There had been a recent rash of fat-shaming incidents that made the headlines.In the US, Playboy model Dani Mathers was sentenced in May to 30 days of community labor and three years of probation for posting on Snapchat an image of a nude woman with weight issues while they were in an LA Fitness locker room.Netizens also fat-shamed then-White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who said the off-camera press briefings of then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer was because "Sean got fatter."

In England, Daily Mail writer Hilary Freeman got thousands of hate comment for an opinion piece on fat teachers, although the mother of a nursery student clarified she was against obesity, not fat people.What triggered the deluge of vile and nasty comments was her Sept. 6 article titled "Why I refuse to let my daughter be taught by a fat teacher."

The lovely nursery assistant she referred to – who is in her 20s – is morbidly obese, which made Freeman anxious that the teacher could become an unhealthy role model for Hilary's two-year-old daughter.She braced herself for criticisms for discrimination or fat-shaming.Hilary noted that it has become politically incorrect to comment on the size of anyone or say anything negative about obesity or being overweight, which has risen to 68 percent of British men and 58 percent of British women, according to 2015/2016 National Health Service (NHS) data.

Tracking the growth of body-shaming

LA Weekly noted that although psychology and sociology experts have long suspected that people who are fat-shamed or body-shamed suffer real mental and emotional wounds, there are now efforts to track the embarrassing social phenomenon.Behind the initiative is Janet Tomiyama, the laboratory director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)'s Dieting, Stress and Health (DiSH) Lab.

The lab studies the intersection between eating, not eating or dieting, stress, and health, said Tomiyama, who is also an associate professor in the University's Department of Psychology.In the past six years, she had been studying the effects of fat-shaming and body-related stigma.

In 2015, Tomiyama co-authored a research – published in Obesity – that examined the psychological consequences of active interpersonal exposure to weight stigma.The bulk of her study's foundation was the pre-existing beliefs that Americans hold about fat people.These include overweight people being "lazy," "gluttonous," "stupid," and "worthless." "Society is incredibly mean to people it perceives as heavy," Tomiyama noted.

Weight stigma = weight gain

She explained that stress causes a person to excrete cortisol, a hormone.One of the tasks of cortisol is to signal extra storage of fat in the belly, which is one of the most toxic types of body fat.Tomiyama pointed out that when someone is experiencing stress because people are mean to them on account of their body size, it would cause the fat person to excrete cortisol, which could lead to weight gain.

Beyond the biological explanation, the DIsH director pointed to comfort eating as the second way that weight stigma leads to weight gain.People who go through emotional discomfort because they have been discriminated against or stigmatized may turn to food.The motivation to exercise is also often destroyed. "If someone's made you feel bad because of how your body looks, do you really want to put on some Lululemon and go to the gym?"

The third way is stress reduces the quality of a person's executive functioning.This is the high-level part of the brain that makes decisions by the selection of rational choices over emotional choices like what to eat at a particular moment.Tomiyama said that not eating is an incredibly difficult, all-consuming activity that needs the highest level of executive control.It is the first part of the brain that gets dampened down when someone is stressed.

Concern for person's well-being

Although in some instances, people fat-shame others who have weight issues as their way of expressing concern for the well-being of an obese friend, there is little research to support the idea that being overweight makes a person unwell.In lieu of fat-shaming, Tomiyama backs the body-positive movement that is emerging on social media, which uses the hashtags #EffYourBeautyStandards, #HonorMyCurves, and #BodyPositive.

However, Hilary stressed that obesity is not healthy.She cited a new study from the University of Birmingham that found healthy obese people are still at higher risk of stroke or heart failure than the general population.It was based on analysis of the data of 3.5 million people over two decades.  

Likewise, the NHS released figures this week that diabetes-related amputations in England hit a record-high of 135 weekly.These health woes related to obesity cost the NHS about £16 billion (or $21.1 billion) yearly

But Tomiyama has a point in stating that shaming, whatever is the reason, should not be an acceptable practice in society. "The real answer is, we shouldn't be mean to anyone," the UCLA professor said.