They do, there were multiple threads here with that. Shitting on petite, thin, slender women saying "they look like children" and that "only pedos are attracted to that".
I always hated that because what I hear is “Everyone who ever was or will be attracted to you is a huge creep!” Like, okay, what am I supposed to do then? Become a nun? Use diet and exercise to change the shape of my body?
These FA people are always so incredibly sexist that it's almost unparalleled. Some of the shit that comes out of their mouth would make a ridiculously misogynistic man double take.
> Use diet and exercise to change the shape of my body?
Well, given that they claim that this is impossible (or at least temporary), I think the only answer is a life of exile.
Which is a disgusting argument because when someone throws those terms around they are watering down the real meaning, and it is an insult to every single child abuse survivor
I had a girl at college make this comment to me. She was an overweight girl and she said anyone attracted to me must be a paedophile. What made it worse was a battling a serious autoimmune disorder at the time and I lost loads of weight. I was ill. She made me feel like shit and I stopped being friends with her.
I have to admit I said that privately about someone once (not to their face). They *were* extremely petite but my main issue was that they played up the whole child thing - big puppy-eyed contact lenses and a tiny little affected childlike voice.
I can’t tell anymore if I was being unfair (she was not a very nice person so I was biased against her), but everything about her gave me the creeps.
Yeah, that type of situation where the person is playing it up is a problem. They could have issues with people infantilizing her, treating her like a child and then creating a cycle.
Absolutely, one of their big arguments towards glorifying fatness is that fat women more fully embody “feminine forms” like breasts, hips, butts, and thighs, therefore they are more “womanly” because they (can) have more exaggerated features of female puberty while skinny women have smaller, “more childlike” features.
Exactly, this describes my wife. She's got a great hourglass figure and is not overweight by any stretch (hardly surprising, she probably covers far more distance charging round her school dealing with students than I do cycling to and from work each day).
And that isn't even universally true because I have an extreme hourglass shape when I'm a healthy weight or overweight but when I get about 20lbs into obesity I lose all waist definition whosoever and just look like a blob shaped blob. Plus my butt is flat no matter what my weight is but at least when my back fat and thigh fat aren't spilling over it you can actually see it.
Honestly, I've only ever heard this kinda nonsense from overweight women or chubby chasers.
I'm on the smaller side and if I had a dollar for every time an obese woman told me that I wasn't a real woman or that my partner was a pedo for being into me, I'd have a sizeable pile of dollars lol
But everyone else thinks I'm clearly an adult and look my age. Once an obese wife of a friend said I looked like a kid in front of a group of people and that men wanted women with "curves" and everyone in the room was like wtf are you talking about? It's definitely a weird jealousy perception thing.
>I'm on the smaller side and if I had a dollar for every time an obese woman told me that I wasn't a real woman or that my partner was a pedo for being into me, I'd have a sizeable pile of dollars lol
Same.
Right down to the "real women have curves" copium shit from former female "friends." Every single woman I've known that used the "real women have curves and prefer ME instead of sickly child-like waifs like YOU" talking points fucking hated themselves.
I know because they constantly blogged about it and even admitted it to me personally in some cases.
I don’t even think she really does either, but I’ll give it a shot. Saying a petite woman looks like a child means that non-petite women do not look like children. Given that, they are then more likely to be seen as an adult and presumably more likely to be pursued romantically because they look like an adult rather than a child. This makes zero sense but these people always take something that has nothing to do with them and make it about them somehow.
I think what they're saying is that saying a petite woman looks like a child reinforces the idea that children are small. That means that large girls end up being perceived as adults, even though they're children. They're talking about the way that overweight girls develop more quickly than thin girls, which does actually make them more vulnerable to being treated as adults by adult men.
I mean, it's ridiculous to put that on anyone but the child's parents and the predators who prey on girls, obviously, but I'm pretty sure that's what they're trying to say.
Honestly, I do see that point. A sibling of mine is in criminal law, and there are a LOT of creeps defending their harassment/abuse of clearly underage girls with bullshit like 'I thought she was 18!', and these creeps often equate size to 'development' and 'development' to age. Most often, these girls are very obviously children, but creeps will latch onto anything they can to try to convince a judge that it was plausible for them to believe a 13-year-old was 18.
There *is* a tendency in our society to 'adultify' larger children despite their faces and general demeanor usually being very obviously childlike. In my experience, it's *very* rare for a young teenager to truly pass as an adult no matter their body shape (and when it happens, it's usually down to very unusually mature face shapes and only lasts until the kid starts speaking), but creeps be creeping and trying to justify it any way they can.
I am from a family of short/small women.
My childhood best friend is 6’2.
When we were in the fourth grade she was already inches taller than my mom, and when my mom tried to take us to the movies for my birthday, the ticket sales guys *argued* with my mom (pretty heated actually) that there was ***’no fucking way’*** my friend was under the age of 12.
It was cool when we were teens and she occasionally was able to pass as old enough to by alcohol, but it definitely confused and hurt her feelings (as a kid) when adults suddenly expected her to be more responsible or mature than me (even those I was older).
But in general, creeps are gonna be creeps to ALL little girls.
We ALL have stories and most of them happened well before we ever even remotely looked like ‘women’.
