No shame

The problem of discrimination against overweight people in Russia is not made up. They face job search rejections, medical prejudice, they receive lower salaries than people with “normal” weight. They often have trouble finding their size when shopping for clothes, as well as finding positive media representations of people who look like them. Many of them are bullied and shamed throughout their lives.

It seems that society insists: there is no place in the world for overweight people.

In the modern world, being fat is still much more than just a body characteristic. If you are overweight, it is automatically implied that you are a lazy, weak, stupid, spineless, spoilt person. You can never be truly loved, you can never have neither friends, nor a happy family, nor a dream job. “They don’t see your personality, they only see fat and awful” - one of the participants said in her interview for the project.

Diet culture and beauty industry have been demonizing obesity under the guise of “concern” for fat people’s health and wellbeing. They’ve been promoting the idea that being skinny is morally and physically right while being overweight is wrong. According to one of the studies, over 50% of female respondents said they would rather be run over by a truck than gain weight and two-thirds claimed that it was better to have mediocre or even below average intelligence than to be overweight. Body image anxiety and fatphobia have become part of our daily life - and an established social norm.

Fatphobia is not about beauty or health, it is about power and control over other people’s lives. In manifests itself in different ways. Apart from open fat hating, it is often sugarcoated with “I’m just worried about your health”, “I just want to help you become a normal good-looking person” type of thing. As a result, being exposed to fat shaming and public disapproval on a regular basis causes stress, which in its turn leads to eating disorders, internalized fatphobia, feeling of guilt and shame for your own existence, depression and suicidal behavior.

«No shame» features stories of overweight people from Russia who experienced fat shaming in the past or still have to face it. The subjects of the project are people of different genders and sexualities, different occupations and professional activities. They refuse to stay silent and put up with the system that makes millions of human lives miserable.

The color light illustrates a metaphor that society still crowd out overweight people and sometimes they feel like people from another planet.