Hey, good news... Fat jokes are back!

Hey, good news... Fat jokes are back! - Revolver News

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Everybody gets picked on at some point, right? Skinny people, fat people, muscular meatheads, wimpy dudes… it’s part of life, like it or not.

Now, we’re not saying people should be humiliated or treated cruelly because of how they look, but somewhere along the way, basic human decency was hijacked by leftwing activists who decided normal, everyday kindness wasn’t enough. The public was ordered to celebrate obesity, pretend it was healthy and desirable, and if you questioned any of it, that made you a hateful, fatphobic monster.

This all-or-nothing attitude is reminiscent of the debate over gay marriage. We went from “We just want to file our taxes like a married couple” to “Celebrate the homosexual lifestyle, or you’re a bigot.”

This type of emotional and social blackmail doesn’t work long-term, especially on Americans, who have a built-in fighting spirit against any kind of tyranny… and that’s what PC culture is: tyranny.

The “fat is beautiful” fantasy wasn’t built to last.

Obesity should’ve been treated with honesty, guidance, support, and encouragement for people who should be making healthier choices. Instead, it became another left-wing ideological loyalty test. Americans were told to ignore what they could plainly see and pretend that physical attraction, health concerns, and personal preferences could be totally rewired and changed through hashtags and advertising campaigns.

If Victoria’s Secret embraces fat girls, why can’t you?

Then the Ozempic era arrived…

Suddenly, thin was back in. Weight-loss drugs became a cultural sensation, dramatic before-and-after photos began flooding social media, and many of the same celebrities who had spent years celebrating big bods started slimming down. You didn’t hear them cheering on obesity anymore. They were too busy getting fitted for their size 4 Chanel dresses.

So now, the Washington Post has now discovered that “fat jokes” are making a comeback, and the paper seems downright puzzled by this sudden cultural shift.

But they really shouldn’t be.

When people are bullied into pretending they believe something they don’t, there will always be backlash. And when the people selling the fantasy quickly abandon it the second Big Pharma comes along, the backlash gets even louder.

This WAPO article kicks things off by describing the return of terms like “big back” and “fat Sunday,” then actually acknowledges one of the biggest things driving this new change is weight-loss drugs making people thinner. They’re shrinking the “body diversity” that activists spent years insisting everyone must celebrate.

Now everyone’s wondering, “Well, if being fat was so great, why is everybody and their brother taking Ozempic?”

WAPO:

Cindy Noir, 30, scrolled through TikTok. Videos of thin people calling themselves a “big back” or taking a “fat Sunday” piled up. Some creators donned fat suits, others used the new terms to make self-deprecatory comments about their food choices.

The trend was disappointing but not surprising. “Fatphobia never went away,” Noir says. “But people who were fatphobic and quiet now feel emboldened to be loud.”

As weight-loss drugs whittle down body diversity and brazen language reappears, fat jokes reminiscent of the early 2000s are once more taking root online — especially on social media algorithms that reward transgressive content — and making the leap to real life.

Millions of people want to lose weight, and many are embracing these new treatments. And that reality has completely undermined years of “fat is beautiful” messaging.

The piece describes how the new “fat jokes” have spread from TikTok into middle schools, where children are using “big back” to tease one another over eating.

Honestly, what this shows is how quickly culture will move away from these tyrannically enforced “language controls” the left slapped on everybody during the body-positivity era.

WAPO:

The videos and comments stung, but Noir brushed them off. Then she heard the internet jokes creep offline. She was working as a substitute teacher at a middle school in Atlanta where students “were throwing ‘big back’ around like it was a Frisbee,” she says.

Kids called themselves a “big back” for eating lunch. Others felt afraid to pick up a pencil off the floor for fear of being called “big back.” Fights began in the hallways with students making the joke. At the same time, Noir noticed they seemed “self-conscious, constantly fixing their outfit so that it doesn’t hug certain parts of their body.”

On TikTok, there are more than half a million videos posted under the hashtag “big back.” The phrase has roots in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Caribbean English, but over time its meaning has evolved from complimentary — think Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back” — to derogatory. The insult was popularized by radio host Charlamagne Tha God, who criticized Tareasa Johnson’s TikTok video series about her marriage as “big-back behavior” on his iHeartRadio show in 2024.

Instead of focusing on the obvious – which is, instead of bullying people into not bullying, you should offer education, WAPO is stuck in a loop.

Meanwhile, everybody is once again openly interested in thinness… Granted, thinness was always the goal, you just weren’t allowed to talk about it, you had to pretend “fat was beautiful.”

WAPO:

Some creators producing this type of content described their initial trepidation using such language — but said that their videos got more views when they did.

Ishani Paul, a 22-year-old influencer who has worked with brands from Valentino to Motel Rocks, makes “fat Sunday” videos. She hadn’t thought of the joke as insensitive, but she did describe feeling “a little bit hesitant,” particularly since she noticed how language about body size has shifted online. She called it a “skinny-demic situation.”

In the end, she decided to stick with the title that had already begun to gain traction on TikTok. According to Google Trends, searches for “fat Sunday” increased 250 percent over the past year.

One of Paul’s friends had watched a “fat Sunday”-style video filmed in New York, and asked Paul if they could make one together in Seattle. Paul thought it seemed like fun. “A ‘fat Sunday’ video is basically spending a Sunday with your friends trying various different food and drink spots,” she explains. “A lighthearted way of eating a lot on Sundays.”

The fat jokes are back because people are responding to it. Creators, audiences, and the algorithms know it. They’re just reflecting what keeps viewers watching. People are sick and tired of being policed, and they feel free to talk again, like normal humans. Humans who don’t believe “fat is beautiful,” and that’s perfectly okay.

At the end of this piece, one of the pro-fat activists said that people are prioritizing thinness, thinking about weight constantly, and treating overeating as something that’s negative (it is).

The “fat is beautiful” message didn’t permanently alter human preferences. All it did was temporarily make everyone uncomfortable.

WAPO:

“We’re prioritizing collectively to be thinner,” Umar says. “We’re using language like this because people are thinking all the time, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to be thinner, I need to be thinner.’ So, when they eat a lot, they’re thinking, ‘I really don’t want to be fat.’”

Videos in which creators advertise unhealthy goal weights, idolize thin bodies or show a series of extremely low-calorie foods as a “What I Eat in a Day” frequent Umar’s feed. She described watching one video of a thin person putting pillows underneath their shirt and rolling down the stairs with a caption about a food delivery arriving.

Umar posted a video about the rise of fatphobia online and immediately fielded hate comments about her body. One commenter was someone she knew personally, a girl who attended the same high school. It especially upset Umar because they were some of the only Muslim students at a predominantly White school. Umar reached out to her directly, and the classmate removed it.

“If shaming people worked, believe me, it would have worked a long time ago,” Umar says. “Sometimes people just come in different sizes.”

There’s a massive difference between treating overweight people with dignity and demanding that society celebrate fatness as healthy, attractive, and empowering. The body-positivity movement deliberately erased that and then attacked anyone who tried to restore it.

Now, the fat jokes are back. But guess what? They were never really gone.

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