Fat studies professor says encouraging people to eat healthy during quarantine is ‘fatphobic’ and traumatizing to overweight people

Dr. Darci Thoune from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse says that urging people to eat healthy during the COVID-19 lockdown is "fatphobic."

What are the details?

As pointed out by The College Fix, Thoune took to her personal blog — "Two Fat Professors" — to air her grievances over the dangers of counseling people to take care of themselves during quarantine.

Thoune, who is described as a "fat studies" professor, said that fat-shaming during the pandemic will only serve to continue traumatizing people "who are already being traumatized."

The article, titled, "Diet Culture at the End of the World," also pointed out that she has seen an increase in tongue-in-cheek memes about the horrors of gaining weight during quarantine.

"In addition to comments from people I know online, I've also noticed a sizable (no pun intended) uptick in the number of 'funny' memes about weight gain during the Covid-19 crisis," she wrote. "These memes seemingly poke fun at diet culture and shame viewers for: not going to the gym, eating 'too much,' for getting fat, and for not starving ourselves at the end of the world. The meme below is a fair representation of this kind of 'humor' that reinforces diet culture."

Thoune went on to insist that there's nothing wrong with seeking relief from stressful situations through food.

What else?

"I'm going to be blunt, we are living in traumatizing times," she explained. "Your trauma is real. You do not need to suck it up. We need to seek solace and comfort where we can, and for some folx [sic], that solace and comfort will be in food. AND, THIS IS OKAY."

She later pointed out, "To persist in promoting the idea that gaining weight is dangerous, bad, or something that we should be preoccupied with in this moment (or any moment) only feeds into a system of fatphobia that oppresses and abuses so many even in the best of times."