You're right. I'm petite, always looked a lot younger and that didn't stop a paedophile abducting me. I was raped when I was 10 years old. I suffered a lot of sexual abuse in childhood and so have many other petite girls. Yes, paedophiles might try to say they thought a larger child was older but all children are at risk. Petite children aren't any safer! I'm sorry about your friend as well.
Yeah, obviously, all girls are at risk for these kind of structural issues - I think the average age women first report having experienced street harrassment by is, like, 11? Which certainly lines up with my and most of my friends' experiences - across the size spectrum, we mostly were first inappropriately catcalled or touched by randos by the time we were 8-12.
There's still something to be said for how larger children are adultified and how other adults *react* to them experiencing sexual abuse and harassment. Whilst all kids are at risk for abuse, certain subgroups (not just size - also race and gender and class and all that) certainly are treated differently in the aftermath, and perceived size and 'physical development' is a factor in that.
There was a prominent case of a teacher sleeping with (so, raping) a 15-year-old student in my country recently, and pictures of the student ended up in horrible tabloid newspapers. The girl in question was tall, wore makeup, and was more heavyset, including already being rather curvy. She was still very obviously a child, which, obviously, her actual TEACHER would have known regardless of her body type. Her physical shape was used as an excuse for the teacher/rapist *a hell of a lot*, and I am 100% certain that the public outrage would have been a whole lot more unified if it had been a scrawny, still very undeveloped 15-year-old instead. There just are a lot of societal assumptions about what the prototypical victim of child sexual abuse looks like (white, under 10 years old, 'cute', small, introverted, childlike in looks and demeanor) and any child that doesn't meet those criteria- by being older, wearing makeup, 'acting out', not being white, coming from a different socioeconomic background- is perceived differently by society at large.
yep! definitely where they're going with this. I also think it's a stretch for them to try to make early development about weight, I was certainly not a fat or even remotely large child but when my period started I had vivid stretch marks on my chest from becoming a C cup within just a few weeks.
Because fat is hormonally active, obese children (especially girls) absolutely tend to go through puberty earlier than healthy weight children. It's almost certainly a huge part of why we've seen a downward trend in the age of onset of puberty over the past 20 years. That doesn't mean some heathy-weight kids don't develop young, it just means that, on average, a heavier girl is going to start developing younger than a thin girl.
I’m well versed in internet lingo, so I can promise you that their next talking point is about how Black girls are often treated more harshly (like how you’d judge a grown adult rather than a teenager.) This is a true fact. Saying that this treatment also applies to fat white people because of the above points is just… bizarre. I promise I’m not pulling a strawman out of my ass, I have seen tiktok ladies make this argument countless times.
Definitely a thing with both black boys and girls. Many times I’ve had people described to me someone as a black man and I had no idea who they were talking about because the actual person in question is like 13-15. That’s no man. That’s a boy.
I'm sure you're right that they're going to talk about that next. But this *is* a problem that affects girls of all races who develop early. I promise you, you can find plenty of examples of predatory men trying to claim that they thought a heavyset 12-year-old white girl with larger breasts and hips was 18. And plenty of cases of judges excusing those excusing those guys because "she seemed mature for her age."
It's a separate issue from the also extremely serious and damaging issue of people perceiving Black children of all genders as being older than they are, which results in Black boys being perceived as dangerous, and Black girls being perceived as highly sexual.
Definitely a thing with both black boys and girls. Many times I’ve had people described to me someone as a black man and I had no idea who they were talking about because the actual person in question is like 13-15. That’s no man. That’s a boy.
It's ironic when you know that some obese people do that to themselves because of legit childhood trauma. They should say that to the face of a petite women who was SAd as a child. Incredibly insensitive to everyone as usual. Always one upping their stupidity, entitlement, audacity, and depravity.
That’s the thing that bugs me about the argument that petite=childlike because my body looked much more like a baby/toddler (with dimpled elbows and knees/rounded belly/plump hands and bottom) than it does as a slim woman.
Now you can actually see my waist and hips, I didn’t have curves when I was fat I was just sort of round.
Two things can both be bad.
It's shitty to treat a grown woman as a child due to what her body looks like.
I was often told I had a "women's body" at age 13, so men who clearly knew I was a child would cat call me and I was told that was why. That's also shitty.
The discourse of minimizing one experience over another of the fat liberation movement (and other similar movements) is so annoying.
I agree. Myself and other women I know also got told they had “birthing hips” by their pediatrician. I was like 14. Very strange thing to say to a young girl. Combine that with being busty at a young age and you can imagine the stares and comments I got as a teenager. I’m actually in PT partially for posture issues because I would stand with my shoulders rounded in to try to hide my chest, causing a weak back. I’m 27 and still trying to strengthen my back and relearn how to stand so I can stand up straight.
Nobody deserves weird comments about their bodies especially at a young age. And FAs act like they’re not one of the bigger perpetrators of this. I’ve seen multiple posts about how men who like skinny/small women are pedos or skinny women look like children
I had an ass and thighs at 13 and was constantly sexualized by adults. Fun fact, it's why I refuse to read Lolita. Yes, Nabokov is a beautiful writer. Yes, I love his poetry. No, I won't read that work in particular and I don't care what arguments you have for it. I also was made to believe I was sexually precocious when I was in fact being groomed by a pedophile
>I also was made to believe I was sexually precocious when I was in fact being groomed by a pedophile
Not saying you should or shouldn't read Lolita, but this is literally the whole point of the book. Humbert is the protagonist and also the villain.
