It’s hard for me to even understand what sort of person would find this shit funny, but a company named ‘Pourtions’ recently came out with a set of plates that use fat-shaming to ‘help people eat better.’
The plates, according to Pourtions, ‘keep you from overindulging…Research shows that people unintentionally consume more calories when faced with larger portions…our tableware collection provides helpful —and hilarious—visual cues; simple guide rails.”
The Pourtions site tells the story of how the husband and wife team who designs these products wanted to mix ‘social awareness with a humorous nudge in the right direction’, although apparently their moral compass is completely screwed up if they’re this tone deaf.
Here are a few examples of the plates and glasses that are for sale on the Pourtions site:
Excuse my language, but what the fuck? So I can starve myself and fit into my skinny jeans, and if I eat too much, I’m going to be wearing ‘mom jeans?’. Why is this bullshit only directed at women?
The Pourtions site says about this plate: “There’s nothing like broken-in, faded, ripped-in-the-right-place jeans. They look great, and more importantly, they fit great. So, keep your eye on the middle circle and you’ll always be in fashion.”
I’m actually speechless, and this doesn’t happen very often.
And what if I only fit into ‘mom jeans’ because that’s actually my size? Is that not okay, Pourtions? Fuck you very much.
These particularly UNFUNNY dishes were for sale at Macy’s until today, when the social media backlash made Macy’s pull them. Thank god.
Next, we have the completely tasteless Fish/Foul plate, which implies that if you eat a small portion of fish you’re fine; if you eat more than that, you’re FOUL.
Ha ha, Pourtions, yeah I get it – fowl vs foul, nice play on words, but insulting AF. Because in other words, eating larger portions is so shameful and gross. What if I’m hungry? Will eating more make me a revolting person? Unbelievable.
Moving right along, we have the Feed Me/Feed Bag plate, which insinuates pretty clearly that you’re a fucking animal if you eat more than what the ‘feed me’ outlines on the plate.
Are you fucking kidding me right now? People who eat larger portions are animals?
Finally, the ‘cute’ abbreviations plate, where eating a really small portion is ‘No Problem’, but What The Fuck is wrong with you if you dare satisfy your hunger?
Can you imagine kids seeing these plates? Oh. My. God. Hold me back.
Eating isn’t shameful.
Satisfying your appetite isn’t shameful.
Being fat or only fitting into ‘mom jeans,’ whatever the fuck those are, isn’t shameful.
What IS shameful is companies like Pourtions attempting to make money off of peoples’ struggles and insecurities with backhanded, unfunny rhetoric. Sorry Pourtions, nobody’s laughing about fat and food-shaming plates that compare overeaters to barn animals.
It’s also completely offside for Pourtions to dictate the portions they feel are appropriate for people, especially under the guise of saving the world from obesity. Don’t go outside the rails! How vomit-inducing.
If Pourtions wants to ‘help people’, they should first understand that according to the research, food and fat shaming doesn’t stop people from eating, it just makes them feel like shit about themselves..and eat more in the process.
Being overweight involves a hell of a lot more than just eating too much. It’s often a complex situation involving socioeconomics and emotional facets that are completely out of the realm of ‘just eat less!’ and to suggest that dinnerware like this can help solve the problem is asinine.
I am glad that Macy’s pulled their stock of this crap, but who in the world thought it was a good idea to sell it in the first place?
And by the way Pourtions, in the era of #metoo, we don’t need a glass like this:
Who the fuck is buying this shit?
Not funny. None of this is even remotely chuckle-worthy. Instead, it’s a sad statement about how we view food, eating, and obesity.