Everyone Is Very Angry At Facebook For 'Feeling Fat'

A new Petition urges Facebook to remove the status update "Feeling Fat."

Not too long ago we were applauding Facebook for their newly-introduced Legacy feature, which thoughtfully allowed users to select someone to curate our social media presence after we've died.

Their latest update? Not so thoughtful.

When you now update your status, you can post an emoticon that fully explains the depths of your feeling, whether it be Blessed, Cold, Nostalgic, Heartbroken, or most existentially terrifying of all, Incomplete.

Also: Fat. The red-cheeked emoticon at the top of this article indicates how precisely Facebook decided to visually represent such a feeling.

The only problem is, as global body image advocacy group Endangered Bodies’ insist via this petition, “Fat is not a feeling.” (As of this writing, there are now more than 15,000 signatures requesting the emoticon be removed.)

The petition’s creator, Catherine Weingarten, expressed to Time the reason for her battle against Facebook’s ‘Fat’ emoticon.

“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.'

“When people see that on Facebook, I want them to realize that it’s not just a light, cute sort of thing for everyone.”

At least for now, Facebook isn’t budging. They made the following statement to PEOPLE:

“People use Facebook to share their feelings with friends and support each other… One option we give people to express themselves is to add a feeling to their posts. You can choose from over 100 feelings we offer based on people’s input or create your own.”

It's a shame to see Facebook dance around a fair argument like Weingarten's. A good thing then that another one of those feelings you can choose is Disappointed.