Fat Shaming on Instagram

I never thought I’d write this post. I mean I’ve written a blog for 16 years now and I pretty much grew up in this little space of mine. I wrote all about my children being born and now I even have a high schooler myself. Fat shaming on Instagram is real. Fat shaming in person is real. Using Instagram to harass someone is real.

Let me tell you my story.

We moved back to Oregon last year and at the start of this year I decided to get our my snowboard after a trip sledding in our local mountain, Mt Hood. Delfino and I packed them away after Kaila was born but I had always wanted to teach him to snowboard. So I followed the local ski resorts so I could learn about pricing, possible passes, deals, etc. A local ski resort posted a local mom and so I did the normal blogger thing and was like rad another mom who snowboards, follow. In fact I followed a lot of accounts related to skiing and snowboarding all over the Pacific Northwest. Honestly I was tired on my feed full of influencers pedaling links and fake likes.

Turns out I mentioned being a foster kid so we also contacted because I came to understand she was adopted. She for some reason wanted to bash on all of my experiences. I posted about sneaking on lifts as a teenager but that’s what the locals always did in Arrowhead. Being a foster kid my aunt never once bought me a lift ticket. I worked babysitting for my first board $50 at the Crestline pawn shop and my boots were gifted used from one of the guys in high school. They didn’t even fit but I just loved being own the mountain with the guys so I was just posting my own childhood experiences snowboarding and why I love it so much now as an adult.

Well I guess she had an issue with that. Her first messages were mean hearted so I should have seen it right away but you know me, I’ll always see the best in anyone. So I deflected her attacks saying my blog post were bringing thousands of people to trash the mountains. All I did was post already public assessable information for free sledding spots but that was enough to get on her radar of hate. She went on to message other influencers with a string of messages convincing them how horrible of a person I was. She went on to messaged my husband at 3am talking about a snowboarding backpack and how not to buy me one and how I’m so messed up – to which if you know my husband he told her to fuck off. To which all of my friends said to tell her do the same but you see I trued that, it didn’t work! To this day she has my photo on her Instagram page! Why? Just another way to harass me is all. She goes around and follows and unfollows my friends to get their attention, its bizarre.

The most bizarre point came after my 16 year old daughter AnOrdinaryKid called her petty. My child called us both petty for me even trying to defend myself against her constant assault of attacks. I consulted more of my friends they said block and move on but that only made the attacks worse! She didn’t even know me for months but knew so much about my character.

She/and or her friends decided to find me at a closed ski resort and follow me around. She was not a paying guest but had her and her friends take photos to fat shame me. Messages went on all day.

The most strange part of it all was at the same time she was telling people that she was afraid of me! But was following me around in actual person!!!!!

So when she couldn’t destroy my character online she turned to fat shaming and talking about my weight. Which I guess she has her own issues about but I never brought her weight up. I never cared. I just wanted to follow another woman who liked to snowboard and take photos and videos. You know like I’ve done for 16 years now. I’m not an influencer anymore. I just want to have fun. I’ve met so many like minded women online I didn’t expect that I wasn’t allowed to follow another public profile.

This lesson has been observed by my own teenager on Instagram and its so cool to me to see her all these years later helping me process this traumatic situation. Giving me advice over an Instagram follower gone wrong!!!!