Andrew Dickens: I'm sick of being shamed because I'm skinny

In recent weeks the first evictee from New Zealand Survivor complained she was given the boot just because she was a big girl. "Fat Shaming!" screamed the headlines. Last month, a Playboy model was sentenced for fat shaming an elderly woman in a LA locker room after posting a picture her on Snapchat with the caption: "If I can't unsee this, then you can't either." Even the Pope has been accused of fat shaming after asking Melania Trump what she fed Donald.

Shame a fat person, particularly if you have even a smidgeon of fame, and all hell breaks loose. Ask Kiwi actor KJ Apa. Our media is full of it.

Fat shaming happens regularly, despite a mountain of press highlighting the problem and a litany of larger people writing about the shame they constantly receive. It's a blight on our society but I'll be honest: my sympathy is limited.

Here's my issue. I'm a 1.87m-tall man who weighs just over 60kg. Yep, I'm freaking skinny. I'm the same weight at 54 as I was at 17. But I'm happy with the way my body serves me. I've competed at national level in athletics, I can ski all day and you'd be hard pressed to keep up with me when I ride my bike uphill (ask George Bennett, the cyclist, who's the same weight as me: skinny people are good climbers). But while I'm okay with it, most people seem to have a problem with my body.

The other day I went to the bank to change my KiwiSaver plan. A very nice man sorted me out. But as I made to leave, he told me he had to pass on a message from one of the tellers behind me, which made me realise he wasn't nice at all.

"My teller asked me to tell you that you're too skinny and she wonders, do you eat enough?"

I told my adviser to tell his teller that I've always been this skinny, that I eat heaps and, finally, to tell her that skinny shaming is just as bad as fat shaming. I left, shooting a dagger from my eyes, and regretted not taking up the issue with the teller who'd seen fit to ask a colleague to pass on an insult.

I was gobsmacked that a complete stranger could judge me so harshly. My adviser obviously didn't see the insult and had no hesitation passing the comment on. The bank workers seemed to have no shame about their shaming.

Actually, it didn't surprise me at all. My whole life I've been getting it. Daily. "For God's sake, eat a pie". "Mate have you got cancer?" "Do you break bones often?" My boss, who has known me for nearly 30 years, did it the other day in reception. A nationally famous broadcasting treasure who saw me in shorts, told me I looked like I'd just stepped out of Belsen. At least he was truly contrite when I told him off, saying, "What part of that did you think was acceptable to say?"

For here's the truth. While people may think twice before passing comment on fat strangers they seem to have no guilt about shaming a skinny man. Gender does have something to do with it. People will think twice about commenting on a skinny woman for fear that she may be battling an eating disorder. But skinny males appear to be fair game.

Talking with some of my plumper female friends, they admit that they get shamed from time to time but when they hang out with me they are truly shocked at the level of abuse that comes my way.

So who's standing up for me? No one. Our newspapers, airwaves and magazines are awash with commentary against fat shaming and nothing about other types of body shaming. It occurs to me that the fatties are not only hogging all the pies they're also hogging all the headlines. Day after day a fat person rails against the abuse they receive but, in their desperate pleas of sympathy for their self-esteem, they miss the bigger picture. It seems that they're campaigning for the normalisation of fat rather than the abolition of body shaming.

With obesity now considered an epidemic and 67 per cent of the New Zealand population considered overweight, the skinny are now the minority. The normalisation of fat means the skinny among us become the freaks and don't we know about it. We even seem to be portrayed as the enemy. Furthermore, we're not supposed to complain about it, because the overweight think we're the lucky ones. A male point of view isn't even considered.

For example, Melissa A. Fabello is the editor of the popular magazine and website, Everyday Feminism. In a recent article she admitted that thin people can hate their self-image but she argues it's not on par with the self-loathing of fat people, as a thin person is the only one worrying about it.

People will think twice about commenting on a skinny woman for fear that she may be battling an eating disorder. But skinny males appear to be fair game.

"When you're not thin, other people on the beach actually do take offence. When you're not thin, people really do think that you shouldn't be in a bathing suit. When you're not thin, people really do make your body their moral obligation. And while your internal struggle is real and significant, the point is: you might hate your body, but society doesn't," she says.

