Article - I Found Out What The World Thinks Of Fat People
UrbanLotus
Posts: 1,163 Member
This article was posted on the main boards, I want to see what yall think of it? Especially the romantic aspects...I have to confess, this has always been a worry in the back of my mind - is being overweight why I'm still single? I get hit on quite a bit and seems like men are always willing to get involved with me physically, but relationships are MUCH harder to come by. I would like to think that indicates that I'm attractive to men - so my weight isn't the problem...but is it a problem where commitment is concerned? I haven't been anywhere near as big as the woman in the article (I've been a size 14 at my largest, most of my life was 20-40 lbs overweight; now I have about 50 more to lose) but this is really making me depressed 
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"I come from a small-ish town in Oklahoma where we’ve never met a vegetable we couldn’t fry and the only thing more super-sized than our portions are the huge church complexes that alternate with fast-food restaurants along our roads.
So it maybe isn’t such a big surprise that by the time I graduated from high school, I weighed 260 pounds. My prom dress was a size 24, and my mother had to help me zip it up, a five-minute ordeal during which we grunted and cursed at one another. My aunt had to custom-make my graduation gown, a huge white tent in which I resembled the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Still, I left for college in New York City feeling relatively confident. After all, I wasn’t just fat. I was also stylish, managing to alter and combine pieces in a way where they overcame their origins as shapeless sacks designed by people with the gall to decorate plus-size garments with ice-cream cones and slices of pizza. And I was hilarious, *****y and sexually brash, defense mechanisms mastered by fat women and gay men everywhere.
I wasn’t immune — hurtful things would happen on occasion. Groups of rowdy teenagers sometimes yelled insults at me from car windows. I gave my phone number to a nice guy, only to find out when he called that he had a fetish for overweight women, shamelessly telling me that he likes “something to grab onto” during sex. Or someone would approach me out of nowhere on the street and tell me not to worry about how I look; someday — when I’m ready — I’ll lose the weight. And of course, I compared myself endlessly to the impossibly thin women in magazines, just like the average-weight women I knew, to whom I also, by the way, compared myself.
Despite these blows to your self-esteem, for the most part nobody close to you really tells you to your face what they think about your weight. As a result, a fat girl’s worldview is missing vital pieces of information. When you don’t get invited on your friends’ man-catching all-girl outings, or when men who enjoy sleeping with you over and over again fail to want to date you, you can’t quite comprehend that all this is really caused by the way you look.
But then, the summer before my junior year of college, something changed. I made a promise to myself to diet just for one summer, and for the first time I saw results. On a low-carb plan, I started melting away, shrinking inwards. I began to grow collarbones and hipbones, sprouting bony, sharp spots all over my body. By the end of the summer, I was 50 pounds lighter, and within a year I was down to 160 pounds on my 5’11″ frame, a solid size 10.
It’s been six years now that I’ve maintained that weight loss, and it is far and away the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Not because I’m healthier and will probably live longer, but because I now reap the benefits of a society set up to punish fat people for the unforgivable crime of eating too much.
I hear the fat jokes right out loud now, instead of just a whispering breeze brushing past my ear. Men who used to let the door swing shut in my face now hold it open for me politely and look me up and down as I step past. My own boyfriend, a man I began dating a few months after reaching my goal weight, sees the picture on my driver’s license and admits he probably wouldn’t have gone out with me when I looked like that. I appreciate his honesty. It’s better than the good-intentioned people who gush upon seeing the new me, “You’re so pretty now!” before stammeringly adding, “Not that you weren’t, uh, pretty before.”
Finding yourself suddenly thin after a lifetime of being fat is a bit like stepping into that “Saturday Night Live” sketch where Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white guy and discovers that white people act completely differently when there are no black people around. With no outward sign of my former body type, I became a renegade spy for Team F.A.T.
Of course, I didn’t discover that thin people drink cocktails and dance when fat people get off the bus. But when I lost weight, I was rewarded with membership in a club I never knew existed, where the benefits included better treatment, greater professional success and, above all, a new status as qualified participant in the social world including romantic relationships.
Of course, I lost weight to reap these benefits. But it doesn’t stop me from being angry that I had to lose weight to reap these benefits. Of those who are nice to me now, who would have been rude to me before? Which ones made the cruel jokes? Who can be trusted?
