OK, I have had just about ENOUGH of the talk shows and made for tv movies featuring skinny girls who wear the fat suit and then oh suddenly they understand the plight of the fat woman.
I am all for fat power. I am all for changing society, for forcing people to understand that not everyone is a size 3 and that all women (and men) deserve respect and awesome clothes, regardless of waist size.
But holy hell, do these tv programs take it way too far. Let me break it down for you:
1. skinny pretty girl gets put in ridiculous fat suit and usually a velvet jumpsuit of some kind
2. faux fat girl goes out in public, looking noticeably nervous and terrified
3. faux fat girl is ignored or openly made fun of. no one will help her when her car breaks down. people point and stare and laugh when she orders ice cream
4. later, as fat suit is removed, skinny pretty girl cries and confesses that she had NO IDEA that being fat was SO TERRIBLE!
OK, seriously…wtf?
I am a fat girl. There is no getting around it. The scale does not lie. I am big and curvaceous and hey yeah, look at this belly. Let me suck that back in for ya.
When I was younger, MUCH younger, like, say 6 years old, yes. I got made fun of. Fat rock! fat kid! oooo! fatty fatty fatterson!
clever things like that. and I would be lying if I said that didn’t cut me to my young bones. I ran home crying many a day.
As I got older, I didn’t get any thinner, but the taunting stopped. Why? Because we GREW UP! If you are still pointing, staring, laughing at, and making fun of an overweight person, and you are over the age of 11, you are a total loser. Seriously.
Yeah, I didn’t date in high school, but that was a self esteem issue. No one was mean or rude to me because of my weight. I was well liked by most social cliques, and even the “popular” crowd were friendly and chatty with me.
And today, I can do things like GO SHOPPING and ORDER PIE and as far as I can tell, NO ONE points and laughs. Or calls me “fatty.” Or even raises one damn eyebrow. I have had complete strangers assist me when I have problems with my car or a ripped shopping bag, or WHATEVER. Because we are grownups.
(OK, the exception to all this might be “circus fat.” If you are circus fat, and there has been a Discovery Health Channel special done on you, like maybe something entitled “the xxxxlb man”, then maybe people might point and stare and snicker. But then you are an extreme case. I’m talking about the regular fatties here.)
Yes, there are prejudices out there, and maybe if I walked into some trendy couture clothing shop and tried to find something that fit me, the salesladies might look at me odd and suggest I try another store. But I KNOW that already. I know where I can shop and where I can’t.
I am a fat girl.
And yet, people still like me. I can buy ice cream without shame.
Shocking! SHOCKING, I SAY!
So please, skinny pretty talk show hosts? Stay skinny and pretty and stick to rating the best mascaras or showing off this year’s hottest trends, and lifetime channel for women? Stick to showing movies about women who are abused by their drug-addicted husbands/boyfriends. Us fatty fatty fattersons are OK. We are not lepers or social outcasts. You being “fat” for one day doesn’t help anyone.
end rant.
I want some ice cream.
Hey, Me too!
I think people don’t laugh and make fun of circus-fat people either; I think they just feel sorry for them.
I’m eating cinnamon sugar toast RIGHT NOW. With real butter. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
I couldn’t agree more.
The first time I saw this it was one of those reality shows - about the supermodel dating the “geeks” and she secretly had a love-child with Fabio. She spent a day in the fat suit. She got all teary when she wasn’t constantly hit on. Men walked past her on the street! Without fawning on her! Oh, the trauma, nobody’s telling me I’m pretty for a whole afternoon!
I once had a new doctor, she was a size 2. Wore clingy Donna Karan under her lab coat. Kept asking me if I was “depressed” and having “thoughts of injuring myself”, on my FIRST visit, right after I weighed-in and it showed I had gained 20 pounds since my last physical, 2 years earlier.
I finally asked her, “Have I somehow offended you, or acted in a manner that would indicate an emotional state that I am not feeling? I’m perfectly happy and having a lovely day. Maybe a little annoyed I had to park half a mile away for your office, but other that that, what gives?”
