Megyn Kelly Faces Major Backlash After Claiming People Want to Be Fat-Shamed

Big surprise: Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor known for asking black people if they’d ever called someone a “cracker,” and being unable to fathom Santa being anything but a white man, has said something stupid again.

During a segment on her new MSBNC morning talk show, Megyn Kelly Today, Kelly invited fitness blogger Maria Kang to speak about how she keeps fit with three young kids and a full-time job. Kang has been accused of fat-shaming, after she posed for a 2013 photo posted on her Instagram along with her three children, aged three, two, and eight months. Above her toned body were the words: “What’s your excuse?” The photo received major backlash at the time for fat-shaming other mothers. She was actually on Kelly’s show to speak about how she’s now “taking a softer approach to fitness and wants to inspire other moms to work out,” BuzzFeed noted.

But Kelly was into the whole fat-shaming thing. She told Kang that she should seriously consider “parlay[ing] the shaming thing into a professional business."

“Some of us want to be shamed,” Kelly said. “When I was in law school, I was gaining weight, I said to my stepfather, 'If you see me going into that kitchen one more time, you say, 'Where you going, fat ass?’ And it works!”

Many people immediately jumped on Kelly for her comments. While it’s true that everyone has different tactics for staying fit, it’s also true that being healthy is a different journey for everyone, and shaming others into not eating specific things or losing weight is an unhealthy act by itself. That Kelly herself would ask to be shamed into being skinnier—and by a family member, of all people—illustrates the cruel ways society controls women through their body shape, only validating those who can manage to conform to an exceptional standard. But the fact that Kelly would admit it on national television to millions of viewers who could take what she's saying as advice? All I can say is look out for the inevitable apology soon enough. And, hey, at least she’s not dancing anymore.