She calls this "thin privilege".

I call this bollocks. I know plenty of thin women ridiculed on beaches because their ribs are showing. Songs on popular radio pronounce that real women have curves and men prefer big booties and boobs. While the catwalk is full of clothes for rail-thin women with no cleavage, try finding clothes like that at Postie Plus. If this is a privileged life, then I'm missing something. It's just as tough for skinny girls as overweight ones.

What about guys? For men, turning up on the beach with a skinny body, the ridicule is palpable. It's been instilled in the population for generations. Growing up in the 70s, I bought DC, Marvel and Disney comics that had pages of ads. Every comic seemed to advertise the Charles Atlas body-building programme.

You know the ads. "Let Me Prove in 7 Days That I Can Make You a New Man!"; "The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac"; "Hey, Skinny! Yer Ribs Are Showing!" It's an ad that has a cartoon of a skinny, 97lb [44kg] weakling who gets sand kicked in his face by a beefcake, uses the moment as inspiration to build his body, then comes back to the beach to give the bully his belated comeuppance. Name any ad for weight loss that insults so blatantly.

It also assumes that being skinny is a choice that you can fix if you do some work.

Now hold on, buster. I spent decades taking supplements, eating two dinners and exercising and I've never put on a gram. Skinny is no more a choice than is fat.

Newstalk ZB radio host Andrew Dickens. Photo / Nick Reed

Meanwhile, in popular culture, the Charles Atlas look is the body shape men are supposed to aspire to. Pecs, abs, biceps. Brad Pitt, Zac Efron, Chris Hemsworth are the Hollywood heroes. Let's be honest, can you name a skinny male movie star?

There are hardly any, unless you count the movies about Aids and cancer sufferers, Holocaust survivors or the shipwrecked. And even then they get big guys to diet. Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Hanks? On behalf of skinny actors, thanks for nothing.

Growing up, I thanked heaven for Levi 501s, the baggier the better, because they'd hide the chopsticks I have for legs. Except when the wind blew and drew attention to my legs. (Always stand with your back to the wind.)

In the New Romantic 80s, Duran Duran's flouncy shirts were a godsend. At the beach, it was boardies, not budgie smugglers.

Like many skinny men with a high metabolism and a bit of intelligence, I developed a big mouth and a quick wit. It's no surprise I've plied my trade in radio and not television.
It's also no surprise that my radio listeners are always telling me I don't look as I sound. It's also been my saviour on the girl front. I'm a slow grower in the affections of women. They learn to like me through my humour, intellect and sensitivity until my body becomes irrelevant.

I got beaten up a lot by the bigger guys with low self-esteem out to prove themselves. I learnt to take it, to run like the wind or, if needs be, fight like a cornered rat and leave nothing behind. My redeeming feature was my height and I know how to blow myself up like a blowfish and loom over aggressors.

I spent decades taking supplements, eating two dinners and exercising and I've never put on a gram. Skinny is no more a choice than is fat.

My last fight was four years ago. I couldn't believe I was still having to do this crap at the age of 50.

But age has also given me acceptance of my lot. With the rise of the skinny jean and tailored clothes, I found salvation. I now squeeze into stretch skinnys that most 50-somethings avoid, preferring their Obama Dad jeans.

I know it confronts some but it's way better to embrace my lot than try to disguise it. I realise that my attempts at disguise were so obvious that it actually accentuated the problem.

My body may be skinny but my skin is tough. Trust me, there is no insult I haven't heard - and they slide off me like water. And as the conversation of my contemporaries increasingly dwells on diabetes, cholesterol and stents, I am thankful for my 1 per cent body fat and arteries completely clear of fatty deposits.

If there's something to take from all this, it's a change to the unconscious bias we all have. Fat shaming is obviously a thing. But so is skinny shaming. Shaming of the disabled, the congenitally defective and even the short is also extremely common and insidiously evil.

I have a simple request. When you talk about fat shaming, call it body shaming. Lay off the skinny folk, who are also doing it hard. Accept that one of the greatest things about humans is that we come in all shapes and sizes and none is better than another.

So hug a skinny guy today. And fight the urge to say, "Wow, it's just like hugging yourself!". Because we've all heard that one before.