{"id":103289,"date":"2016-08-10T11:30:48","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T19:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=103289"},"modified":"2016-08-10T11:34:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T19:34:32","slug":"wp-a-179-pound-ethiopian-male-olympic-swimmer-is-being-body-shamed-on-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=103289","title":{"rendered":"WP: A 179-pound Ethiopian male Olympic swimmer is being body shamed on the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Poor dear.<\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/early-lead\/wp\/2016\/08\/10\/an-olympic-swimmer-with-a-dad-bod-is-being-body-shamed\/?hpid=hp_hp-banner-low_swimmer-245pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory\">Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/download-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/download-1.jpg\" alt=\"download\" width=\"193\" height=\"261\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-103293\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>People are being downright unkind to an Ethiopian swimmer, body-shaming him for having what, in one of the more charitable comments, is called a dad bod.<\/p>\n<p>Robel Kiros Habte competed in the men\u2019s 100-meter freestyle heats on Tuesday and finished last in the three-swimmer heat.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">In yesterday&#8217;s 100m freestyle prelims, Ethiopia&#8217;s Robel Habte swam so slow he slipped off the screen <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NSvoeio2kL\">pic.twitter.com\/NSvoeio2kL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/darrenrovell\/status\/763364032468451328\">August 10, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\" src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Overall, he finished last among the 59 competitors in the eight heats with a time of 1 minute 4.95 seconds. Habte confessed that his personal best was 59.08 seconds; Australia\u2019s Kyle Chalmers won his heat with a time of 47.9 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>Ecadf, an Ethiopian news site, called him \u201cout of shape.\u201d Others coldly called him \u201cRobel the Whale.\u201d Habte is 5 feet 9 and weighs 179 pounds. Chalmers, for instance, is 6-4 and weighs 194.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">First cheer at the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Rio2016?src=hash\">#Rio2016<\/a> pool goes to Ethiopia&#39;s Robel Habte. Not quite Eric the Eel but close. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/JlByyBm0O2\">pic.twitter.com\/JlByyBm0O2<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jai Bednall (@jaibednall) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jaibednall\/status\/763044571806896129\">August 9, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>(Eric \u201cthe Eel\u201d Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea completed the 100-meter freestyle in 1:52.72 during the Sydney Games.)<\/p>\n<p>And still others noted that Habte is the, ahem, son of the president of the country\u2019s swimming federation.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Ethiopia?src=hash\">#Ethiopia<\/a> &#39;s  <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/RobelHabte?src=hash\">#RobelHabte<\/a>. 59th place at <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Rio2016?src=hash\">#Rio2016<\/a> . With him is the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ETH?src=hash\">#ETH<\/a> swim federation president who&#39;s HIS DAD. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kLLzLA1dAS\">pic.twitter.com\/kLLzLA1dAS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Zecharias Zelalem (@ZekuZelalem) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ZekuZelalem\/status\/763243673530269696\">August 10, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Whatever brought him to Rio, the 24-year-old college student was a crowd favorite and was pretty happy just to be there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted to do something different for my country, that\u2019s why I chose swimming,\u201d he told Reuters. \u201cEverybody, every day you wake up in Ethiopia, you run. Not swimming. But I didn\u2019t want to run, I wanted to be a swimmer. It didn\u2019t matter where I finished.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poor dear. Washington Post: People are being downright unkind to an Ethiopian swimmer, body-shaming him for having what, in one of the more charitable comments, is called a dad bod. Robel Kiros Habte competed in the men\u2019s 100-meter freestyle heats &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=103289\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29633],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethiopia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103289"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103297,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103289\/revisions\/103297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}