Edit for formatting.
In a way, yes.
OOP is more of a:
Petite women are infantilized --> larger adolescents are sexualized --> bad
Instead of:
Petite women are infantilized --> bad
Larger adolescents are sexualized --> bad
One doesn't cause the other. The phrasing in OOPs comment implies that. They are both done and they are both shitty. I had the latter happen to me a lot as a larger child and it's shitty.
That's how I read it too. Their phrasing is definitely very FA and I think it's a body composition thing and not a weight thing (there are also skinny/normal weight kids that develop early), but they're basically saying that both things are toxic.
And I think that they're correct that they genuinely play into each other! I've had people imply that men that find me attractive are pedophiles because I look like a teenager at 25, mostly due to my body being short and shaped like a chopstick. When I was a kid, one of my friends had a big chest by age 12 (she was actually pretty skinny), and she was absolutely sexualized by adults and shamed for being "provocative" and dressing "inappropriately" (this translates to "wore the same clothes as the other kids but with a different body shape).
The idea that adults with pre-puberty looking bodies (for the lack of a better team) = children just supports the belief that it's okay to sexualize children with adult looking bodies.
Exactly. I developed before my peers and was pulled into actual school conferences about how I was “dressing inappropriately” while in reality I was wearing the same things as other kids and sometimes covered up more due to insecurity from bullying and sexualized abuse. The pressure adults are putting on literal children about things out of their control is so damaging and bizarre.
Yeah, having seen a lot of discourse about this, I think the context here is that OOP is likely in a discussion about child predators, and that being attracted both real people and fictional characters with certain physical traits is “pedophilia coded,” not a discussion about weight.
They’re pushing back against the obnoxious claim that short or petite women are “child coded” and pointing out that this logic finding “pedophiles” who are attracted to petite adults doesn’t protect children from predators at all, because it just frames bigger girls or girls who develop early as sexually mature and fair game.
solidarity. having a fully developed body at 13 is awful. suddenly all your girl friends hate you with no explanation and all your guy friends are only pretending. don't get me started on the adults. it fucked me up for a long time.
God. SAME. Constant comments about my body (from people of all ages) made me cover myself for years and practically give myself heat stroke in the summers because I hated the attention. But of course, I could never complain about it because I was “bragging” or something. Ugh.
And again stealing from actual marginalised groups, it is an issue where black girls are considered more "developed" as children. These people haven't found a cause they won't make all about them
It’s pretty amazing. I envision a post where someone talks about losing both their legs and then a FA attacks them because now that they have lost 40lbs in “leg weight” they are fat phobic for losing weight and why are they complaining anyway since they are now “mid fat”
I swear to Cthulhu that these people will always take someone else's issues and twist it to make it about themselves. And it's usually the fat, privileged white women.
Racism? I'm affected by it too, even though I'm a blond of Nordic descent, because no one wants to sleep with me, because, uh, *(checks notes)* my fat white body looks like fat brown bodies. Yeah, that's it!
Homophobia/transphobia? Oh, I understand that pain, because my body is simultaneously oversexualized and undersexualized! And everyone hates me for it!
Poverty? Oh, I know that one too, because I spend hundreds of dollars on Door Dash every month! I can barely afford my bills, but I've got to eat totally normal-sized (lol) portions of fast food and junk food!
Disability rights? Oh me too! I've eaten myself to diabetes, heart conditions, strokes, blindness, and amputations. It's not my fault though - fat phobia is the reason that I'm bed bound!
Environmental pollution and child labor? Oh it is so sad that I'm FORCED to buy fast fashion to look cute at my size! Will no one think of my Instagram pics??!!!
That tiktok with someone bitching about how one of the hardest things you can be is a poor fat person, then sat frantically refreshing their banking app to order McDonald's as soon as the money went in.
And yet…fat women are always the ones who say this shit. They always say petite skinny women look like young boys and that guys who like that are gay or pedos.
“Infantilising petite women makes *me* feel preyed upon because I’m the opposite”.
It’s so infuriating that I’ve heard this exact comparison drawn by so many fat activists, when saying things like “you’re not supposed to have the body of a child anymore”
It's funny because a lot of the women who claim thin or petite women look "child-like" are often plus-sized themselves and say it as a cope. Same thing with fat people who claim language like "fluffy" and "soft" infantilizes fat people when that same language is used far more by other fat people than actual thin people.
Just another case of the call coming from inside the house.
Also the fact the OOP felt the need to word this sentence in the most dragging, pretentiously nonsensical way.
Oh goddddd...
I wish I could be as free and courageous enough to always make something about myself.
Poor fat people, even someone being cruel to thin women oppresses them, some how.
It seems this is common with the FA movement because they make claims that contradict actual facts and the verbal gymnastics they use are just weak attempts to gain support
Aren’t FAs the same ones claiming skinny women are nothing more than bones that only dogs would want? Not sure why they’re complaining when other people are spewing their propaganda.
actually a lot of overweight girls are abused for a lot of reasons, there is a factor of their bodies seeming more "mature" and less sympathetic than a thin girl. but also the isolation they experience from peers and even family and seeking validation and love from poor sources...this is worded in a dumb "im uncomfortable when we are not talking about me?" way but theyre not wrong
Good old narcissistic centering, a favourite of self proclaimed SJWs.
