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"Have a couple of Big Mac's for me (co-worker)". "If you stand sideways I cannot see you (neighbor)". Doesn't stop there. Try small boned/short. "Did your Mama wrap you feet as a baby so they wouldn't grow (classmates)". "You have smaller feet than my children (stranger)". You not only have to gain weight to please other people, you need to GROW (feet and height) so just you fit in to some ideal standards. Heard it all myself.
"Wait until you have children/stay home, get older, go through menopause, etc., etc, you TOO will be get fat." Heard that countless times. Really? Well, I am the same 5'1", 100 lbs today at 67 that was in my 20s. Only time I weighed more was when I was pregnant or nursing. My paternal Grandma was 4'10" and weighed 85 lbs. My Dad at 5'8" was 140 lbs. "You're an Amazon woman compared to my Mom", Dad always said to me. Genes?
Vanity sizing, ladies, over decades is why sizes are so much bigger today. My 1974 wedding dress is a size 5/6 and still fits. I am a size 1 or 0, or GIRLS, size today because the sizes over decades have been made BIGGER to accommodate bigger women who can say they are a smaller size. Size 5/6 would fall off me today. Years ago I used to joke that if they kept making clothes bigger and bigger, I would be shopping in the Children's Section by the time I was a Senior. Not funny coming to pass.
If a person is healthy, it does not matter what some chart, or BMI, says is some ideal weight. I will include HEIGHT in this. My Mama was not malnourished during pregnancy (scientific studies) which caused me and mine to be SHORT either; genes and the ethnic background we come from.
My final word. Children. Do not think it is only overweight children that they target in schools. Thin children face it to, especially if they have a healthy appetite and eat a lot.
My daughter was thin, and also a 3 sport athlete. She could eat a lot, but because of her genes, and all her exercise, she did not gain weight.
She was followed by school staff into the bathroom to make sure she was not vomiting up her food to stay so thin. Want to know what that does to a thin child's self-esteem? My daughter came home from school crying over this.
I was called into school to discuss my thin daughter's "problem". She didn't have a problem. OTHERS did. I brought my family photo album in to the meeting. Never had to open it, because they took one look at skinny Mom, and the conversation was all over. My daughter was not BULIMIC. It was her genes!
Having experience this with my own skinny daughter, it also makes me FURIOUS with the "fat shaming" of overweight children in schools. I fully understand how their parents must feel; from the thin opposite side of the coin.
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Both thin-shaming and fat-shaming are equally abhorent - as if either condition threatens another person's well-being. Even when the condition does threaten the ultra-thin or obese person's well-being, shaming does nothing to solve the problem, and if anything makes it worse -- namely by throwing an additional emotional barrier that person must overcome in order to properly address their condition. If there is a problem here, it's (as usual) mainstream society's narrow definitions of "acceptable" person. We wouldn't tolerate a high-profile public figure making derogatory remarks against such people. Why should "We the people" be allowed to do so?
In fact, I fail to see any difference between shunning people due to body shape and the more publically-aware bigotries like racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Antisemitism, etc. And like those bigotries body-shaming is. Having spend 30 of my 47 years in the rural and small city Deep South, I can speak with authority on this subject. Actually the same thing goes for any other difference that our reptilian brainstem targets as "distastefully different", but that's going beyond the scope of this thread. For now, it's enough to say that my rural Deep South background lets me see strong parallels between racism and homophobia on one hand and body-shaming on the other.
Last edited by Phil75230; 09-15-2015 at 04:18 AM..
What's really funny is that it's usually the tubby folks who are making snide comments about the so-called skinny people.
It's there own lame way of trying to tell themselves that they are more fit then they really are. Or closer to the norm. (I'm talking about the overweight guys here.)
And i say 'so-called" skinny people because usually they're not technically underweight. I mean, half the time if you looked-up the ideal weight parameters for a person called skinny--his ideal weight for his or her height--you'd see they fall into the acceptable or even optimal weight guidelines. It's just that America has seen such a crazy increase in obesity over the past three decades that fit people now look skinny. Anybody with a BMI between 22 and 24 (which, BTW, is ideal) looks downright thin sometimes, especially like if he's at a Golden Corral or a Wal-Mart surrounded by the porcine.
I gladly point this out when I get called "toothpick" or "too skinny" by some of my tubby friends. I'm a hair over 6'-1" and weigh about 162-165. Yeah, I look slender, but when I look up my BMI it is spot on in the middle of the Green Zone.
(BTW: BMI deserves its own thread. It is by no means the end-all yardstick or measuring tool for optimal fitness. It is but a rough guideline. And with elite athletes is CAN be and IS often-times flawed. (I can explain how later if somebody wants). The truer measurement of optimal fitness is body-fact percentage!
I've noticed this as well. As someone who was 20 lbs underweight with a sister that was 20 lbs overweight we were the perfect social experiment.
Guess who got made fun of more? I once had a girl say that she would buy me protein shakes if it was a money issue that I was having. Imagine if I went up to an overweight person and said I would buy you a fitness club membership.
The obesity problem in the U.S. has caused people who were formerly teased for being overweight to take their anger out on us thin people. Its just human nature to do unto others what was done to you. I think it is healthier to be thin than overweight, so as long as my doctor says my weight is fine, then I am fine with being thin. Overweight people still have it worse, so I generally don't take their comments and jokes seriously.
The obesity problem in the U.S. has caused people who were formerly teased for being overweight to take their anger out on us thin people. Its just human nature to do unto others what was done to you. I think it is healthier to be thin than overweight, so as long as my doctor says my weight is fine, then I am fine with being thin. Overweight people still have it worse, so I generally don't take their comments and jokes seriously.
It really comes down to BF% rather than lbs. To your point, there is definitely a backlash going on. People need someone to pick on and right now it is still socially acceptable to pick on skinny people. If you pick on an overweight person you are kind of viewed as heartless or worse.
The question becomes when will it be socially unacceptable to pick on skinny people?
It's not all due to the obesity epidemic. Many years ago, as a kid, I was made fun of for being thin. Called toothpick. Embarrassed to wear shorts or a bathing suit.
When I went to college I went out with a boy--once. He never asked me out again so I finally got up the nerve to ask the girl who had fixed us up, if she knew why he didn't ask me out again. The answer: He doesn't like skinny girls.
When I finally found a nice boyfriend, he put me on a diet of nutritional shakes to fatten me up. That was okay as I was glad someone would help me to gain weight. Doctors had never taken the problem seriously; they would just laugh and tell my mother to make me eat more ice cream.
I have managed to keep the weight on, especially as I got older. But still, my best friend who is overweight will say cruel things like, "You will be at risk for osteoporosis--it's better to have more weight on you." This may be true but she is a person who will complain endlessly if someone calls her "short" yet she has no problem calling me "tall" and asking me to reach things for her because she is "short."
It's better not to draw attention to anyone's body shape for whatever reason. I feel very sorry for tall women--I'm only 5'7" but I've had the nasty "too tall" remarks. How horrible it must be for a woman who is really tall!
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