As the years pass, it is easy to forget. I have even, on a few occasions, found myself looking at an overweight person with faint disdain, forgetting those years I struggled with the very same issue. I hope never to gain back the weight I lost. But I have seen another side of people that I cannot forget. And with any luck, I never will.
I hope I always stay fat on the inside."
http://www.thefrisky.com/2010-08-09/girl-talk-i-lost-100-pounds-and-found-out-what-the-world-thinks-of-fat/
."I come from a small-ish town in Oklahoma where we’ve never met a vegetable we couldn’t fry and the only thing more super-sized than our portions are the huge church complexes that alternate with fast-food restaurants along our roads.
So it maybe isn’t such a big surprise that by the time I graduated from high school, I weighed 260 pounds. My prom dress was a size 24, and my mother had to help me zip it up, a five-minute ordeal during which we grunted and cursed at one another. My aunt had to custom-make my graduation gown, a huge white tent in which I resembled the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Still, I left for college in New York City feeling relatively confident. After all, I wasn’t just fat. I was also stylish, managing to alter and combine pieces in a way where they overcame their origins as shapeless sacks designed by people with the gall to decorate plus-size garments with ice-cream cones and slices of pizza. And I was hilarious, *****y and sexually brash, defense mechanisms mastered by fat women and gay men everywhere.
I wasn’t immune — hurtful things would happen on occasion. Groups of rowdy teenagers sometimes yelled insults at me from car windows. I gave my phone number to a nice guy, only to find out when he called that he had a fetish for overweight women, shamelessly telling me that he likes “something to grab onto” during sex. Or someone would approach me out of nowhere on the street and tell me not to worry about how I look; someday — when I’m ready — I’ll lose the weight. And of course, I compared myself endlessly to the impossibly thin women in magazines, just like the average-weight women I knew, to whom I also, by the way, compared myself.
Despite these blows to your self-esteem, for the most part nobody close to you really tells you to your face what they think about your weight. As a result, a fat girl’s worldview is missing vital pieces of information. When you don’t get invited on your friends’ man-catching all-girl outings, or when men who enjoy sleeping with you over and over again fail to want to date you, you can’t quite comprehend that all this is really caused by the way you look.
But then, the summer before my junior year of college, something changed. I made a promise to myself to diet just for one summer, and for the first time I saw results. On a low-carb plan, I started melting away, shrinking inwards. I began to grow collarbones and hipbones, sprouting bony, sharp spots all over my body. By the end of the summer, I was 50 pounds lighter, and within a year I was down to 160 pounds on my 5’11″ frame, a solid size 10.
It’s been six years now that I’ve maintained that weight loss, and it is far and away the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Not because I’m healthier and will probably live longer, but because I now reap the benefits of a society set up to punish fat people for the unforgivable crime of eating too much.
I hear the fat jokes right out loud now, instead of just a whispering breeze brushing past my ear. Men who used to let the door swing shut in my face now hold it open for me politely and look me up and down as I step past. My own boyfriend, a man I began dating a few months after reaching my goal weight, sees the picture on my driver’s license and admits he probably wouldn’t have gone out with me when I looked like that. I appreciate his honesty. It’s better than the good-intentioned people who gush upon seeing the new me, “You’re so pretty now!” before stammeringly adding, “Not that you weren’t, uh, pretty before.”
Finding yourself suddenly thin after a lifetime of being fat is a bit like stepping into that “Saturday Night Live” sketch where Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white guy and discovers that white people act completely differently when there are no black people around. With no outward sign of my former body type, I became a renegade spy for Team F.A.T.
Of course, I didn’t discover that thin people drink cocktails and dance when fat people get off the bus. But when I lost weight, I was rewarded with membership in a club I never knew existed, where the benefits included better treatment, greater professional success and, above all, a new status as qualified participant in the social world including romantic relationships.
Of course, I lost weight to reap these benefits. But it doesn’t stop me from being angry that I had to lose weight to reap these benefits. Of those who are nice to me now, who would have been rude to me before? Which ones made the cruel jokes? Who can be trusted?
As the years pass, it is easy to forget. I have even, on a few occasions, found myself looking at an overweight person with faint disdain, forgetting those years I struggled with the very same issue. I hope never to gain back the weight I lost. But I have seen another side of people that I cannot forget. And with any luck, I never will.