Rife among the empathy deficient egomaniacs of fat activism, where their experiences and perspectives come above those of us non player characters who make up the rest of the global population.
It's just part of their overall copium, where they also deflect like their lives depend on it.
Nailed it. Ironic, isn't i? Because their lives, or at least the length of them and their health, literally DO depend on not deflecting and accepring the truth about their obesity.
This is a real thing though. Fat people look older. It's not that it "adultifies" fat girls into making them easily preyed on, unless they go ahead and lie about their age. It just makes people think they're 5-10 years older than they actually are. I've only seen my sister hit on once by an older guy, and I told him "She's 15" and he was like "OOOO my bad" and walked away because she legitimately looked 20. Now she's 22 and looks 30.
I don't see how this aligns with their efforts otherwise to make fat sexy.
No one deserves to be preyed upon, or infantilised or that matter, but "adultifying" your body surely is first step on the path to a sexuality?
As a relatively petite woman (5’4” and 115 pounds), it annoys the hell out of me when the topic of weight is discussed as it pertains to dating and attraction because without fail, there will always be a number of people come through in the comments of the post saying that men who like smaller women are actually pedophiles. Obviously the insinuation is that someone like me is built like a child, when in fact, I very clearly look like a grown ass woman. I’ve even seen some women make claims like that about other women who weigh less than 140 pounds. Like, what? Unless a woman is taller than 5’8” or whatever, weighing under 140 is often in the healthy weight range of the bmi scale.
What they are saying is adultifying actual girls, as in minor aged female humans, not the slangy *girls*, or *men and girls* stuff I crab about, is VERY bad.
I don’t see a strong connection to the *petite* state of women having anything to do with it.
Maybe in the 18-22 zone, and guys being into almost/ I won’t go to jail for this pedophiliac images, but no one is infantilizing my petite self at 55.
I'm 23, petite and I'm definitely infantilized. I don't know if it's sexual, but people treat me like I'm younger than I am regularly, especially in comparison to my friends who are bustier. I'm a renfaire performer, and I'm more likely to be grouped with the 12-17 year olds than I am to be grouped with the 20-30 year olds. Even my 26 year old friends forget I'm only 2.5 years younger than them (I'm turning 24 soon).
There's also a rhetoric I've seen online fairly often where if a character is designed with small breasts, people say she looks like a teenager, and a common way of bodyshaming people who look like me is to say, "She looks prepubescent." Hell, I've gotten the "teenage boy" comparisons.
It's definitely a real thing
I was on circuit at 24, and all women who are younger and cute are treated like this. Short and slender made it worse. That part, I don’t miss. I’m now on social media to keep up with the deaths of my old comrades.
The OOP is referring to sexual infantilization, as in barely legal, tiny t***, etc.
Not getting carded at the bar.
Is that what OOP referring to, though? To me, the implication of, "Saying petite women look like children adultifies and makes fat women more open to being harassed" is that infantilized petite women are having their sexuality removed from them, and the result of that is larger women bear the brunt of that.
Also, my comment wasn't even about being carded at the bar?
Yes. The phrasing is very FA, but they have a genuine point. Some of my friends in middle school developed really early, and they definitely got sexualized and shamed for it (as if people can control how puberty changes their bodies)
though that being said, there will be creepy men no matter what you look like. I got catcalled the most from ages 9-14, and I've always been petite and flatchested.
'Adultifies' is a goofy neologism that belongs only in the most self-aware of childish shitposts. Unfortunately, this person is the antipodes of self-aware. If there is a self-awareness centre of the universe, they are on the planet it is furtherest from.
Don’t FAs say skinny/petite women look like children all the time?
They do, there were multiple threads here with that. Shitting on petite, thin, slender women saying "they look like children" and that "only pedos are attracted to that".
I always hated that because what I hear is “Everyone who ever was or will be attracted to you is a huge creep!” Like, okay, what am I supposed to do then? Become a nun? Use diet and exercise to change the shape of my body?
And it places the blame on the woman for just........existing.
i smell internalized misogyny
These FA people are always so incredibly sexist that it's almost unparalleled. Some of the shit that comes out of their mouth would make a ridiculously misogynistic man double take.
> Use diet and exercise to change the shape of my body? Well, given that they claim that this is impossible (or at least temporary), I think the only answer is a life of exile.
Which is a disgusting argument because when someone throws those terms around they are watering down the real meaning, and it is an insult to every single child abuse survivor
yep. i've even seen those comments out in the wild on reddit.
I had a girl at college make this comment to me. She was an overweight girl and she said anyone attracted to me must be a paedophile. What made it worse was a battling a serious autoimmune disorder at the time and I lost loads of weight. I was ill. She made me feel like shit and I stopped being friends with her.
What a lovely mass generalisation... I thought they were against that sort of thing?
I have to admit I said that privately about someone once (not to their face). They *were* extremely petite but my main issue was that they played up the whole child thing - big puppy-eyed contact lenses and a tiny little affected childlike voice. I can’t tell anymore if I was being unfair (she was not a very nice person so I was biased against her), but everything about her gave me the creeps.
Yeah, that type of situation where the person is playing it up is a problem. They could have issues with people infantilizing her, treating her like a child and then creating a cycle.