She told me she was wondering if I was Morbidly Obese, because of the number on the scale… and I had said “Oh, damn, I hate scales.” when I’d seen the number it was.(Hadn’t weighed myself in over a year)
She and I had a little chat about projecting her own feelings of “What if MY scale said that number?” onto other people. And she was rather doubtful when I went as far as saying I DID NOT WANT to be in the size 0-8 range. It was just… unbelievable. Completely out of her “reality” that anyone would be happy with curves.
I had her make sure my chart was nice and updated, and ready to go for when my NEW doctor’s office would be requesting it later that week.
Oh my god, Cinnamon–that’s horrible! I’m glad you left her office for good. Just so wrong…
I gotta agree here–I’m a size 26 and have only been what some folks would call “normal-sized” for some time in my 20’s when my life was much wilder.
I get hit on no matter what effing size I am. Men tell me I’m attractive whether I’m able to slide into a size all the stores carry or not. I like me better now than I did when I was smaller, to be totally truthful–I might have been thinner then, but I’m definitely happier now.
Maybe my ass isn’t the first thing that attracts men to me, but I’m very happy with that. I’d rather someone likes the inside and accepts the outside as part of the package than have someone who drools over the outside and totally ignores my intellect and personality.
Awesome post. I too have generally found that goofy prejudices like that tend to end by the time one exits junior high school and is certainly not a pressing enough topic to dedicate an entire television program to. Would it be wrong to confess though that I laughed a little at “fatty fatty fatterson”?
Hi. I normally lurk (sorry?). And I just wanted to Thank you for posting abou this. Why can our society not accept the fact that some of us will never be a size 6 and that we can be healthy and active even if we’re a size 18?
Mmmmmmmm…..ice cream. Chocolate or vanilla?
What’s to say? Personality and attitude go a lot farther than the size dress a woman wears. Real men look at the total package.
no apologies from lurkers neccessary. THOUGH PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU ARE! IT’S FUN TO HEAR FROM YOU!
and Gooch - I actually made that up - I don’t think anyone ever actually called me that. but yeah, I laughed when I thought of it.
Cinn - what a freak of a doctor. sorry you had to go through all that!
and I think your recent….ahem…”escapades” are proof enough that size doesn’t mean you get to have no fun in life!!!
Aimee - I had pasta with alfredo sauce for lunch. mmmmm….
Vince - and I give you full respect for being a real man. and a big hug
How people (mostly women, but men, too) are treated based on their weight does differ, but much more subtlely than they present on these dumb talk shows.
Besides the obvious, like guys being nicer to the skinnier chicks, the shallowness exists in surprising ways. For example, I’ve heard of instances of heavyset women losing a lot of weight and then losing a lot of their girlfriends. It reveals the competitiveness of the so-called friendship.
Right on! The sexiest thing on earth is being comfortable in your own skin.
I got a hard time from my doctor a year ago for being in the upper end of the HEALTHY Body Mass Index. He did the math, and was starting to give me a lecture… even though the BMI was still in the “green” range. I had apparently gained 10 pounds over 6 months, and the fact that you’re weighed with your clothes and shoes on it was November and I *might* have been wearing a lot more clothing didn’t seem to have entered his mind.
And you know what? I fell for it. Even though I was still wearing a size in the single digits, I figured since the doctor said it, it must be true. I eventually got over it, but not before I tried to lose some weight. That dieting shit is for the birds. And that doctor was a little turd. You rock!
I’m ambivalent here. I completely buy your critique of the skinny talk show host shallow girls’ prejudice of “OMFG! It must be awful to be fat!” Hell, it’s not even a controlled experiment: They need to do the same things under both fat and skinny circumstances, and see what happens. How many guys approach them and start conversations when fat? Skinny? The entire approach is so subject to the observer’s own bias (not noticing good things when fat, only noticing bad ones), it’s terrible. Of course, it’s daytime TV.
But there is an important notion here: yes, some people can be a perfectly healthy, active, marathon-running size 12, and that’s great. But few people are truly fit when fat, and few fat folks truly have healthy lifestyles of diet and exercise. So being heavy may not make one, by definition, a social outcast, but it probably does mean, by and large, that one isn’t as healthy as one could be. And hence, is worth classification as a less-than-ideal state.
