Remi Bader's Weight Loss Doesn't Make Her Less 'Relatable.' Fat People Aren't Here For Your Comfort

Yahoo

28-03-2025

In this op-ed, associate editor Aiyana Ishmael examines the discussion around Remi Bader's weight loss, and how the 'relatable' fat friend trope is harmful.
Growing up as the fat girl in the room, there was always this narrative that I was everyone's comfort person — literally and figuratively. My classmates would always say how 'comfy' I was, using my larger body as their pillow during class time, leaning on me when they needed support. When they'd deal with boy issues throughout our teenage years, they'd manage to throw out: 'You're so lucky you don't have to deal with this.' That luck, and what it always felt like, was an uppercut to my rounded jaw, letting me know that love and 'main character issues' weren't things I would have to worry about. Everyone is just so comfortable around the fat girl because you don't see her as a full fledged person with choices to be whoever she wants. She's there to be relatable, a blank canvas that can make you feel as though your subpar world isn't as bad because hers must be worse.
I was reminded of these experiences this week, when influencer Remi Bader sat down with Khloe Kardashian to talk about her weight loss, after decidedly choosing not to discuss the subject with her fan-base for roughly a year. During the 60-minute podcast, and in a profile with SELF, Bader opened up about her journey getting the single anastomosis duodenal-ileal bypass with sleeve gastrectomy (SADI-S), a bariatric surgery meant to induce weight loss. The conversation raised many complex issues for viewers, but amid all the chatter about Bader's body and her decisions around it, what really stood out to me was this: some fans complained that Bader's newfound thinness somehow makes her less 'relatable.' In fact, my issue has little to do with Bader, and everything to do with how we view fat people, and how often fat people are relegated to the margins as these so-called 'comfort' people.
To me, calling fat or formerly fat influencers 'relatable' seems coded — something that many fat people might understand instinctively, perhaps having had experiences like my own. What I hear when people say this is that plus-size people are here to make you feel better about yourself, an extension of the illogical belief that because someone isn't 'supermodel thin' they aren't as intimidating. It's certainly true that the hyper-thin, extremely toned bodies that many celebrities have are unattainable to most people. Still, these bodies are held up as the ideal — we compare ourselves to people who have both the time and money to make their bodies fit an extremely narrow beauty standard, so it makes sense that we might breathe a sigh of relief when we see a body that looks more like ours reflected on our screens. But when we peg someone in a fat body solely as relatable, saying we followed them because of that, we're directly upholding thin bodies as aspirational — and playing into an age-old trope, one rooted in racism, that further marginalizes fat people.
We often see fat bodies relegated as non-threatening and undesirable. This trope is particularly prevalent onscreen. According to the Representation Project's 2022 findings, non-fat women characters are almost twice as likely as fat women characters to be portrayed as 'fashionable," and are perceived as 'better than average looking' six times more often. Fat women characters are also more likely to be portrayed as both stupid and funny than non-fat women characters in film.
But these ideas date back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, when, according to Sabrina Strings' Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, white slave owners tied fat, Black bodies to gluttony, laziness, and hypersexuality that they claimed was rooted in an inherent lack of self-control. White people used this ideology to further oppress Black people, pointing to their bodies as evidence that they needed to be controlled. They also used it to uphold their own beauty standards, decreeing that thin, white women were the ideal, while fat, Black women were undesirable, out of control.
These ideas, that fat people are undesirable, that they're gluttonous, that they're non-threatening, persist today, and are particularly harmful for women of color. But fat people and plus-size content creators aren't online emotional support fodder for you to trap into a box. They're nuanced beings that deserve to be treated as such. Bader isn't the only person I've seen discussed this way. Actress Barbie Ferreira faced backlash to her weight loss; influencer Rosey Blair did too, when she told her followers she was taking a weight loss drug. The tricky thing about advocating for body positivity and making a living off being a plus-sized influencer is that if you lose weight, there are thousands of followers who will have some pretty strong feelings about it, and maybe that's understandable — though ultimately how people treat their bodies is their choice and theirs alone.
It's nice to relate to one another, to feel connected; and it's natural to want to see bodies like your own reflected back at you. In fact, we should see all kinds of bodies both online and in media. Seeing and celebrating body diversity allows more of us to exist happily in our bodies, understanding that they're normal and beautiful. So, it's then understandable that an influencer losing weight, particularly when they came to fame specifically because of their fatness and fat advocacy, might trigger some feelings. But following a fat woman because she's 'relatable,' not because she's a full and interesting person whose body is also beautiful and aspirational, creates this unrealistic standard, trapping fat people — especially Black and Brown women — into being your proverbial pillow, or at worst your punching bag.
We need to carefully examine our relationship with influencers, particularly those who offer their body as their main product, and what that means for how we think about fatness in real life. If fat creators are valuable to you simply because they are fat, becoming your comfort person the way I was for many of my friends, that's not a celebration of body diversity, it's limiting the potential of fat people to the bounds of their body.
As I've gotten older, still existing in a large body, but working in fashion, getting to go to fashion weeks and interviewing celebrities, I now experience a narrative that I didn't get while growing up: Aspirational. So, it isn't far-fetched to see plus-size bodies as such. Take a look at influencer Simi. As a creator I've followed for years, her content and lifestyle has always been aspirational to me. Her being plus-size doesn't make her any more relatable than the thin white women who are also doing fashion content and traveling the world — what her body does signal is that there's room for all of us in this field and in any field, that our body size doesn't preclude us from achieving our dreams.
In 2025, we need to stop indirectly putting thin bodies on a superfluous pedestal. Fat bodies can be aspirational, the same way thin bodies can be relatable. Fat people and plus-size content creators aren't just your online 'fat funny friend.' They're people that deserve to exist outside of your projections of them.
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue