I was recently looking at photos from a film premiere that pop singer Rihanna attended; loving clothes as much as I do, I have a slight obsession with poring over red carpet photos and finding out who wore what.

Well, to cut a long story short, everyone’s favourite Bajan beauty was wearing a short, pink, frilly Giambattista Valli Couture dress which, while not to my particular liking, looked really pretty on her and could have served as a particularly stimulating conversation piece.

Ironically, it was not the dress itself which had everyone talking but as I glanced over to the comments section (which is an evil no one should ever wish upon themselves), I realised that people were not discussing the dress itself but were instead dedicating whole paragraphs to the fact that Rihanna looked fatter than usual.

Indeed, everywhere you go, whether it’s on billboards, adverts, social media and everything in between, marketing executives, Hollywood moguls and your average Plain Jane seem to have decided that the measure of someone’s worth isn’t calculated in how bright, kind, witty or generous they are but in how many burgers they can afford to eat before officially becoming fat.

The measure of someone’s worth isn’t calculated in how bright, kind, witty or generous they are but in how many burgers they can afford to eat before officially becoming fat

Just last week someone approached me and after pointedly staring at my belly casually and shamelessly asked me if I was planning on losing any weight any time soon. You can imagine how that went down for them.

Ladies and gents, listen up: it is not okay for anyone to make comments about how fat or how thin someone is, not on the internet and certainly not in real life. Not only do you have no idea what that person is going through but to be honest, I’m not sure why people think their opinion matters.

Of course, there will be the usual ranters and ravers that cite health concerns as the reason they have decided to carry someone else’s cross but very often, it’s not really about that (and a bigger person is not automatically unhealthier than a thin person either).

It really and truly all boils down to thinking before you speak. When we were young, my mother always used to tell us that, unless you have something nice to say, you probably shouldn’t say anything at all.

However, from all the unwanted feedback I keep getting, it would seem that she was the only one who was trying not to raise rude children. An opinion is not a hot potato: just because you have it, it doesn’t mean that you should pass it on. At the end of the day, fat shaming doesn’t do anything but show how limited you must be to think that the most another person can offer the world is their weight.