity and the people who work for that company.
5 Likes
Why is it so important to you that they be able to sell their plates?
12 Likes
They’ll be fine.
This seems more like an Instagram product anyway.
7 Likes
This company was just branding plates from Poland and marketing them. They had the same business risk that the public wouldn’t like their product forever as the people who sell funny gimmick t-shirts.
If they built their whole business on a single kind of fat-shaming joke, that’s on them. That’s like only selling Bill Cosby shirts and crying about your luck in 2019.
18 Likes
Good point, especially when someone is being intentionally targeted.
Buying something like that as a gift would be a horribly insulting faux pas. Buying that plate for oneself as a (perhaps not-so-) gentle reminder to keep one’s eating in check could well fit with one’s sense of humor, though just using smaller plates is much more practical.
There is a sexist angle to this plate that I do find highly off-putting, since women get far worse fat-shaming than men do. Maybe they need a men’s version of this plate. 
As for myself, I’ve kept one pair of my old “fat jeans” as a reminder to myself not to let my eating get out of control (or to go out for a ride to burn off what I ate if I’ve overindulged).
13 Likes
Probably anticipating it because some one who goes off over an ugly novelty plate with a near ubiquitous message about how pathetic you’ll be as a woman (a mom gross) if you gain weight is probably fragile already. So a type of low level interloper comes in because that’s the biggest prey they can take on. The plates are dumb, no one is going to want to look at them after two years. They’re just typical household trash that ends up in a landfill after the second kid or shows up after a god awful office white elephant party.
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On one hand Americans are disproportionately overweight compared to the rest of the world (including Europe, the land of a million cheeses), on the other hand fat-shaming is cruel.
It also seems to be a gender-related issue-- fat shaming men is not as offensive as fat-shaming women (or am I mistaken on that one? I personally think there are a lot of women who look great with some extra weight, but I can’t judge for men.)
I’ll bet we can all agree there is a limit to how overweight someone can be before they’re no longer “pleasantly plump”, and there are good and bad ways to address that issue. These plates are kind of borderline-- mildly humorous and mildly offensive, but probably not even effective because what you eat is more important than how much you eat.
4 Likes
Meh, if you’re at the mall and want to get offended, just stroll on down to Spencer’s Gifts and look around for a while. Then walk back into Macy’s and realize how tame those plates are. Is the person complaining because they were in the mall, or because they were in Macy’s?
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Could be worse…
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I’m over 6 ft, if I ate the “skinny jeans” portion every day I would literally die. Unless I could stack it up really high.
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Isn’t it obvious that we should be much more free to discuss things, than we should be to demand that action is taken?
Especially if that action is censorious in the sense of taking away from others things, which were not forcefully being pushed on anyone?
If you’re uncomfortable seeing a fat-shaming plate, and I’m uncomfortable seeing two people kissing in public, the better response for both of us is just to look away.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologist’s_fallacy?wprov=sfti1
And yes, on the eating disorder, though I see absolutely no reason why anyone’s specific and subjective experiences can be or ought to be generalized, as opposed to statistical sampling. In other words, I have no clue about how representative my experience was, so it’s about as relevant as if I had a perfect life and never struggled with anything.
And, of course:
https://www.bustle.com/p/what-is-derailing-8-tactics-to-look-out-for-42485
Mmm - fat shaming or encouraging healthy habits? We have a health epidemic of obesity and diabetes that is literally killing people. I guess if you gave this to someone you could claim fat shaming, possibly. But if one bought this for a way to encourage portion control, I say go for it. I appreciate they are trying to interject humor into an otherwise touchy subject.
And plate size has been linked to overeating.
4 Likes
Your link shows how these particular plates are bad.
Instead of making the food portions seem like they fill the plate, they do the opposite, by calling attention to all the plate that isn’t filled with food.
These plates don’t encourage portion control, they would make successful portion control harder.
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