Yesterday I saw an article posted on Facebook about Adam Richman, the guy from Man Vs. Food. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of that show – it’s about a guy who travels the world and shovels food in his face to win such novelties as a T-shirt and heart disease. But, hey, he travels! So totally Travel Channel. I’m just shocked it wasn’t on TLC.
Gonna have to place my bet on the food.
Though no one on TLC, it turns out, is as big a scumbucket as this guy. It makes me angry to even recall it. The show has been off two years, though Travel continues to show it again and again. In that time, dear Adam lost a lot of weight. Yay, now he looks so much older! Oh, and he’s totally healthy because thin! He posted a selfie of himself bragging about his weight loss and using the hashtag “thinspiration.” Turns out thinspiration is a term people with eating disorders use. News to me. Anyway a blogger named Amber Sarah (who OMG is fat!) told Adam about this and he said “Oh, didn’t realize that. I’ll just drop that particular hashtag.” Hahaha, no of course he didn’t. He told her “Do I look like I give a f**k?” She tried again, and got a friend to try, and when they were ignored, she hit up her followers who started bugging him. So he just ignored them.
No, of course he didn’t. He went freaking off the wall crazy, tweeting such gems as “If anyone acts like a c**t, I’ll call them one. It’s not misogyny, it’s calling a spade a spade.”, “Eat a bag of sh*t”, and most chilling of all “Seriously, grab a razor blade and draw a bath. I doubt anyone will miss you.”
It is impossible to fully express my anger at this because it’s wrong on SO many levels. And it just gets worse if you look at the comments. I know, I should never do this, but I thought surely people would be as enraged as I was. Nope. Here are some of the responses from various articles.
Is bad, bad, bad. Unless you are paid to eat it by the ton.
“There is no excuse for HER behavior. She weighs 1,000 pounds and doesn’t want anyone else to be happy that they are thin and in good shape.”
A picture of her – on her article – with the caption “Its Tinkerfat the land whale princess.”
“People are way too sensitive. I don’t think anything he said was wrong. He’s lost a lot of weight and is proud of himself, as well he should be.”
“Who wouldn’t want that nutjob to commit suicide? He may have been ranting, but be honest . . . most of us were cheering him on because we are so damn tired of people trying to cause trouble or thin skinned or offended by small thing. I know he’s in the public eye and has to apologize . . . but I hope it is the fakest damn apology ever.”
“Since when does a “Blogger” like that monster Amber Sarah have the power to get a television show pulled? She’s a BLOGGER! They aren’t real! That pig should take note of what he did and hit the gym. So sick of Liberal PC nonsense ruining people’s lives.”
She’s overweight and has bad fashion sense! Good thing she’s a blogger, and doesn’t exist.
Commenters who disagreed with these views were often disregarded with slams like “You must be fat yourself.” Right, cause you have to also be overweight to think telling another human being they should kill themselves because they are worthless is wrong. Here’s news to these people, and to darling Adam. There are PEOPLE on the other side of that screen. People who kill themselves everyday partly because they are judged by their appearance.
The ironic thing is that many overweight people are not unhealthy. They eat well and exercise. Some people will always be thin because of metabolism, even if they eat McDonalds for every meal. That doesn’t make them more healthy. And even if the person IS an unhealthy weight, that doesn’t mean their brains work less. It doesn’t mean they are worth less.
I am disgusted that my daughters must grow up in a world where completely unrealistic body images are seen as the norm, and deviating from that means ostracism, discrimination, abuse. Where it’s better to starve oneself than to have a little meat on your bones.