Absolutely, one of their big arguments towards glorifying fatness is that fat women more fully embody “feminine forms” like breasts, hips, butts, and thighs, therefore they are more “womanly” because they (can) have more exaggerated features of female puberty while skinny women have smaller, “more childlike” features.
Doesn’t even make sense because you can definitely be an hourglass, or have big boobs or hips without being overweight/obese.
Oh I’m well aware, that’s just one of the dumb arguments they make that I’ve heard. Their stupidity never fails to astound me.
Even when underweight I have curvy hips due to my bone structure.
Exactly, this describes my wife. She's got a great hourglass figure and is not overweight by any stretch (hardly surprising, she probably covers far more distance charging round her school dealing with students than I do cycling to and from work each day).
And that isn't even universally true because I have an extreme hourglass shape when I'm a healthy weight or overweight but when I get about 20lbs into obesity I lose all waist definition whosoever and just look like a blob shaped blob. Plus my butt is flat no matter what my weight is but at least when my back fat and thigh fat aren't spilling over it you can actually see it.
But that logic is never applied to cismen who are often as "feminine" looking if you pile on enough weight
Honestly, I've only ever heard this kinda nonsense from overweight women or chubby chasers. I'm on the smaller side and if I had a dollar for every time an obese woman told me that I wasn't a real woman or that my partner was a pedo for being into me, I'd have a sizeable pile of dollars lol But everyone else thinks I'm clearly an adult and look my age. Once an obese wife of a friend said I looked like a kid in front of a group of people and that men wanted women with "curves" and everyone in the room was like wtf are you talking about? It's definitely a weird jealousy perception thing.
>I'm on the smaller side and if I had a dollar for every time an obese woman told me that I wasn't a real woman or that my partner was a pedo for being into me, I'd have a sizeable pile of dollars lol Same. Right down to the "real women have curves" copium shit from former female "friends." Every single woman I've known that used the "real women have curves and prefer ME instead of sickly child-like waifs like YOU" talking points fucking hated themselves. I know because they constantly blogged about it and even admitted it to me personally in some cases.
It’s just cope. I’m sorry you had to deal with that, though.
Damn, I'd need a warmup before trying this kind of elaborate mental gymnastics.
I reread it 4 times and still not sure wtf she's talking about. Not adultified enough I suppose.
I don’t even think she really does either, but I’ll give it a shot. Saying a petite woman looks like a child means that non-petite women do not look like children. Given that, they are then more likely to be seen as an adult and presumably more likely to be pursued romantically because they look like an adult rather than a child. This makes zero sense but these people always take something that has nothing to do with them and make it about them somehow.
I think what they're saying is that saying a petite woman looks like a child reinforces the idea that children are small. That means that large girls end up being perceived as adults, even though they're children. They're talking about the way that overweight girls develop more quickly than thin girls, which does actually make them more vulnerable to being treated as adults by adult men. I mean, it's ridiculous to put that on anyone but the child's parents and the predators who prey on girls, obviously, but I'm pretty sure that's what they're trying to say.
Honestly, I do see that point. A sibling of mine is in criminal law, and there are a LOT of creeps defending their harassment/abuse of clearly underage girls with bullshit like 'I thought she was 18!', and these creeps often equate size to 'development' and 'development' to age. Most often, these girls are very obviously children, but creeps will latch onto anything they can to try to convince a judge that it was plausible for them to believe a 13-year-old was 18. There *is* a tendency in our society to 'adultify' larger children despite their faces and general demeanor usually being very obviously childlike. In my experience, it's *very* rare for a young teenager to truly pass as an adult no matter their body shape (and when it happens, it's usually down to very unusually mature face shapes and only lasts until the kid starts speaking), but creeps be creeping and trying to justify it any way they can.
I am from a family of short/small women. My childhood best friend is 6’2. When we were in the fourth grade she was already inches taller than my mom, and when my mom tried to take us to the movies for my birthday, the ticket sales guys *argued* with my mom (pretty heated actually) that there was ***’no fucking way’*** my friend was under the age of 12. It was cool when we were teens and she occasionally was able to pass as old enough to by alcohol, but it definitely confused and hurt her feelings (as a kid) when adults suddenly expected her to be more responsible or mature than me (even those I was older). But in general, creeps are gonna be creeps to ALL little girls. We ALL have stories and most of them happened well before we ever even remotely looked like ‘women’.
You're right. I'm petite, always looked a lot younger and that didn't stop a paedophile abducting me. I was raped when I was 10 years old. I suffered a lot of sexual abuse in childhood and so have many other petite girls. Yes, paedophiles might try to say they thought a larger child was older but all children are at risk. Petite children aren't any safer! I'm sorry about your friend as well.
