“I’m such a big back.” It’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? Kind of funny, ridiculous even, until it isn’t. Especially when it’s said by someone whose frame is so thin they practically disappear when they turn sideways. It’s the kind of self-deprecating “joke” that’s meant to feel relatable, maybe even empowering. But instead, it lands like a slap, one that reminds you that fat shaming didn’t go anywhere. It just got a rebrand. You can see it everywhere, repackaged in TikToks and “glow-up” guides, framed as self-improvement but rooted in the same old shame. “How to be boy pretty instead of girl pretty,” “How to be the hot friend,” “How to slim your face with these 3 contour hacks,” it’s all part of a culture that pretends to be about confidence, but only if that confidence fits within a certain body type.

We’re supposed to laugh at jokes about “being built like a fridge.” We’re meant to nod along when someone who’s a size four talks about how “bloated and disgusting” they feel. The message is clear: if they think they’re too big, what does that make you? The underlying cruelty of it all is that fatness is still treated as the worst thing a person can be. We just dress it up in better lighting now. What’s worse is how internalized it’s become. The person saying “I’m such a big back” isn’t trying to hurt me, but they do. How do you tell a friend that their self-criticism is also a dig at your existence? How do you explain that your body, the one you’re just starting to maybe accept, is constantly being used as a benchmark for someone else’s “before” picture?

There’s a difference between maintaining your health and shaming yourself. But we’ve blurred that line so thoroughly that even genuine wellness gets lost under the noise of calorie counting, “what I eat in a day” videos, and ab check selfies. We’ve convinced ourselves that being thin equals being better. And any deviation from that ideal, even in jest, is unacceptable. I’ve never found fat jokes funny. They sting in the same way a racist or homophobic “joke” does. They depend on a shared agreement that certain people are lesser, and that mocking them is fair game. That’s not humor, it’s bullying with better PR.

The real glow-up we need is one of compassion. Of body neutrality, if not body positivity. Of moving through the world without assuming smaller is always better, and without treating fatness as a problem to be solved or a punchline to be delivered. Because the truth is, fat shaming never really left. It just got sneaky. And it’s time we called it out, trendy or not.