Personal Trainer Tries to Body-Shame Bride-to-Be

He said her wedding pics will be around for centuries
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 29, 2017 9:30 AM CDT
Updated Sep 2, 2017 5:14 PM CDT

Cassie Young is used to strangers reaching out to her on social media. The 31-year-old is a digital director at the nationally syndicated radio program The Bert Show in Chicago, and she's got more than 14,000 followers on Twitter alone. But when a personal trainer offered to whip her into shape after she announced her engagement to her boyfriend of nearly a decade, he became so persistent—and their chat so emotional—that she posted their exchange on Facebook, where it went viral. "If you think of life as a 'game' with being skinny as how you 'win,' this guy is offering to play by the rules and get you there," she writes. "I'm telling you the game is BOGUS. You don't need the game. I reject the game. I REFUSE TO PLAY."

Young tells Yahoo that, since she was first teased about her size in 5th grade, it's taken years and many yo-yo diets to love the body she has. But the trainer—whom she won't name, saying that "no one should be vilified because they're ignorant"—told her that if she didn't hire him she should hire someone else because "those pictures last centuries" and her children's children would see what she looks like, per Mashable. "This guy tried to undo the work I’ve done and plant a seed of doubt in my head during my engagement," she says. She replied to him, "I'll look my best because I'll be so happy I get to marry the man I love." She says the positive comments she's received from readers mean a lot, and that life is "too short to be spent worrying about a belly roll." (People recently tweeted memories of the first time they were body-shamed.)

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