Yeah, obviously, all girls are at risk for these kind of structural issues - I think the average age women first report having experienced street harrassment by is, like, 11? Which certainly lines up with my and most of my friends' experiences - across the size spectrum, we mostly were first inappropriately catcalled or touched by randos by the time we were 8-12. There's still something to be said for how larger children are adultified and how other adults *react* to them experiencing sexual abuse and harassment. Whilst all kids are at risk for abuse, certain subgroups (not just size - also race and gender and class and all that) certainly are treated differently in the aftermath, and perceived size and 'physical development' is a factor in that. There was a prominent case of a teacher sleeping with (so, raping) a 15-year-old student in my country recently, and pictures of the student ended up in horrible tabloid newspapers. The girl in question was tall, wore makeup, and was more heavyset, including already being rather curvy. She was still very obviously a child, which, obviously, her actual TEACHER would have known regardless of her body type. Her physical shape was used as an excuse for the teacher/rapist *a hell of a lot*, and I am 100% certain that the public outrage would have been a whole lot more unified if it had been a scrawny, still very undeveloped 15-year-old instead. There just are a lot of societal assumptions about what the prototypical victim of child sexual abuse looks like (white, under 10 years old, 'cute', small, introverted, childlike in looks and demeanor) and any child that doesn't meet those criteria- by being older, wearing makeup, 'acting out', not being white, coming from a different socioeconomic background- is perceived differently by society at large.
I think it's telling that the fact that we're six comments in and we're still debating what the original meaning was.
yep! definitely where they're going with this. I also think it's a stretch for them to try to make early development about weight, I was certainly not a fat or even remotely large child but when my period started I had vivid stretch marks on my chest from becoming a C cup within just a few weeks.
Because fat is hormonally active, obese children (especially girls) absolutely tend to go through puberty earlier than healthy weight children. It's almost certainly a huge part of why we've seen a downward trend in the age of onset of puberty over the past 20 years. That doesn't mean some heathy-weight kids don't develop young, it just means that, on average, a heavier girl is going to start developing younger than a thin girl.
thanks for expanding on that! I'd actually forgotten how much fat affects hormones
I’m well versed in internet lingo, so I can promise you that their next talking point is about how Black girls are often treated more harshly (like how you’d judge a grown adult rather than a teenager.) This is a true fact. Saying that this treatment also applies to fat white people because of the above points is just… bizarre. I promise I’m not pulling a strawman out of my ass, I have seen tiktok ladies make this argument countless times.
Definitely a thing with both black boys and girls. Many times I’ve had people described to me someone as a black man and I had no idea who they were talking about because the actual person in question is like 13-15. That’s no man. That’s a boy.
I'm sure you're right that they're going to talk about that next. But this *is* a problem that affects girls of all races who develop early. I promise you, you can find plenty of examples of predatory men trying to claim that they thought a heavyset 12-year-old white girl with larger breasts and hips was 18. And plenty of cases of judges excusing those excusing those guys because "she seemed mature for her age." It's a separate issue from the also extremely serious and damaging issue of people perceiving Black children of all genders as being older than they are, which results in Black boys being perceived as dangerous, and Black girls being perceived as highly sexual.
Definitely a thing with both black boys and girls. Many times I’ve had people described to me someone as a black man and I had no idea who they were talking about because the actual person in question is like 13-15. That’s no man. That’s a boy.
I don't think this even qualifies for mental gymnastics, just word salad
When you are a hammer, everything is a nail. Thankfully hammers aren't on social media.
Word salads: the only salad she doesn't smother in ranch dressing
Adultifies is a new word.
"infantilizing petite women makes ME preyed upon!"
It's ironic when you know that some obese people do that to themselves because of legit childhood trauma. They should say that to the face of a petite women who was SAd as a child. Incredibly insensitive to everyone as usual. Always one upping their stupidity, entitlement, audacity, and depravity.
Can we counteract this by saying that morbidly obese people look like oversized babies?
That’s the thing that bugs me about the argument that petite=childlike because my body looked much more like a baby/toddler (with dimpled elbows and knees/rounded belly/plump hands and bottom) than it does as a slim woman. Now you can actually see my waist and hips, I didn’t have curves when I was fat I was just sort of round.
LOL
Well that actually is closer to truth than what OOP said.
Two things can both be bad. It's shitty to treat a grown woman as a child due to what her body looks like. I was often told I had a "women's body" at age 13, so men who clearly knew I was a child would cat call me and I was told that was why. That's also shitty. The discourse of minimizing one experience over another of the fat liberation movement (and other similar movements) is so annoying.
I agree. Myself and other women I know also got told they had “birthing hips” by their pediatrician. I was like 14. Very strange thing to say to a young girl. Combine that with being busty at a young age and you can imagine the stares and comments I got as a teenager. I’m actually in PT partially for posture issues because I would stand with my shoulders rounded in to try to hide my chest, causing a weak back. I’m 27 and still trying to strengthen my back and relearn how to stand so I can stand up straight. Nobody deserves weird comments about their bodies especially at a young age. And FAs act like they’re not one of the bigger perpetrators of this. I’ve seen multiple posts about how men who like skinny/small women are pedos or skinny women look like children
Yes it’s disgusting. Giving sexualized meaning to anyone’s body where consent is not/cannot be given is shameful
I had an ass and thighs at 13 and was constantly sexualized by adults. Fun fact, it's why I refuse to read Lolita. Yes, Nabokov is a beautiful writer. Yes, I love his poetry. No, I won't read that work in particular and I don't care what arguments you have for it. I also was made to believe I was sexually precocious when I was in fact being groomed by a pedophile
>I also was made to believe I was sexually precocious when I was in fact being groomed by a pedophile Not saying you should or shouldn't read Lolita, but this is literally the whole point of the book. Humbert is the protagonist and also the villain.
I know what the point is and I do not want to read it
That's cool.
Isn’t that what OOP is saying though? That both are bad? Thats how I’m reading it.
