Just like all her episodes, Reham Said’s latest episode has made its way on social media. Now, we know her content isn’t the most publicly loved, but sometimes she can hit the nail on the hammer.
This episode was supporting a good cause, where she was discussing her weight loss campaign, where her show will be sponsoring women who are opting for weight loss surgeries but couldn’t afford it.
We hoped this could be one of those times where we would jump on board with her cause, but sadly things did not go the way we had planned.
Reham Said has openly fatshamed the Egyptian public for being, well, overweight. She did not just fatshame a nation, she proceeded to insult overweight women in all ways possible.
While we are sure the segment was done with the purest intentions, we had some concerns over how it was represented.
Given that Riham owned up to previous mistakes, we wanted to highlight something Riham said which we found problematic.
Dear Reham Said,
You might be thinking that this backlash is normal. You always get attacked for your show and for everything else you say, so sometimes you consider this backlash to be part of the job.
Sometimes the backlash makes sense, though. This time you may have to re-evaluate things because your words were too harsh here.
You called overweight people a burden on society and spent the rest of this clip commenting on their health. We need to talk about this, so bear with us.
If we’re comparing ourselves with other nations which recognize extreme obesity as a disability, we’re not in the danger zone at all. Egypt doesn’t see obesity as a disability, so it doesn’t assist obese people through special means, like checks. Logically, there’s no burden there.
That’s one thing. Another is that there was no need at all to mention galabeyas and esdals because they’re actually very free-fitting garbs and don’t highlight a person’s body in any way. And since we’re talking about bodies, we might as well get to another sensitive point here.
You shouldn’t have said that fat women lose their femininity and appeal because, some way or another, they’ll find this clip and when they do, they won’t feel encouraged to lose weight.
They may actually gain more because they may slink off into depression. This is what fatshaming and weight bias do. It makes people think “well, if I am that anyway, then what’s it gonna matter?“. This cannot be your purpose, we’re sure.
Actually, as we go through the clip, we see your point. You’re trying to advocate for weight loss surgery, sponsored by your program, and this is positive change.
We honestly commend you for this because this is an important issue, but sometimes words can harm rather than help. Especially if they jab into what people consider to be their biggest insecurities.
We know from what you said this episode that you’ve been overweight before and you lost the weight. You said this was spurred by you being called names because you were fat, but everyone doesn’t react the same way. What may have pushed you further may set others back because we’re all different.
You could have worded it better, you know. You could have mentioned the lack of awareness and the poor dietary systems most of us follow are the reason we fell into these patterns. That would have been a push in the right direction.
You’ve apologized before, Reham, for realizing that there times when you were wrong and that’s the biggest sign of growth. You can do that again now.