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Woman's viral response to gym bullies who mocked her weight on Snapchat

Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

After a long absence at her local gym, Reddit user southerndraw-er decided to head back and get in shape for the New Year. She soon discovered that a couple of girls were secretly taking photos of her at the gym and mocking her on Snapchat.

Instead of getting mad, she took the high road and called out the fat shamers in a now-viral Reddit post written earlier this week, aptly titled ‘The overweight girl at the gym’:

“I’m the fat girl,” she poignantly begins her post. “This is my first week at the gym and every night after work, the same three girls are there. Today I found out they have been snap chatting pictures of me and making fun of me, but I don’t mind. I’m glad that you haven’t gone through what I’ve been through. ”

Southerndraw-er said that she used to be in shape, but broke her hip and subsequently had to give up exercising. And then more tragedy struck as her grandmother got sick:

“I couldn’t leave her alone because I had no help, so I gained more weight. Then she died, and I ate my feelings and gained more weight. Now I’m a size 22. I don’t hate myself, or my body. I love who I am, and that took me my entire life to be able to honestly say those words. I love myself.”

“It really sucks that society, and your parents raised you that it was okay to try to hurt someone that’s trying to better themselves instead of trying to lift them up but I’m not mad. Thank you for reminding me to keep pushing after I had a really long day. In a month when the new year sh*t has worn off, I’m still going to be dieting and working my ass off at the gym everyday. It’s not so you, or anyone else, will except me. It’s for me.”

She then concludes her post with helpful advice for anyone who “feels ugly” or is overweight and has decided to make life changes:

“Forget the skinny girls who laugh at you, or the muscly men that tell you you’re gross, love yourself. Let’s teach love, today’s world needs it.”

Since the post went up, she’s received thousands of supportive comments from other reddit users, and more than a few have shared their gym bullying experiences as well.

bluecatlady: “As a size 22 girl, I needed to hear this. I’ve fallen off the wagon so many times because of how I feel I’m perceived by other people in the gym. Tomorrow is my first day back at the gym, and I’m not gonna care what everyone thinks of me! I’m there for me and no one else.
Good luck on your journey!”

bookwench: “I’m the girl whose skin is hanging off her all over the place. Like… Deflated beach balls hanging. At my last gym there was a gorgeous woman whose shoulders and upper arms would make a dude jealous; gorgeous to my eyes but obviously not in it for the svelte femininity aspect. Another woman had somehow misplaced one of her legs (her replacement was pretty cool looking though). Another worked out in a hajib. We’re out there. The sisterhood of the non-models at the gym. We’re with you. And we’re all getting healthier, recovering. Not falling, not sliding back- climbing up.”

Anon9753: “I look at it in a psychological way. You must be dysfunctional to need to put someone else down to put yourself up. I am fine the way i am. I dont need to pay attention to what you are doing.”

then_stina_says: “Paraphrasing Winston Churchill here… You’ll eventually be fitter, and they’ll still be a**holes.”

In an updated post, southerndraw-er has confirmed that the fat shamers are between the ages of 18 and 21 and that the gym owners said they’d kick them out—although she wasn’t really pushing for that, so the owners have instead decided to ban the girls from using their phones in the gym.

“I don’t want the girls to get kicked out, I don’t want to press charges, and I don’t want them to be treated unfairly,” she wrote. “The world will never change if when someone is treated unfairly, they reciprocate in the same way.”

In a similarly creepy vein, last July, former Playboy playmate Dani Mathers secretly snapped and posted a pic on Snapchat of a woman changing at her local L.A. gym. She has since been banned from LA Fitness gyms and charged with one count of invasion of privacy.

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