Fatism

When I saw the title of this thread I thought it was going to be about Fate.

I would not want to think that all 'overweight' people have an eating disorder (just as all 'thin' people don't).
However, when we express sympathy with eating disorders, it is almost always those people with anorexia / bulimia, and not those who are overweight.

There are a lot of reasons that people may become overweight, many rooted in childhood. I know many people cannot understand why someone would become more than just a little overweight.

There is a narrative that many kind people try to understand, and which gets lots of publicity, about various addictions, gambling & alcoholism. I hear little sympathy directed at those whose issues result in them becoming overweight.

When I was a health visitor, I dealt with some children who were 'overweight' because of metabolic disorders, kidney disease, some complex syndromes. Some health workers as well as families had difficulty in grasping the reasons for excess weight gain, not realising that it was not simply overeating.

Reading through this thread, many GN’ers are describing themselves as ‘fat’ or ‘large’.

Never having seen any of them in real life, just want to say ‘fat’ is never how I have envisaged them.

My ‘mind’s eye’ is not working very well.

It's definitely a class issue. Mind you lots of things are a class issue in the UK.

Bear Grylls also drank his own wee in one episode

I would prefer to be lost in a jungle with a fat person, and not just because they’d take longer to eat. Compare these 2 people who have both appeared in ‘survival skills’ type programmes.

Ray Mears - chubby, makes his own comfy bivouac, camp fire, fishing equipment, etc. Dines out on trout that he caught himself, cooked with herbs that he picked.

Bear Ghrylls - fit, ripped, picked up by helicopter at the end of the day and transported back to a 4-star hotel. He’s stuffed if that helicopter doesn’t arrive!

This is an interesting article here

The fat = lazy thing is so lazy too, isn't it?

The poll which resulted in the extract quoted about was of more than 1,800 women ages 18 to 40. Women are judging one another - practising misogyny against one another.

As a fat person, I think it's assumed I'll be lazy, whereas I inevitably get a reputation at work for being a dedicated, hard worker. Happens everywhere I work.

I do worry that as I age, fat AND old, I'll be seen as being less relevant as a teaher by my students, but it hasn't happened yet.

I do think being fat is perceived as a 'common' or lower class thing tho. TBH, as long as it doesn't affect my work or my ability to get work, I don't care.

All of it is steeped in misogyny

Interesting article here:

www.glamour.com/story/weight-stereotyping-the-secret-way-people-are-judging-you-based-on-your-body-glamour-june-2012

Extract:

... respondents were six times more likely to label an anonymous overweight woman as "slow" than they were to use that word for a thin woman—and about 10 times more likely to assume she was "sloppy" or "lazy." Slim women, in contrast, were eight times as likely to be seen as "conceited," four times as likely to be viewed as "vain," and twice as likely to be presumed "bitchy." Perhaps most striking, women of all weights hold these stereotypes: Plus-size respondents judged other plus-size women as "sloppy," and skinny types pegged their thin peers as "mean." In other words, no matter what size you are personally, you've internalized these assumptions.

My mother in law was a lovely lady but she was always slim and proud of wearing a bikini in her 50’s 60’s and was rather scathing about anybody who was overweight.

I was I dare say a plumpish child (although when I look at photos I don’t think I was ) my brothers called me fatty, and my mother let them. “It’s only teasing”

I’m a size 12 and still a bit paranoid about looking fat and hate my legs etc.

As a fat person myself, I hope that my friends think I am kind and nice regardless of my weight!

I had a little smile though when I read the OP, my mum lives in a care home for people with dementia and I often cringe with embarrassment when she comments on the appearance of the carers, like a toddler would, saying things like “ look at the thighs on her” or “ she’s got a big bum hasn’t she”. Interestingly she doesn’t comment about my weight, even though I’m not sure that she knows who I am anymore, I think she must at least like me to keep quiet!

I guess the carers in such care homes must get used to comments like this.

How times have changed! When I was a child, large people were always spoken off as kind, jolly, nice, good-hearted. You never heard "a stout body" as the generously proportioned were called in Scotland called sour, mean or other derogatory adjectives unless they quite definitely had shown these tendencies.

Lots of children's books had a character who was stout, elderly and jolly, in the American ones she was usually black as well!

We are conditioned to think that slim people are better than fat people. Overweight implies that a person is thick, lazy and greedy and none to fussy about their personal hygiene. They are either on benefits, zero hour contracts or minimum wage employment, never a top job. They are an easy target for cruel remarks with many thinking fat people only have themselves to blame for any abuse. The fashion industry hasn't helped with their stick thin models entrenching the belief in young people's minds that slim is the only way to be. We should be embracing all shapes and sizes but sadly, the world isn't like that.

I thought the cliche about larger people was that they were all jolly and pleasant? I speak as a nippy larger lady.

Why would a ‘large person’ be any less kind or pleasant than a skinny Lizzie? People have some weird ideas?

Says more about the small minded person doesn’t it

It’s awful. I do indeed have lots of thoughts, which I will gather, and return,
This has the makings of a zinger of a thread, WhiteRabbit