I hope I always stay fat on the inside."
http://www.thefrisky.com/2010-08-09/girl-talk-i-lost-100-pounds-and-found-out-what-the-world-thinks-of-fat/
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Replies
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JJ, have you posted this article before? I could have sworn we've discussed it. I might be hallucinating that though.0
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ill admit it, I have a distain or dislike for fat people. its a general resentment with no pity for them. Especially when they're complaining about their size or weight or social status. If one is fat, its almost entirely because of poor choices made. (only exception is a possible severe medical condition)
I know exactly why I was fat. I was lazy! I didn't want to put the effort in, I made the seemingly easier choice. I made excuses rather than goals and accomplishments. I let my emotions drive my decisions which lowered my own self esteem and lowering my emotions further.
I agree that some social privileges are not available to those who are overweight, but that is not always the case. I believe what has a far bigger effect on social perception and involvement is your ATTITUDE and your own opinion of yourself. As you get thinner, your confidence grows and your far more fun to be around! If your fat and not making any changes in your life, you'll tend to have a very low negative self image, tremendous insecurity, and generally be a big downer for those around you.0 -
The only time I'll dislike fat people is when they put down others that are in shape.
"Oh look at him/her she must live at the gym or must use steroids." No it's called hard work and putting the fucking cheeseburger down.0 -
I always worry that when an attractive guys talks to me, that he has a fat fetish. Not sure why, but it is one reason I would prefer to date a larger guy. What thin guy would want a fat girl when there are a ton of thin single women out there? Maybe that is terrible but it crosses my mind every now and then.
I've never been super slim but you are treated differently than when you're obese.0 -
I always worry that when an attractive guys talks to me, that he has a fat fetish. Not sure why, but it is one reason I would prefer to date a larger guy. What thin guy would want a fat girl when there are a ton of thin single women out there? Maybe that is terrible but it crosses my mind every now and then.
One of my friends used to say this - but then I told her that every single guy I have ever dated (there have been a number of them lol) has been fit/normal weight except for one overweight one. That was kind of a shock to her, but I had never even thought about it before - it isn't something that happen consciously, I don't mind if a guy is overweight.0 -
I always worry that when an attractive guys talks to me, that he has a fat fetish. Not sure why, but it is one reason I would prefer to date a larger guy. What thin guy would want a fat girl when there are a ton of thin single women out there? Maybe that is terrible but it crosses my mind every now and then.
One of my friends used to say this - but then I told her that every single guy I have ever dated (there have been a number of them lol) has been fit/normal weight except for one overweight one. That was kind of a shock to her, but I had never even thought about it before - it isn't something that happen consciously, I don't mind if a guy is overweight.
I've almost exclusively dated guys that I have been told are out of my league. Won't stop me from trying
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One of my friends used to say this - but then I told her that every single guy I have ever dated (there have been a number of them lol) has been fit/normal weight except for one overweight one. That was kind of a shock to her, but I had never even thought about it before - it isn't something that happen consciously, I don't mind if a guy is overweight.
Yeah... I've been single 4 years The first 2 years all the guys I went out with were very trim, some trainers and a bodybuilder. One guy told me the reason I attracted tall lanky/thin guys was that they couldn't gain weight and most men want what they can't have. IDK if that's true because for most of those guys my weight and eating habits became a sore issue that divided us.
With the guys who were just normally thin I got the impression that they had just as slim pickins as I feel women who were overweight do. The "choice" girls go to the tall dark and handsome. Not the short thin and handsome.
With the guys who were into fitness I got the impression that those guys came after me for one thing (thinking I'd be an easy target), then fell for my personality (cuz I'm awesome like that haha), but couldn't reconcile the need to settle down with a woman at or above their league physically and so spent much time trying to change me to better fit their mold of what I should look like.
Then 2 years ago I met a man with a bald head and a pot belly - two things I never wanted - but he had broad shoulders and swept me off my feet. Hugging him was soooooo different from hugging the other guys. Since then I have not desired to date any man who is "too thin" or "too fit" unless they were also comfortable to snuggle. While I'm not interested in dating someone who shows they don't care about their health by carrying around too much extra weight** little extra padding goes a long way.
**Even as I typed that... I realized there are quite a few men who consider ME to be carrying around too much extra weight. I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.0 -
I always worry that when an attractive guys talks to me, that he has a fat fetish.
I just automatically assume I'll get rejected. If I don't get rejected right away, then I go to the fat fetish...0
