'Disgusting': Winery's 'fat-shaming' doorway slammed
A winery in Victoria’s Yarra Valley has come under fire for a ‘fat-shaming’ doorway that encourages visitors to squeeze through a series of narrow openings.
Shannyn Tucker visited Badger’s Brook Winery in Coldstream on Sunday before finding the feature in the car park.
“It made me disgusted to not only see that they thought this was okay,” she explained on Facebook, sharing an image of the ‘Stature Challenge Door’.
In the image there are six doors visible, the two widest being named ‘Big-Boned Body’ and ‘Overweight Body’, and the thinnest named ‘Fit-Looking Body’.
The feature also includes translations into Chinese.
Ms Tucker slammed the installation for creating “bad body image issues”.
“It shouldn’t be okay to make anyone of any age feel uncomfortable for not fitting through an ‘ideal’ space,” she said.
“This is actually disgusting. I don’t understand how this is acceptable in this era.”
Ms Tucker’s post prompted hundreds of comments, many in agreement the display was unacceptable.
“Are they kidding? This needs to be taken down!” one person commented.
“This is horrifying!” another wrote.
The winery’s estate also houses the Tramonto Kitchen and Bar, which confirmed to Yahoo News Australia the installation, which has no affiliation to the restaurant, has since been removed.
“Tramonto Kitchen and Bar staff and management unfortunately don't have any input on what Badgers Brook chooses to put in the car park,” a spokesperson said.
“We very much agree with the feedback given and have passed all we receive on to the owners.”
Yahoo News Australia has been unsuccessful in contacting Badger’s Brook Winery for comment.
‘Complete lack of understanding’, expert says
Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s professor of physiology Brian Oldfield, who is also the vice-president of the World Obesity Federation, said such displays were disturbing and damaging to many.
“At best it’s uninformed and harmful,” he told Yahoo News Australia.
Prof Oldfield said the sign contributed to a stigma around obesity, with many unaware of how “debilitating those stigmatising attitudes can be to people overweight and with obesity in terms of their mental health and well-being”.
“It highlights the problem we have where people don’t understand about the drivers of obesity which are essentially genetics that have been honed over thousands of years to make us want to hang on to every bit of body fat we can,” he explained.
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“The reality is that genetic environment is matched with a food environment that has more fat than you can poke a stick at.”
Prof Oldfield said this had created the “perfect storm”.
“The image is a complete lack of understanding of those basic principles that put people in a position where they can’t squeeze through the skinniest the crack and it’s a shaming attitude that shows ignorance of those issues,” Prof Oldfield said.
He added obesity was considered a disease and noted people suffering from breast cancer or liver disease wouldn’t be singled out and “made fun of in that sort of way”.
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