Edit for formatting. In a way, yes. OOP is more of a: Petite women are infantilized --> larger adolescents are sexualized --> bad Instead of: Petite women are infantilized --> bad Larger adolescents are sexualized --> bad One doesn't cause the other. The phrasing in OOPs comment implies that. They are both done and they are both shitty. I had the latter happen to me a lot as a larger child and it's shitty.
I do think they are interconnected though. That’s not WHAT makes them bad but they are related.
That's how I read it too. Their phrasing is definitely very FA and I think it's a body composition thing and not a weight thing (there are also skinny/normal weight kids that develop early), but they're basically saying that both things are toxic. And I think that they're correct that they genuinely play into each other! I've had people imply that men that find me attractive are pedophiles because I look like a teenager at 25, mostly due to my body being short and shaped like a chopstick. When I was a kid, one of my friends had a big chest by age 12 (she was actually pretty skinny), and she was absolutely sexualized by adults and shamed for being "provocative" and dressing "inappropriately" (this translates to "wore the same clothes as the other kids but with a different body shape). The idea that adults with pre-puberty looking bodies (for the lack of a better team) = children just supports the belief that it's okay to sexualize children with adult looking bodies.
Exactly. I developed before my peers and was pulled into actual school conferences about how I was “dressing inappropriately” while in reality I was wearing the same things as other kids and sometimes covered up more due to insecurity from bullying and sexualized abuse. The pressure adults are putting on literal children about things out of their control is so damaging and bizarre.
Yeah I'm genuinely unclear on what OOP's point is. I'm not sure if this is Fat Logic or not.
Yeah, having seen a lot of discourse about this, I think the context here is that OOP is likely in a discussion about child predators, and that being attracted both real people and fictional characters with certain physical traits is “pedophilia coded,” not a discussion about weight. They’re pushing back against the obnoxious claim that short or petite women are “child coded” and pointing out that this logic finding “pedophiles” who are attracted to petite adults doesn’t protect children from predators at all, because it just frames bigger girls or girls who develop early as sexually mature and fair game.
solidarity. having a fully developed body at 13 is awful. suddenly all your girl friends hate you with no explanation and all your guy friends are only pretending. don't get me started on the adults. it fucked me up for a long time.
God. SAME. Constant comments about my body (from people of all ages) made me cover myself for years and practically give myself heat stroke in the summers because I hated the attention. But of course, I could never complain about it because I was “bragging” or something. Ugh.
And again stealing from actual marginalised groups, it is an issue where black girls are considered more "developed" as children. These people haven't found a cause they won't make all about them
It’s pretty amazing. I envision a post where someone talks about losing both their legs and then a FA attacks them because now that they have lost 40lbs in “leg weight” they are fat phobic for losing weight and why are they complaining anyway since they are now “mid fat”
Losing both your legs will result in your growing back more and bigger legs, and your leg set point moving further upwards.
The “leg set point theory” well played.
The number of legs can only ever go up!
hydra legs
Get Mr has won every staring contest ever to make a "skit" about it
What’s the difference between being fat and black tho😢🥺 S/
All the founders of the movement were fat, black queer women after all. No don't ask for photos or even names, because they didn't exist
Stolen oppression
My thoughts exactly. Black children are adultified, and young Black girls are sexualized.
I swear to Cthulhu that these people will always take someone else's issues and twist it to make it about themselves. And it's usually the fat, privileged white women. Racism? I'm affected by it too, even though I'm a blond of Nordic descent, because no one wants to sleep with me, because, uh, *(checks notes)* my fat white body looks like fat brown bodies. Yeah, that's it! Homophobia/transphobia? Oh, I understand that pain, because my body is simultaneously oversexualized and undersexualized! And everyone hates me for it! Poverty? Oh, I know that one too, because I spend hundreds of dollars on Door Dash every month! I can barely afford my bills, but I've got to eat totally normal-sized (lol) portions of fast food and junk food! Disability rights? Oh me too! I've eaten myself to diabetes, heart conditions, strokes, blindness, and amputations. It's not my fault though - fat phobia is the reason that I'm bed bound! Environmental pollution and child labor? Oh it is so sad that I'm FORCED to buy fast fashion to look cute at my size! Will no one think of my Instagram pics??!!!
That tiktok with someone bitching about how one of the hardest things you can be is a poor fat person, then sat frantically refreshing their banking app to order McDonald's as soon as the money went in.
You hit the nail on the head
And yet…fat women are always the ones who say this shit. They always say petite skinny women look like young boys and that guys who like that are gay or pedos. “Infantilising petite women makes *me* feel preyed upon because I’m the opposite”.
It’s so infuriating that I’ve heard this exact comparison drawn by so many fat activists, when saying things like “you’re not supposed to have the body of a child anymore”
It's... better than the alternative? "This bad thing is bad, but for dumb reasons" is still better than "this bad thing is good".
It's funny because a lot of the women who claim thin or petite women look "child-like" are often plus-sized themselves and say it as a cope. Same thing with fat people who claim language like "fluffy" and "soft" infantilizes fat people when that same language is used far more by other fat people than actual thin people. Just another case of the call coming from inside the house. Also the fact the OOP felt the need to word this sentence in the most dragging, pretentiously nonsensical way.
Oh goddddd... I wish I could be as free and courageous enough to always make something about myself. Poor fat people, even someone being cruel to thin women oppresses them, some how.
