It’s disturbing to watch the last videos that were uploaded to Brittany Sauer’s TikTok page. The 31-year-old social media star, who frequently shared defiantly ‘body-positive’ content about how ‘hot’ she felt in particular outfits, sobbed as she spoke to the camera and admitted with startling candor that food and binge eating had “ruined her life.”
And it had left her, at the young age of 28, with many regrets.
For two years, Brittany had been a virtual prisoner in her own house, battling type 2 diabetes and recurrent bouts of cellulitis, which had resulted in a growth in her pelvis that weighed more than two stone. She was so out of breath that she had to ask someone else to trim her toenails.
However, she fervently hoped that she still had time to save herself. “I fear that I may find myself in a difficult situation from which my body is unable to recover,” she shared with her half a million TikTok followers. “I want you to know that food isn’t worth your life; it’s not worth it.”
The brother of TikTok celebrity @Wafffler69 claims that the 33-year-old star passed away in January from a “presumed heart attack.” Known by his real name, Taylor LeJeune, he gained 1.9 million followers by posting videos on social media criticizing odd foods like canned ham from the 1960s and reindeer meat, without displaying his weight. The day before he passed away, he was seen in his final video consuming a huge fruit loop in milk.
Dr. Cat Pausé, a well-known activist and professor of “fat studies,” passed away at the age of 42. She questioned the connection between weight and health. As a resident at Massey University in New Zealand, she additionally hosted a radio program titled “Fat Positive.”
Brittany passed away a week after the film was uploaded in December of last year.
The contentious “fat acceptance” and body positivity movements that enticed Brittany and millions of other impressionable youth like her are brought to light by her passing.
Over the last ten years, there has been a remarkable surge in support for the central claim that obesity need not equate to illness. That is, it is possible to be both fit and fat.
The core objectives of the Branded Health At Every Size, or HAES, philosophy are admirable. It seeks to combat the multibillion dollar diet industry, which has a dismal track record of promoting long-term, sustainable weight loss, and serve as a counterbalance to the stigma associated with individuals who struggle with their weight.
The theory is that overweight people should be encouraged to accept their bodies, find enjoyable activities to do, and eat a more nutritious diet rather than being shamed and made to diet. However, some claim that those ideas have been taken too far, especially on social media, where they have been used to celebrate morbid obesity while downplaying its grave health risks.
The US version of Cosmopolitan magazine received backlash for publishing covers with plus-size models doing yoga poses with the caption, “This is healthy.” In an effort to dispel beauty stereotypes, it also included US plus-size model Tess Holliday, whose choice was denounced as “dangerous and misguided.” At 5 feet 3 inches and 300 pounds, she has a BMI of 53, which is more than twice the healthy range.
Meanwhile, self-described “fat activists” encourage followers to disregard medical professionals’ advice to lose weight and not only support larger bodies as healthy but also reject decades of research that demonstrates the risks of excess body fat.
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