You may all beat me up now.
Yesterday, I made a comment about liking food, and patted my ass. A girl I work with started telling me I needed better self esteem. I was like, what? Apparently, it’s not ok to even think your fat, as if fat and sexy cannot go hand in hand.
I beg to differ.
Good post!
I am fully aware that my being overweight means that I’m not as healthy as I should be. And this post was in NO WAY suggesting that being overweight is healthy.
I only wanted to say that being overweight doesn’t mean you get treated like a leper everywhere you go, which is what those talk shows imply. I don’t need thin people to pity me OR point and laugh at me. Healthwise, I could be better, but socially, I’m doing just fine, thank you very much!
I probably get a lot more action than a lot of skinny people, too. SO THERE! TAKE THAT TYRA BANKS!
Personally I’ve been fat for a much larger percetage of my life than I’ve been “not fat” (heaviest adult weight: 275, lightest adult weight: 165 current adult weight: ’round 250) and I’m of the opinion that there were opportunities, both professional and social, that I had (or didn’t get to have) which were influenced (both positive and negative) by my weight at the time. Now, though, even though I’d prefer to not be fat, I’m pretty comfortable at my current weight. I can still play hockey, I’m happily married and my voice doesn’t change depending on how well (or not) my pants fit on a given day. I guess that, as long as my fingers don’t get too fat to draw with, I should just accept who I am and live with it.
The skinny model types would probably love to have some ice cream. Why don’t you share?
Hi there! Saw your commment on Harlot today about the green socks. My question: do you really think Britney Spears would use both of the pair to cover her hoo-ha? Me, I think with the adition of a couple of sequined shoelaces, she’d likely ake a whole outfit out of one sock.
Like your blog!
Dez
I was vaguely thin til I had kids, then I just got lazy and didn’t lose any of the extra weight. It does get me down when I try on something I really like and it just doesn’t look right, and I say to my other half I’d give my right arm to be that thin.
Well that’s probably what it’s gonna take cos I can’t give up pasta and chocolate and pizza just to be thinner. I’d probably eventually be thin, but I’d spent my days with my nose pressed up against the window of the shop drooling over the chocolate bars!
Although saying that, we’re off to Portugal in the summer so I will probably try to cut down and do some exercise just so as I don’t look like a heifer in the beach photos.
I hate being fat. I honestly do. After having my newest son 6 months ago I’m all huge and fat again and I don’t even want to take pics or look in the mirror. I caught a glimpse of myself from the side yesterday and I wanted to cry.
It’s not that I’m lazy and don’t try to lose weight, it’s that my life is already chaotic with 3 sons (one who is a baby and still gets up every 3 hours at night), a sick husband and a graduate program in chemistry (complete with all the toppings of taking classes, teaching classes and doing research). I tried to put exercise in the mix and that was a joke.
Nobody makes fun of me anymore, no..but those scars I had when from when I was 10,11,12 etc… are pretty deep. I guess it didn’t help that my mom used to pick on me about my weight (and ok, let’s be honest, in a passive agressive sort of way still does).
I often wonder what my skinny blond bombshell general chemistry students are thinking when I’m standing there teaching them. Would they respect me more if I wasn’t fat? *shrug*
I wish I had your self esteem, instead I have self loathing.
I am 6 feet and two inches tall, and 165 pounds. I wear sweaters in June. I fear windstorms. Pity me! Oh, the travails and agony of the underweight!
Yeah. Not really the same league, is it?
Look, ESC… I like you and your writing because of who you are, not in spite of it. If any jerk points out your physicality in a derogatory manner, I think you are legally allowed to tase him on his nuts.
I too am a fat girl.
My husband was shopping for my Christmas presents the other day. And when I accidently looked at the bank account online and saw where he had shopped. I told him about it.
He said that he couldn’t believe the rude people working there. He had to ask for a Petite size * cause yes not only am I fat I’m short too* and the girl looked at him and said. ” Petite… did you see what size this was?”
Gah people are so daft!