A restaurant in Thailand recently caused a stir after offering discounts based on body size. The premise? If a diner could squeeze through a narrow metal bar, they’d get up to 20% off their bill. What the owners probably saw as a playful gimmick quickly backfired — with many criticizing it as discriminatory, fatphobic, and demeaning.
It’s easy to see why the backlash was swift. This wasn’t just about a bad marketing idea — it reflected a deeper, more insidious truth: society treats bodies, especially fat ones, like public property. Open to comments, judgments, and unsolicited advice. And often, these remarks are disguised as humour, concern, or even incentives — just like this discount.
Everyday Policing of Bodies
From aunties asking if you’ve “put on weight” to strangers commenting on what’s in your shopping basket, body commentary is disturbingly normalised in everyday life. Women, in particular, are frequent targets of these unsolicited assessments, as are those whose bodies fall outside of narrow beauty standards.
It’s not just about rude comments. There’s a constant pressure to justify your body — whether through diets, gym memberships, or defensive jokes. As if the only acceptable fat person is one who is trying not to be fat. This unspoken expectation turns bodies into open projects — as if everyone around us has the right to critique or “improve” them.
Media and Cultural Conditioning
Where does this mindset come from? It’s fed by years of cultural messaging. Movies, advertisements, and even health campaigns have long equated thinness with success, discipline, and beauty — while fatness is associated with laziness, failure, and poor choices.
Add to that the rise of social media, where filtered perfection is the norm, and the pressure multiplies. Even well-meaning friends or family may repeat harmful ideas because they’ve been conditioned to believe them. In many Asian cultures, comments on body size are often brushed off as “just concern” — but concern without consent is still intrusion.
And when businesses like that restaurant jump on the bandwagon, it reinforces the idea that it’s acceptable — even profitable — to reduce people to their body measurements.
The Cost of This Mindset
All this doesn’t just hurt feelings — it has real consequences. Constant judgment chips away at self-worth. It breeds anxiety, body dysmorphia, and unhealthy relationships with food and exercise. People skip social events, avoid cameras, or even delay career opportunities because they’ve internalized the message that they’re “too big” to be seen.
Fatphobia also shows up in more systemic ways — from doctors overlooking symptoms to hiring biases and travel discomforts. And when society normalizes commentary on bodies, it makes it harder to call out these more serious forms of discrimination.
Reclaiming Body Autonomy
The truth is simple: nobody owes society a certain kind of body. Not a smaller one, not a “healthier” one, not a photogenic one. Our bodies are ours — not community projects for others to critique, monitor, or reward.
What we say about others’ bodies (and our own) matters. Every joke, “concerned” comment, or thoughtless ad shapes how we view ourselves and each other. It’s time we stop seeing bodies as public property and start treating them — and the people who live in them — with the respect they deserve.
Change won’t happen overnight. But it begins with awareness — and choosing empathy over opinion.