Adam has the right to “free speech”. So did the blogger. And the Travel Channel had the right to “postpone his new show indefinitely”. There is such a thing as karma, Adam, and consequences for your actions. I only wish his losing his new show was the only consequence, but it’s just a symptom of a very sick world where it’s better to be dead than fat.
aliceatwonderland 
I’s horrible to see that we life in a world where no one knows a limit. “Seriously, grab a razor blade and draw a bath. I doubt anyone will miss you.” – seems he not only lost weight, he lost his brain too. (if he had such a thingy once)
That’s what gets me. If he’d just said “Nanner you’re a poophead” that’d be one thing. It’s stupid and immature, but nothing like telling someone to commit suicide. That’s such an extreme overreaction – like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.
and the worst is the are covered behind some stupid online names and think they can act like idiots….
Wow…just wow. People can be such hard-hearted idiots at times, it’s disgusting. As a proud plus size woman and a blogger thank you for posting this Alice! 😀
What amazes me is what constitutes “plus size” these days. Size 14 or 16! That is not that big, especially if you are a tall woman. WTF. And anyway, even if you are 500 pounds, how does that change who you are inside?
Exactly!!!
Anyone that will go around the world stuffing his face with tons of food (yes I’ve seen the show and thought it was bad) shows he has little restraint. So when he was fat did someone say to him to grab a razor blade and draw a bath? It amazes me that some people who once were heavy leave their sensibilities behind with the weight they lost.
The guy has a major ego problem and a distinct lack of human feeling. It’s not like he’s the Pope or something. He starred on some stupid show about a guy eating food. A simple request to not use a word on a public forum is not that big of a deal. Even if they did hound him, he could have chosen to ignore it. But if he says that stuff in public, I can only imagine what he says on his own. Frightening.
I loved Adam Richman and that show, but now Tom and I have boycotted him entirely. It does sicken me, that we live in such a world where people would rather strike out cruelly than to admit they are wrong. I am fat and always will be fat, and I have contemplated suicide many times. I take offense to his actions. I hope his career goes down the shitter.
I would rather be with an overweight person with a good heart than a skinny one with no heart. As you know I also have had mental health issues, and to hear such an insult is a far cry from someone saying I’m a jerk. It strikes at my core. It’s so needlessly cruel. I’m glad they cancelled his new show. I hope they stop showing the other one too – I too thought he seemed like a decent guy, but I can never watch that show again now.
Neither can I. I guess the bad guys can appear as good guys, until something cracks and their true colors shine through.
So horrible what this guy said. Shocking, really, and that people actually agreed with him.
That people agreed with him is what really pushed me over the edge. It’s one thing for one idiot celebrity to be so horrible, but for so many others to support him in it? It’s sickening.
It’s awful, Alice. Sickening! I used to watch this guy, even though I thought what he did was unhealthy. I thought he was a good guy. No more! I’ll never watch him again.
Perfect example of why I can no longer read comment sections other than for the blogs I trust and follow. At least I try not to anyway. People are vicious. They think the cloud of anonymity allows them to say anything, things they would never say face-to-face. Words can hurt, whether they’re spoken or written.
Exactly. I try not to read the comment sections too, but there I go again . . . stop, Alice, stop! Maybe there is a 12 step program.
If you find one, let me know. 😉
If you can’t trust hosts of a TV eating show to be good people, who can you trust?
It’s like I’m losing faith in reality TV now.
Hmmm, it think it would be fitting to truss him up and offer him as a peace offering to a cannibalistic tribe. Maybe we could video tape it as his last food show. Ha!
I see crossover potential here. Man vs Food vs Wild. Bear Grilles shows us how to survive by tracking this jerk who gorges at places all over the world. In between staying at four star hotels of course. Maybe they could also have that Treehouse guy come out and build an authentic survival shelter for Bear and Adam.
