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Obesity “for Entertainment”? Not OK!

Some app designers have decided that obesity is great “for entertainment.” The Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) and a substantial group of organizations concerned about health, obesity, eating disorders, and women’s health disagree in the strongest possible terms.

These organizations have banded together to petition Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to remove remove offensive fat-shaming applications from their online app stores and strengthen their review process to ensure no further fat-shaming apps are approved for download. OAC CEO Joe Nadglowski said:

Applications such as “Fatify,” “Fatbooth,” “Fat You!” and others perpetuate fat-shaming and weight bias. Children are the primary users of these types of apps, and the apps are teaching children that the disease of obesity is a funny cosmetic issue, which we know is not true.

In case you’re thinking, “those people are just to close too this issue,” here’s an arms-length view from the tech publication BetaBeat:

We’ve always been uncomfortable with apps like Fatbooth, that try to show how funny and crazy it would be if your face was actually as fat as people with obesity. Using them seems fun at first — until you realize there are people who really do look like the digitally-altered photo you were just laughing at.

When contacted by OAC, the publisher of  the most popular of these apps responded that it is “intended for entertainment purposes only.”

Fat Shaming Apps PetitionWe are not amused.

If you agree, click on over here to sign the online petition. Click here, here, and here to read more.

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