Why can’t the internet let fat people be happy?
Leave the Plus Size Park Hoppers alone
It’s odd how the Instagram algorithm can intuit your desires.
One night last week, while tired and recovering from illness, I found myself scrolling through reels. I was in a state of mindless consumption. I’d watch a few seconds of one video, flick up, finish another, skip two more on sight, and so forth, until I’d lost track of time.
Instagram, meanwhile, was unpuzzling me like I was a Rubik’s cube.
Eventually the algorithm worked out that I was hungry. Very, very hungry. My appetite had returned with sudden ferocity, and my fridge was empty.
And what better for this very human state of unsatisfied calorific yearning, than five fat women cataloguing every meal they’d eaten at Disney World that day.
Instagram was so, so right.
God, what they ate mirrored my heart’s innermost desires. Pink donuts the size of your face, saucy enchiladas, gooey mac and cheese, apple pies dolloped in cream and more. The video was over too quickly, so I went to their profile.
They say it’s important to have a niche, if you want to find an audience online. Stephanie, Katie, Deanna, Ashley and Sarah have certainly done that. They post under a collective called ‘The Plus Size Park Hoppers’, and their videos help very large people plan theme park visits. They’ll talk about mobility scooter hire, what rollercoasters they can and cannot fit in, and what the seating is like in various restaurants, and whether it’s sturdy.
On occasion, they’ll also record what they ate in a day, and give each meal a rating.
These food videos I consumed with reckless abandon until my sister, Tamara, texted me, asked what I was doing, and I told her honestly. There was a long pause. I watched the three dots appear, then disappear, an then appear again.
Eventually she sent a message that just said: “Lol Stephanie”.
Then a little later: “That’s a bit weird. How many of these have you watched? And for how long?”
I didn’t like Tamara’s line of questioning, and chose not to reply – but she did snap me out of my fugue state. I had been, in a sense, edging myself on videos of other people eating donuts, but never getting the release of eating a donut myself. Is this how men feel after a trip to a strip club, I wondered?
I checked the fridge, was disappointed once again, went to bed, and had cake-y dreams.
Morning brought renewed energy, and a trip down the hill to get a hearty breakfast. With the food version of post-nut clarity, I returned to the page of the Plus Size Park Hoppers Instagram to see what witchcraft I had fallen victim to.
My ravenous hunger sated, I could watch their videos without sinking back into the tar pit which had swallowed me the night before. But even then, there was something undeniably hypnotic about these chirpy women, dressed in bright colours. They were laughing and upbeat, five friends with real chemistry unashamedly enjoying a day at a theme park.
And boy oh boy did people fucking hate them.
You would think they were running an account called: ‘Why 9/11 Was a Good Thing’, or ‘Let’s Kill More Dogs!’.
On one video, the girls sit in a test seat for a rollercoaster at Universal Studios, to demonstrate whether the harness will fit them. In this case, it doesn’t. The narrator says they’re all ‘kind of disappointed’. That’s it. They do not complain, they do not ask for further accommodations, there is no moralising about accessibility for fat people. It is a upbeat, but bland.
The comments are unhinged.
“Have you tried the rides at planet fitness”
“It’s not Disney’s job to accommodate your poor life choices”
“Lose the weight. Problem solved”
“Just end it forever”
“We need to stop normalising obesity”
This is just a small cross-section of mean comments on one video. Grains of sand on a beach that stretches past the horizon. It’s odd that in 2025, one of the most transgressive things a person can be is a fat, happy woman on the internet.
I’d hoped that things had improved a bit since I was a fat person, about 20 years and 20 kilos ago. Clearly that is not the case.
With hindsight, being a fat teenager was both a good and a bad thing. Good, because it forced me to develop a personality. If you’re going to be fat, you have to be either funny or interesting. Bad, because boys were mean, and I was led to believe there was nothing worse than being overweight. Truly no greater sin a woman – who exists entirely for the visual pleasure of men – could commit.
There are dozens of little vignettes from this time. Like when Liam called me a tank during school assembly, or Josh (who himself had the physique of an overstuffed beanbag) spat that I was a ‘fucking fatty’, or the Italian exchange student who said that touching my back was like dipping his fingers into butter. This last one was cruel, but had an undeniably exotic European flair. He delivered the Ferrari of insults.
Not that it was all misery, of course. I mostly remember school fondly. I had plenty of friends and was, despite everything, very outgoing. But a part of me was constantly bracing for cruelty, waiting for a verbal blow to land.
Then one day I stopped drinking coke and eating so many cakes. The weight fell off me. By the time I went to university, I had gone from being a size 18, to a size 10. I had changed my shape, and the world seemed to have also been reformed.
The changes are too many to list here. But most striking was how much nicer people suddenly became. Strangers, shop assistants, men in pubs, family friends. A persistent fog of hostility had slowly lifted.
It was a strange experience. The fundamental elements of what made me, me hadn’t changed, but my life was noticeably easier. Who’d have thought these silly meat sacks would be so important? Of course some level of judgement is inevitable – we can't grasp the substance of someone’s character until we’ve seen their outer wrappings. But the difference in how the world treats fat people is shocking. You can’t fully know it until you’ve lived it.
But I believe there is a place where we can bypass these prejudices and immediately see a person’s gooey inner core. That place is literally any comment section on the internet. The way people behave when they think there are no consequences is a wonderful insight into a person’s soul. And if you write needlessly cruel things on videos made by fat women who are merely existing in the world, you are a jerk.
Yes. A big, mean jerk, and I wish you nothing but ill.
And to the Plus Size Park Hoppers? Sometimes just being happy is a radical act. Ignore the fuckwits and don’t change a thing.
The Plus Size Park Hoppers are a threat, but not for the reasons trolls think. They’re not ruining society. They’re ruining the illusion that joy belongs only to the thin, the filtered, and the fearful.
A fat woman laughing at Disney World is more dangerous to the patriarchy than a hundred angry tweets. She’s not selling shame. She’s not asking permission. She’s just living. And apparently, that’s too much for the fragile egos hiding behind anonymous usernames and gym memes.
This isn’t about health. It never was. It’s about control. The internet doesn't melt down because someone ate a donut. It melts down because someone enjoyed it without begging for forgiveness.
So to the Park Hoppers: keep hopping, keep filming, keep rating every bite like it's a sacred rite. You are not the problem. You are the mirror.
Love this week's insights Stephanie. And also can't stop laughing at this: "I had been, in a sense, edging myself on videos of other people eating donuts, but never getting the release of eating a donut myself. Is this how men feel after a trip to a strip club, I wondered?