I am in complete and utter disgust over this right now. I too have watched this show before, being entranced by how one guy could stuff his face with so much food. It seemed glorious! But, in reality, there are healthy and unhealthy ways to go about eating and weight loss. I never knew the hashtag thinspiration referred to unhealthy eating disorders, and I am glad to know. I have seen that a lot online, such as boards on Pinterest entitled thinspiration, and many of the images that come up are borderline anorexic. I wonder if his heavy eating was glorifying the other side of the eating disorders spectrum. I know there are disorders where people over-eat. Either way, it does not pardon the words he said. You can be proud for your weight loss, but be smart about it and humble too. Appearance isn’t everything. The heart is what matters the most. I always remember a quote from Pitch Perfect, in which the character Fat Amy says, “I love all of you, even if you are skinny. I like to think that your hearts are fat, and that’s pretty cool.” To me, that sums it up perfectly. We shouldn’t focus on the outside, but on the inside. That is what makes you you. Thank you for sharing this Alice! I will be boycotting this show and actor/celebrity/jerk face too.
It’s all so creepy. That people who have websites all about how to starve themselves, and encourage each other. But then, the rest of the world encourages them too – at least until they start looking skeletal. But even that is preferred to someone who has “no control” and lets herself get fat. Yeah, anorexics think they have ultimate control over food – but it controls them just as much as it controls overweight people.
People need to go back to watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. They missed something along the way.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I have a board on Pinterest for exercise called “Be healthy” and I only pin things are encouraging or are healthy ways to exercise because I like to workout. But, I also love to eat. As I sit here, I hold a donut in my hand waiting to finish my hashbrowns, so that I can just dive in. (; teehee
Speaking of amazing childhood shows, have you heard that Reading Rainbow is coming back?! I cannot tell you how much this warms my heart.
Wow. Stick it to ’em, Alice!
There is something incredibly wrong with a world where a person’s self worth and their place in the world is determined by their appearance. Every human being has so much to contribute to this world and to one another, to judge someone’s soul based on its external shell is like judging the depth of the ocean by looking at a stick floating on the surface. I pity this man. He will miss so much of the true beauty of life.
I lost respect for him when he started hawking Walmart’s shit, but this, this is just beyond.
I’m glad his show wasn’t picked up. What a douche. If he ever wants to lose more weight, he can chop off his head. Tip courtesy of a thinpiration site where some of its members were attempting recovery. Fuck him. Go Amber.
First of all, I hate that douche canoe. Second of all, THIS….thank you for THIS: “The ironic thing is that many overweight people are not unhealthy. They eat well and exercise. Some people will always be thin because of metabolism, even if they eat McDonalds for every meal. That doesn’t make them more healthy. And even if the person IS an unhealthy weight, that doesn’t mean their brains work less. It doesn’t mean they are worth less.”
so much YES. My best friend has always been curvy (like me, but curvier) and has always struggled with self-image (also like me). But here’s the thing: she’s the most discipline healthy eater I’ve ever known in my life! And she exercises, takes vitamins, drinks a shit-ton of water…she’s the epitome of healthy, but she knows (which is what absolutely kills her) that everyone probably thinks she sits around all day eating french fries. It’s to the point that she’s embarrassed to eat in public at all. How effed up is that?? Meanwhile, I know several naturally thin friends who don’t exercise regularly, and whose idea of healthy eating is not getting a shake with their combo meal. but they get all the attention and glory. Yup. Not fair.
drives….me…..insane.
Me too. I loved one comedian who said, “You see professional joggers dropping dead in the street. And who’s alive? Chubby Checker, Fats Domino . . .” Also studies show that having extra weight is actually helpful with diseases like Cancer where you lose a lot of weight quickly. There is a good book I recommend called the Obesity Myth. It’s really enlightening – and infuriating that no one listens to these studies.
Me, I’d rather be over-weight than dead. Weight can be added or removed. Death’s kind of permanent and I’m rather enjoying being alive.
Why do these idiots have to be such jerks? Maybe I should pray that they find out that they have immortal souls and that they will be judged for behaving like dicks at some point, by an entity rather bigger than the human race…
I wish I could see it if it happens . . .
Wow look at all the fatties crowding here blaming others on their comments instead of fixing yourself first. Quit being such a loser and jealous of people who actually took the pain and effort to slim down. Not only are you people ugly on the outside but the inside as well thank you for giving the world the rights to despises on you.
Thank you for being a complete asshole.