Make Americans Shamed Again and Again
Nothing says “public health” like humiliation in prime time.
This post discusses fat-shaming and includes a mention of suicidal thoughts. If this brings anything up for you, please reach out for support. In the U.S., you can call or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you’re outside the U.S., you can find international resources at opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines.
I spend my days helping people untangle shame, especially around their bodies and the foods they eat. And then I watched shame packaged as inspiration during this year’s Super Bowl.
I was watching the game with friends. Snacks out. Casual conversation. I barely registered the Mike Tyson ad the first time it aired. But I knew something didn’t sit right.
Later, I rewatched it.
That’s when it landed.
The tone.
The language.
The framing.
It was worse than I thought. Thirty seconds of fat-shaming disguised as inspiration. Calling people “fudgy.” Reducing bodies to punchlines. Framing weight as a moral collapse.
And then this line:
“I had so much self-hate when I was like that, I wanted to kill myself.”
Let’s be clear. That is not empowerment. That is shame. And shame does not work. Not clinically. Not culturally. Not politically.
Shame does not create sustainable health. It creates secrecy. Bingeing in private and restricting in public. Gym punishment cycles. Self-hatred disguised as discipline.
It reinforces the stereotype that fat people are lazy, out of control, weak. It tells the public that larger bodies are evidence of moral failure.
That messaging has consequences. I see them every week.
The ad claims transformation. What it sells is humiliation.
Even if the intent was to say, “I was in pain,” the impact is something else.
For anyone living in a larger body, it reinforces a brutal narrative:
You should hate yourself.
You should feel disgust.
You should be ashamed.
And when someone says they wanted to kill themselves because they were fat, broadcast into millions of homes, that framing is reckless.
For people currently experiencing suicidal ideation, that line does not land as a metaphor. It lands as validation of their worst intrusive thoughts.
That is not careful storytelling.
That is dangerous messaging.
And then there’s the messenger.
It is hard to ignore the irony of positioning someone with a long and documented history of harming others as the moral authority on discipline and worthiness.
The hypocrisy is thick.
But this is not just about one commercial. It is about a pattern.
This administration continues to frame health as morality. It continues to weaponize shame. It continues to position body size as a personal defect rather than the complex intersection of biology, environment, stress, trauma, and access.
They call it MAHA.
Make America Healthy Again.
But what we are watching is something else.
MASAA.
Make Americans Shamed Again and Again.
Again through public messaging.
Again through policy.
Again through spectacle.
Again through celebrity humiliation.
Shame is cheap. It is loud. It makes for dramatic television.
But it does not make people healthier.
It makes them quieter. It makes them hide. It convinces them their bodies are the problem rather than the systems around them.
If we truly cared about health, we would invest in food access, mental health care, community infrastructure, and reducing weight stigma in medical settings.
Instead, we air humiliation during the Super Bowl and call it inspiration.
I am not interested in pretending that is harmless.
Shame has never been a public health strategy.
It is a control strategy.
And the people who pay for it are the ones already carrying the most.