Our shifting definition of shame

In this most holy month of Pride I have been making my observances by thinking about shame. After all, shame is the reason that ‘Pride’ has taken on the meaning it has in recent years. If gay people were once made to feel shame for their sexuality then the counterbalance was apparently to encourage them to feel pride in it. A preferable countermove for some of us would have been simple equality, making sexual preference morally neutral: neither worse nor better.

But no, somebody decided on pride, and pride it now is. However, there are several things that this leads to – not least a turn against the use of shame. In recent years, ‘shaming’ people has become something which you should never do, and not only in the realms of sexuality.

For example we have had cause to learn of the phrase ‘fat-shaming’. This is when you point out that someone who is, say, on the large side, may put too many cakes in their mouth, or has other dietary or lifestyle reasons for being a bit on the XXL size. It is true that some can be mean about fat people. Perhaps inevitably, this too has led to ‘fat pride’, whereby women’s magazines put happy-looking obese women on the cover with headlines like ‘This is healthy’.

But should being fat be a source of pride? Are there not times when a little bit of fat-shaming might be useful? I would have thought that some sort of sense of shame might be a useful impetus for many fat people to lose weight, especially during the Covid era. After all, those who are morbidly obese are disproportionately likely to end up in intensive care after getting Covid. Is it fat-shaming to suggest that if you want to dodge the hospital you should also dodge the iced buns? To say so is evidently impossible.