This story came up on npr.org today, concerning a local (young female) newscaster who received a letter from a viewer telling her she was fat and a bad example to local youth, especially girls. The link goes to a story, and there is a video of her 4+ minute rebuttal editorial that ran on her local station.
I don’t think there’s any question that the letter writer was a presumptuous jerk. Because of the transparent nature of that jerkishness, she has gotten a lot of support from lots of people, including Ellen de Generes.
The question that NPR raises is whether she went overboard in calling this one letter an instance of bullying.
I think she makes some very good points in her editorial, and could have made more (as the article points out, she did not bring up the sexist aspect of the letter; how likely is it that a man would have gotten anything similar?), but I think she could have made all the excellent points, even the peroration at the end aimed at young people, without calling it bullying. I do think that was over-reaching, and as a consequence weakened her otherwise excellent response.
I tend to agree with you. What the guy did was rude and offensive but I don’t know if I like her calling it bullying.
Bullying in my mind is preying on those who are somewhat defenseless to fight back. It’s exploiting a position of power over someone. Victims often feel helpless and alone.
I don’t know if she really qualifies. She may have been hurt by his comments but I find it hard to believe she felt helpless much less alone.
As a fatty I find this bizarre. The way she “could be” overweight… for god’s sake she’s fatter than me.
Absolutely not bullying at all.
Let me go into more detail. As well as being obese, I am also an opioid addict. Imagine for a moment that I was presenting some news at your local station, and I went off on one about how it was entirely unfair to complian about things and I totally deserve all your drugs because it’s a lifestyle choice I make, and why do you lot care anyway. You absolutely wouldn’t endorse that. Because you’re hypocrites. You understand being fat because most of you are fat, but you do not understand drug addiction. The SENSIBLE option is to give drug addicts drugs, food addicts food, but under no circumstances even implicitly suggest to kids it is the way to be. While it is my viewpoint that legal opioids would have about an eight of the population having them as nootronics, under this current legal system I can never in good conscience recommend them to the non-terminally ill for anything. And neither should this lady be celebrating her fatitude, she should be just as ashamed of it as I am ashamed of my fatness and drug addiction.
By the way the bulimia shit is bollocks. Especially in the US, if you look at the numbers it’s far better to have ten young girls eating healthily and one of them becoming bulimic/anorexic than it is to pussy foot around the issue. Peer pressure on weight is a good thing on the macro scale at least from a pure physical health point of view.
Yes, the guy deserved a verbal beatdown, and he did deserve to be publicly shamed.
Whether it’s appropriate to characterize his letter as an instance of “bullying” is a question that doesn’t interest me that much, as it pales in comparison to the really shameful thing about his behavior, which is watching a news broadcast on television.
Okay, “pales in comparison” probably doesn’t accurately convey the relative heinousness of bullying wrt watching news on TV, but I do consider it secondary, because the latter is far more pervasive in our culture.
Dunno what you mean by that. I’ve brought it up lots of times, I currently take 16mg of buprenorphine every day. More worryingly, to me at least, I may be put on some amount of methadone instead come Friday, given that they only do methadone in prison here, they don’t do buprenorphine (cause they think you’ll divert it to other prisoners). Would basically make me a zombie. But on the bright side, a high zombie.
Not that you’ll have to worry about that cause I won’t be posting here then!
I…don’t get it. I don’t understand how this email was “bullying” or “bigotry” or “hateful”, or required “defense”. It was, perhaps, medically ignorant (yes, Virginia, it is possible to be obese but metabolically healthy; it’s also not as common as being height/weight proportionate and metabolically healthy), but I don’t see the bullying part.
I see a very defensive angry news anchor, but I feel like she’s replying to other emails, or taunts from her schoolyard days, or her own self-hating inner voice, because I don’t see what in that email is worth this level of simmering rage in return.
Sure, he called her obese. Guess what: she is. So am I. Despite the headlines, she wasn’t called “fat”. She wasn’t called stupid or ugly or gross or lazy or disgusting or any one of the common epithets often slung at obese women without justification. Have we really bought into the fat shaming in this culture to such an extent that even mentioning the mathematically derived medical fact that someone is obese is now “bullying?”
I’m not saying the email should have gone unaddressed, just that I don’t get the charge of bullying, and I think she missed a great opportunity to do some real education by responding with anger instead of information. I’d much, much rather have seen a response like, “I take my job as a news anchor seriously, and I understand that like any public figure, children do see me and may consider me a role model. That’s why I regularly sponsor Healthy Living/Fitness/Get Crap Out of Our Schools/Bring Back Daily PE (whatever) efforts. I want kids to know that we are all more than a number on the scale. Whether we’re slim, fat or somewhere in between, we can all enjoy nutritious food and regular exercise, and I do. A person’s size does not determine whether or not they’re healthy, as doctors now know. Etc. etc…”
Body-shaming is certainly one of the tools of bullying when done in public, but in a private e-mail? ehhhhhh.
I do think it’s wrong to say she’s a poor role model for girls – quite the opposite! Her presence in the job tells girls that they don’t have to be Barbie dolls to succeed in television. I think that’s a very positive influence.
Sorry, I missed it. I remember when I watched the video, for a moment when she mentioned that October is National Anti-Bullying Month, I thought she was saying “Anti-Bulimia Month.” I guess I didn’t pay close enough attention to the rest of what she said.
I read the story on Google news and found it ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was the outpouring of support she’s reportedly been getting. I think someone ought to introduce her to Ricky Gervais.
I wouldn’t categorize a email from a busybody asshole as bullying. The guy who sent the email is a boor and really crossed a line by sending an unsolicited message regarding the anchor’s appearance, which has nothing to do with her ability to, you know, read the news. Who the fuck asked for his opinion?
Now if he had sent several messages that might constitute behavior deserving of the label. But no, not bullying. I have no problem with the public shaming and labeling his behavior as rude and creepy. But I think this really pales in comparison to bullying that kids experience, or even adults in the workplace.
Several of my “Gurl Power” facebook friends have posted the clip and sung her praises. I don’t get it. I also don’t have the energy to call them out over it.
I’m a fat chick, and was fat all through school and was bullied about it. That email wasn’t bullying. Misguided? Uncalled for? Yes to both. I can imagine though that the author of the email has struggled with weight and truly thought he was making a well reasoned argument. He didn’t say “fatty boombalatty you shouldn’t be on TV!” When my mother says I’d be pretty if I just lost some weight it isn’t bullying.
Me either. I snipped the rest of your quote, but I agree with it. The media has been getting a tad ‘reefer-madness’ with the bullying charges. Every insult or slight isn’t bullying. If we start pretending it is, we can’t expect kids to take us seriously when we try to make them understand how true bullying is fucked up.
If we are going to water down the word ‘bully’ until it is just really weak tea, then I say she’s the bully for trying to rally everyone to treat this rude individual as if he has victimized her when he really hasn’t.
ETA: And I don’t even know if the guy was being rude on purpose. Perhaps he honestly was trying to help. Or, maybe he *is *one of those fitness nuts who get off on feeling superior to people who struggle with something that they have mastered. Either way, he isn’t a bully and shouldn’t be labeled as such.
