It cannot be more cruel. Followers of football, or rather they should be called bullies and heralds of fatphobia, have managed to get Declan Rice – one of Arsenal’s stars – out of the fire by attacking him where it hurts the most. These inquisitors of the networks who have taken him with Rice do not mess with him for his play on the football field, which would be normal as long as it does not border on insult. In this case, the player is attacked by insulting the one he loves the most: his wife and mother of his son, Lauren Fryer.
Because? Because of the young woman’s weight. So simple and sad. The harassment has reached unbearable extremes, to the point that the player has had to show his face, on the networks themselves, to beg them to leave his wife alone. Fryer, meanwhile, has deleted all of her Instagram photos in a desperate attempt to shut down the cruel public comments about her physical appearance.
This is a clear case of fatophobia, the discrimination and stigmatization that thousands of people suffer every day because of their obesity or overweight. And with social networks, everything is magnified. It is the perfect scaffold to also insult, anonymously, those who do not fit into a specific physique.
What is innovative about Rice is that, in order to attack the footballer, a campaign of fat-phobic harassment has been launched against someone very close to him, as in this case is the wife of the English international, a signing that has cost to Arsenal 120 million euros.
The rivals of the team and also the ultras with the same colors as the player have also tried to be witty (as if that excuses them) with the harassment. Is it necessary to criticize the footballer’s game? Well, what better formula is there, these cruel internet users have thought, than to criticize him with a simile between his wife’s body and what happens in the field. Phrases such as “you must have very low standards” or “I could do better” convey a double meaning. To criticize him for what happens on the field, Rice is told that his game is at the level of the physical appearance of the person with whom he shares life. You can’t, yes, be more cruel.
The player has exploded and wanted to conclude the controversy with the publication of this message: “My wife is the love of my life and there is no one better for me”. We’ll see if he succeeds, because on the other side – on the side of the bullies – it’s clear that empathy shines through its absence.
Another stereotype flourishes in this story, also widely used on social networks, which links football stars with supermodels. Lauren Fryer, who has been sharing her life with Rice for eight years, is out of this pattern, which would give wings to these fat-phobes to mess with the young woman because of her physical appearance.
Marian del Álamo, psychologist and expert in eating disorders, confirms that social networks are, with these fat-phobic messages, the most faithful proof “of the survival in this society of a normative pattern of the body”. Very specific canons have been set and anyone who deviates from this slim figure is subject to criticism. “The problem should never be attributed to people who do not fit into the pattern; the one who is sick and not well is the one who criticizes these bodies”, this psychologist makes it clear.
