Tag Archives: athletes

The Problem With Fat Shaming Professional Athletes

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Felger: If we ever get to the point where we can’t fat shame athletes, I quit.

Massarotti: It’s coming.

Felger: It is coming.

Massarotti: It might already be here already.

Felger: It’s not. We’re not talking about a teenage girl. We’re talking about professional athletes whose job it is is to be in shape. We are allowed to call them fat and tease them for being fat. If that becomes off limits, I’m done.

The aforementioned exchange, which took place in the context of discussing Kyle Lowry of the Miami Heat, occurred between co-hosts Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti near the end of their Felger & Mazz sports talk show on May 17, 2023. Much like the fat shaming directed at Pablo Sandoval seven years ago, this problematic dialogue misses the mark and causes harm.

Felger asserted that part of a professional athlete’s job is to be in shape, but what constitutes “in shape” should not be defined by anthropometrics, such as weight or body fat percentage, but rather by an athlete’s readiness to perform their given sport at the level their employers expect of them. If an athlete lacks the strength, endurance, or flexibility to perform, the deficiency in their fitness is the real issue regardless of how their body is built; otherwise, teams would just fill their rosters with bodybuilders and models and call it a day.

“In shape” is also context dependent, as the physical abilities necessary to perform at a high level vary from sport to sport. A gymnast who lifts weights and runs but never stretches, a shot putter who stretches and runs but never lifts, and a marathoner who stretches and lifts but never runs would all have serious issues with their performance regardless of how their bodies look.

Besides, Kyle Lowry is actually quite a good basketball player. Lowry is in the midst of finishing his 17th season in the NBA, he earned spots in six straight All-Star games from 2015 to 2020, he started all 65 regular season and 24 playoff games that his team played on their way to winning the 2019 championship, and he was a member of the USA Olympic team that won the gold medal in 2016. Sure, his statistics dropped off a bit this season, but blaming the dip on his physique – which looks to be the same now as it did four years ago – is a bit of a head-scratcher considering the 37-year-old is the seventh oldest player (out of approximately 450) in a league where the average player is 26.01 years old. According to basketball-reference.com, Lowry’s career performance arc is thus far most similar to those of Terry Porter, Vince Carter, and Allen Iverson, the latter of whom is already enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and another – Carter – will likely get in too once he is eligible.

Lowry is far from the only “fat” athlete to outperform many of his leaner peers. The aforementioned Sandoval made over $73 million during his 14 years in the major leagues, and the two-time All-Star was named Most Valuable Player in one of the three World Series that his teams won. Pat Maroon was fat shamed despite winning three straight Stanley Cups. Back in Lowry’s realm of basketball, Luka Doncic’s own boss criticized him for his weight despite winning Rookie of the Year, then being named an All-Star and making the All-NBA first team in the four seasons he has played since then.

However, the most concerning part of Felger’s opinion is that he seems ignorant of the impact that his sentiments have on people other than professional athletes. “We’re not talking about a teenage girl,” he said, but the reality is that fat shaming anybody breeds fat shaming in general. Discussing the reasons why criticizing Donald Trump for his weight is harmful, Ragen Chastain explained, “And make no mistake, when you engage in fat-shaming, your victim is every single fat person.” The ramifications of fat shaming athletes are clear, as I discussed in the Boston Baseball article I wrote about Sandoval back in 2016.

“Fans and media have labeled Sandoval ‘disgusting,’ ‘lazy,’ and ‘pathetic,’ implying that those same terms apply to everyone who has a body type similar to his.

The message is that fat is to be loathed, that larger individuals are not worthy of the respect enjoyed by the rest of us. We reject stereotypes based on race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation but we inexplicably tolerate those based on body size.

The idea that we can tell how someone eats or exercises based on his shape or weight is a myth. Some people built like linebackers never lift weights. Some skinny-as-a-rail folks subsist on fast food. And some obese individuals are more active and have a healthier relationship with food than any of them, but inhabit bigger bodies for other reasons.

As we all know, pressure to be thin leads to dieting, which can lead to a variety of problems, including eating disorders. These life-threatening illnesses are so common in Massachusetts that if the crowd at a sold-out Fenway Park represented a random sample of the state’s population, those in attendance with a diagnosed eating disorder would fill section 41.”

Sounds like Felger’s intent was to focus his fat shame on professional athletes while sparing others – and good thing it was, for his behavior would be even more problematic if his intent was otherwise – but we all know that intent and impact are two different entities. Felger certainly should know this, as his co-host was suspended just three months ago for making a poor attempt at humor that came off as racially insensitive. Like Massarotti, Felger should have known better.

If Felger is unwilling to forego fat shaming professional athletes, then the time for him to quit truly has arrived.

