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Feeling Fat Emoji: Facebook Changes ‘Feeling Fat’ To ‘Feeling Stuffed’ After Petition

By Effie Orfanides
Published on: 05:32 PST, Mar 11, 2015

The feeling fat emoji has been replaced by Facebook after thousands of people signed a petition online. According to the Christian Science Monitor, over 16,000 people signed the petition which asked for Facebook to change the phrase since “fat” is technically not a feeling. Facebook has since changed the emoji to “feeling stuffed,” which seems to sit better with more people.

“We’ve heard from our community that listing ‘feeling fat’ as an option for status updates could reinforce negative body image, particularly for people struggling with eating disorders. So we’re going to remove ‘feeling fat’ from the list of options,” said Facebook spokesperson MoMo Zhou in a statement.

The feeling fat emoji is something that many people did not have a problem with, as saying “I feel fat” after eating a large meal, or after spending the day in bed. And while that might be “funny” or “common,” it’s actually offensive to some people who are actually overweight. This was pretty much the point of the petition.

“I always had this idea of ‘I’m fat,’ ‘I feel fat,’ but when I was saying that, that wasn’t actually how I was feeling. I was feeling angry at myself and like I wasn’t good enough, but I simplified it to ‘I feel fat.’ Through therapy, I was able to work through it, and now I feel like, ‘Wow I never felt fat. I felt like I wasn’t good enough,'” explained Catherine Weingarten, one of the ambassadors for the Change.org petition.

The feeling fat emoji had a “chubby” face and a double chin according to USA Today. To some, this conveyed a message of negative body image, and that message was heard loud and clear by Facebook. It only took about a month to get things changed.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, there was another problem with emojis just last month, but this time, it was involving the new emojis for smartphones. The next iOS update will have “racially diverse” icons which will include faces and body parts shaded in different colors. Well, one of those emojis is yellow, which caused quite an uproar.

“An outward shade of yellow chosen for Asian faces reportedly ‘bordered’ on the line of racism to some on social media,” reports the Inquisitr. So far, Apple has not announced any change to their new emoji lineup.

Would you find either the “fat” emoji or the “yellow” emoji offensive? Sound off in the comments below.

[Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images]

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