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When I was with my exSO, we could both stand to lose a few pounds - though I loved him just the way he was. I've been struggling with joint problems over the last two years and when he would suggest a walk, I wasn't up to it. (When it started, I didn't have health insurance, so I was in pain a lot - and had to stand on my feet for 8 - 12 hours a day.) He started walking and lost 60 pounds. Then, he started getting attention from co-workers, which led to staying out late and the demise of our relationship. Now, I wonder if that was one of the nails in the coffin - that I wasn't walking with him (I was boring), that I didn't lose weight with him - or that he didn't understand what it's like to be in pain.
I had a co-worker who was significantly overweight. Our boss (male) and a very thin co-worker (female) would make fun of her weight when she wasn't around. She was a lot heavier than I, but I often wondered if they made fun of me when I wasn't around.
Making fun of a person with a weight problem shows just how ignorant a person can be. There is no way to know if that person has health issues that caused the weight problem. Metabolic issues, medications, and depression are just a few reasons people can put on weight.
I think being significantly overweight is bearable in your youngers years. It's when you get older your body really starts to feel it even doing simple chores around the house.
Good for the girl in the article to find a bf who accepts her. But hopefully he pushes her to choose a healthier lifestyle and drop a few more pounds.
Back when I was in Grade 6 the doctor was going to prescribe me high blood pressure pills because I was a chubby kid who had the most horrible diet. Thank god I ate better and dropped some weight. If I continued to eat like I did when I was a kid and never exercised, I would have died probably in my early thirties, maybe even late twenties.
North America is way too accepting of being overweight. There should never be fat acceptance.
North America is way too accepting of being overweight. There should never be fat acceptance.
As far as I understand things, fat acceptance isn't about encouraging people to be overweight, it's more about restoring one's self-esteem and moving toward people not being actively cruel and nasty toward people based on their weight.
There's a definite difference there, not that many people believe in encouraging people to gain more weight. The examples cited here ("feeding," for example) are pretty extreme cases and are in the minority.
Honestly, I would probably think something similar to "he can do better than her" if I saw them in public but I'd think the same thing if the roles were reversed(more likely I'd be thinking "He must be rich" in that case). It's just years of social conditioning I guess. The fact that she was heavy when they began the relationship is notable. I'm sure lots of heavy girls are holding him up as such a "wonderful" guy for dating her and simultaneously thinking they can realistically land a good-looking, in-shape guy like him. That's not very likely to happen. Dating a fat person when you yourself aren't fat doesn't make you a hero and I doubt he feels that way. If I were him I might be a little embarrassed by this blog.
Imagine the response if an overweight guy wrote a blog titled "I'm fat but my girlfriend is hot." Think that would go over well?
It's a little different when a couple starts off at a similar size and one gains a substantial amount of weight. Gaining a lot of weight can do all sorts of things to a person, physically and mentally. People can become extremely self conscious and insecure and drive the other partner away and then accuse them of abandoning them simply because they're overweight. And is it really fair to judge the "normal" sized person harshly even if they are no longer physically attracted to their partner due to the weight gain? Unless there's an underlying medical cause, my partner gaining a substantial amount of weight would signal to me that she just doesn't care anymore. It's not difficult to maintain a reasonable weight and it's better for both partners.
When I was with my exSO, we could both stand to lose a few pounds - though I loved him just the way he was. He started walking and lost 60 pounds.
Are you SERIOUS? How can you go on saying that he needed to lose a *few* pounds, and then say that he lost 60 lbs and started getting attention? Apparently that was MORE than just a few pounds (That goes for you too).
Imagine the response if an overweight guy wrote a blog titled "I'm fat but my girlfriend is hot." Think that would go over well?
Well, I think the point is that in this regard, it is somewhat a sexist issue. Generally, when a fat man is seen with a thin woman, people automatically tend to subconsciously "forgive" the man his fatness and assume that he "must have something else going for him" -- money, a sense of humor, a great attitude, mad sexual skills, a "very loving heart" or what-have-you.
However, when a fat woman is seen with a thin man, I think it's way more rare for anyone to think "Oh, she must have something else going for her." Instead the automatic, almost knee-jerk reaction is to stare in disbelief, laugh at the couple and think things along the lines of "he must not be able to get anything better" or "he must have issues and be a chubby chaser" and "what's wrong with that guy that he likes fatties?"
So I think that was part of the point of the article. She even pointed out that people generally intimate that she's lucky to have found a boyfriend. Not this boyfriend. A boyfriend. Any boyfriend.
^ Also, this attitude of forgiveness of overweight in men (at least up to a point) is part of why more men than women in the U.S. are overweight, and far more men than women are overweight in some other countries (the UK, for example).
So yeah, when we say it's all about health, etc., no, it's not 100% about health. Some of it is simply our outrage that "our" women refuse to be beautiful in this particular way; it's almost seen as an affront to some people.
Kinda bizarre but I guess it is what it is. I'm not trying to change the world, just interpreting the girl's motives in writing the piece.
Overweight absolutely is a health issue, no doubt about that. But I don't think this is what this article is getting at. It was looking at the emotional/social side of the coin.
Also, not to get all racial in here, but the problem I see in a lot of these discussions is that they assume every guy is a white dude. By and large, black and Latino guys are much more accepting of heavier women.
And furthermore, the blanket "overweight" term is very vague. Differences in body type/shape mean that individual women can look very different when they're heavy.
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