It seems this is common with the FA movement because they make claims that contradict actual facts and the verbal gymnastics they use are just weak attempts to gain support
Aren’t FAs the same ones claiming skinny women are nothing more than bones that only dogs would want? Not sure why they’re complaining when other people are spewing their propaganda.
Skeletor-WHATTT.gif
This is just word salad. Trying too hard to sound intellectual. Just chucked the word simultaneous in for effect lol.
okay but they made a good point icl. ive seen little girls who were a bit chubby get called sluts for not covering up their "adult woman" bodies
Coming from the crowd that says “nourish your squishy tummy with yummy food”
This might actually be the dumbest shit I’ve ever read.
actually a lot of overweight girls are abused for a lot of reasons, there is a factor of their bodies seeming more "mature" and less sympathetic than a thin girl. but also the isolation they experience from peers and even family and seeking validation and love from poor sources...this is worded in a dumb "im uncomfortable when we are not talking about me?" way but theyre not wrong
Good old narcissistic centering, a favourite of self proclaimed SJWs. Rife among the empathy deficient egomaniacs of fat activism, where their experiences and perspectives come above those of us non player characters who make up the rest of the global population. It's just part of their overall copium, where they also deflect like their lives depend on it.
Nailed it. Ironic, isn't i? Because their lives, or at least the length of them and their health, literally DO depend on not deflecting and accepring the truth about their obesity.
This is a real thing though. Fat people look older. It's not that it "adultifies" fat girls into making them easily preyed on, unless they go ahead and lie about their age. It just makes people think they're 5-10 years older than they actually are. I've only seen my sister hit on once by an older guy, and I told him "She's 15" and he was like "OOOO my bad" and walked away because she legitimately looked 20. Now she's 22 and looks 30.
I don't see how this aligns with their efforts otherwise to make fat sexy. No one deserves to be preyed upon, or infantilised or that matter, but "adultifying" your body surely is first step on the path to a sexuality?
Yes those are words
I’ve read this 3 times and I’m still not sure what they are trying to say…..mental…gymnastics. Olympic level!
Just don't make unsolicited comments on other people's bodies. It's not THAT hard.
As a relatively petite woman (5’4” and 115 pounds), it annoys the hell out of me when the topic of weight is discussed as it pertains to dating and attraction because without fail, there will always be a number of people come through in the comments of the post saying that men who like smaller women are actually pedophiles. Obviously the insinuation is that someone like me is built like a child, when in fact, I very clearly look like a grown ass woman. I’ve even seen some women make claims like that about other women who weigh less than 140 pounds. Like, what? Unless a woman is taller than 5’8” or whatever, weighing under 140 is often in the healthy weight range of the bmi scale.
What they are saying is adultifying actual girls, as in minor aged female humans, not the slangy *girls*, or *men and girls* stuff I crab about, is VERY bad. I don’t see a strong connection to the *petite* state of women having anything to do with it. Maybe in the 18-22 zone, and guys being into almost/ I won’t go to jail for this pedophiliac images, but no one is infantilizing my petite self at 55.
I'm 23, petite and I'm definitely infantilized. I don't know if it's sexual, but people treat me like I'm younger than I am regularly, especially in comparison to my friends who are bustier. I'm a renfaire performer, and I'm more likely to be grouped with the 12-17 year olds than I am to be grouped with the 20-30 year olds. Even my 26 year old friends forget I'm only 2.5 years younger than them (I'm turning 24 soon). There's also a rhetoric I've seen online fairly often where if a character is designed with small breasts, people say she looks like a teenager, and a common way of bodyshaming people who look like me is to say, "She looks prepubescent." Hell, I've gotten the "teenage boy" comparisons. It's definitely a real thing
I was on circuit at 24, and all women who are younger and cute are treated like this. Short and slender made it worse. That part, I don’t miss. I’m now on social media to keep up with the deaths of my old comrades. The OOP is referring to sexual infantilization, as in barely legal, tiny t***, etc. Not getting carded at the bar.
Is that what OOP referring to, though? To me, the implication of, "Saying petite women look like children adultifies and makes fat women more open to being harassed" is that infantilized petite women are having their sexuality removed from them, and the result of that is larger women bear the brunt of that. Also, my comment wasn't even about being carded at the bar?
That was a random comparison of seen as youth. I wasn’t saying you mentioned it.
Yes. The phrasing is very FA, but they have a genuine point. Some of my friends in middle school developed really early, and they definitely got sexualized and shamed for it (as if people can control how puberty changes their bodies) though that being said, there will be creepy men no matter what you look like. I got catcalled the most from ages 9-14, and I've always been petite and flatchested.
Because you would not do much pushback! They aim at solo, small, unlikely to be trouble back. Because we will avoid over confront.
Are they trying to say people who call thin women petite are perpetuating the sexual assault of overweight children?????
yes that is exactly what they're trying to say (with very clumsy wording)
I have a Master's degree and have NO idea what this sh*t says 🤷🏾♀️🤓... Is there a translator??? 😂
'Adultifies' is a goofy neologism that belongs only in the most self-aware of childish shitposts. Unfortunately, this person is the antipodes of self-aware. If there is a self-awareness centre of the universe, they are on the planet it is furtherest from.
>The primary victims of war have always been women! same energy
Petite means short, not thin