You (Still) Are Not Tom Brady

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Yesterday evening, the New England Patriots curiously traded away Jimmy Garoppolo, their backup quarterback and the heir apparent to 40-year-old incumbent Tom Brady. As fans attempted to make sense of the move, media members did the same. Albert Breer tweeted, “Not to be overlooked: Patriots pushing their chips in on Tom Brady playing well into his 40s.” A few hours later, John Tomase published a column in which he questioned the move, noting, “. . . no quarterback in history has managed to avoid falling off a cliff at age 41.”

Tomase’s point is spot on. Remember, Warren Moon was 38 years old at the beginning of his 1995 season that concluded with a trip to the Pro Bowl and then returned to the all-star game two years later, but during the 1998 season, which he began at 41 years old, his quarterback rating, games played, and touchdown-to-interception ratio all fell off before he ultimately finished his career as a backup in 2000.

Brett Favre turned 40 early in the 2009 season, which was arguably one of his best ever. His 107.2 quarterback rating was higher than in any other season of his career as he took his team to the conference championship game. However, he followed that up with a miserable 2010 season during which he posted a 69.9 quarterback rating, the lowest of his career as a starter, and come 2011 he was out of the league.

By trading away the highly-touted Garoppolo, the Patriots presumably believe Brady will somehow avoid the same age-associated fate as every quarterback who has come before him. But why? Brady himself has his sights set on playing through the 2025 season, which he would conclude at age 48, and he seems to believe that his nutrition and lifestyle choices will play a large part in helping him get there.

In 2015, he told CBS Sports, “So much of what we talk about, Alex [That’s Alex Guerrero, the man Brady describes as his “spiritual guide, counselor, pal, nutrition adviser, trainer, massage therapist, and family member,” the same Alex Guerrero who, according to CBS Sports, once lied about being a doctor and at least twice was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for making claims about his products without medical evidence.] and I, is prevention. It’s probably a lot different than most of the Western medicine that is kind of in a way you — I’d say in professional sports, or in any sport in general, you kind of just play the game until you basically get hurt. Then you go to rehab and then you try to come back and you try to play your sport again. And I think so much for me and what we try to accomplish with what my regimen is, and what my methods are, and the things of my belief system, is trying to do things proactively so that you can avoid getting injured.”

Brady seems to view nutrition as a key component of his and Guerrero’s prevention strategy. “When you think about nutritional supplements you think about other types of training methods and training techniques. I think that’s a great thing. I think when you talk about a green supplement — it’s vegetables. It’s eating better. That’s not the way our food system in America is set up. It’s very different. They have a food pyramid. I disagree with that. I disagree with a lot of things that people tell you to do.”

Brady calls attention to his unusual dietary beliefs and habits, not just through interviews, but also his book and a “sports therapy center” at Patriot Place. Even I have written about Brady’s dietary stances, although not necessarily in a flattering way. Early last year, I picked apart an interview with Allen Campbell, Brady’s personal chef, and while I regret the snarky tone with which I wrote (as I now realize that such an attitude can repel the very people who need to hear the message the most) I stand by my assessment.

My concern is not for Brady, as he is an adult who can do whatever he believes to be in his own best interests, regardless of the factual accuracy of his stance. As a Patriots fan, I am disheartened that the team seems to have bought into Brady’s and Guererro’s hype, and I have a feeling that regret for having traded away Garoppolo is right around the corner for those who made the move.

By far though, my main concern is for the ultimate victims of the trickle-down effect, the adults and children alike who see Garoppolo’s trade as an indicator of Brady’s expected longevity and therefore an indirect endorsement of his nutrition beliefs, and who consequently change their own eating patterns in a negative way as a result. To mitigate the fallout, we must view Brady’s nutrition behaviors under the light of ordinary life rather than the glitz of professional athletics and call them what they really are: disordered eating.

In time, we will know whether Brady was able to stay in the league and maintain a high level of play at an age by which every quarterback before him, including Moon and Farve, had experienced significant decline. Maybe some people similarly believed those latter two athletes had the secrets to defying age until time proved them wrong.

Certainly, Brady has the right to opt for whatever lifestyle behaviors he believes will keep him in the game for years to come, but remember that professional athletics are an entirely different ballgame than the life most of us face. To quote myself from a piece I wrote on Brady nearly three years ago, “Real life exists in grays, so building healthy relationships with food means both listening to our bodies and being flexible to allow for the complexities and variables that come our way. A professional athlete may have incentive to sacrifice such a relationship and rely instead on external rules because the here-and-now upside is so great, but the rest of us are better off learning a lesson from the 99.92% of high school football players who will never play in the National Football League. In other words, think long and hard before deciding to sacrifice for the here and now, and instead focus on life’s big picture.”