The Unconscious Prejudice
Just Don't Say It!
Western culture's bias against fat people is so deeply ingrained that the best and most sensitive of people can cause hurt to us without even noticing what they've said. Even the fat admirers, who realise too late that the words they use in admiration twang the same chords as the words the rest of the world always used in hate.I can't speak for everyone, nor would I presume to - but these are a few of the things that annoy me.
You've got such a pretty face. If only you'd lose some weight...
Everybody's favourite.Yes, I've got a pretty face. But I've got a body, too, look! And it's the only one I've got. I spent years trying to lose the weight you recommended, and instead ended up rather heavier than I might have been had I never tried. It's my body, leave me alone!
My mother is especially guilty of this, in the variant "...if you lost some weight the men would come flocking."
She seems utterly unable to come to terms with the fact that the men flock anyway. Nor would I want men who flocked to a pretty face and figure and couldn't care less about what was inside.
I sometimes wish we wore our souls on the outside.
But it's such good exercise!
Traditionally said at the end of a long walk uphill/run for the bus, and scarcely heard over the desperate hammering of your heart to get out and the gasping of your lungs for oxygen.Now, I may be being unwarrantedly cynical here (I wish), but I don't think a nice thin person would get quite the same reaction. Something more along the lines of 'you sound like you're dying, for God's sake sit down' seems a bit more likely.
No, it's not good exercise! It's painful, it's frightening, it's unhealthily stressing my body! I remember a man (both thin and fit - and one of the most sensitive people I've met) walking uphill with me, amazed that I kept going despite difficulty breathing, heart pounding. If it were him, he told me, he'd have stopped well before.
But I was doing less than years of PE teachers had made me do. They didn't care for my pain, and neither do millions of well-intentioned people.
You see, the dangerous stress I'm inflicting on my cardiovascular system is such good exercise!
I'm just worried about your health
You're that concerned about health, give up smoking.The people who say that might even believe it. But their actions usually give the lie to that.
Why is fat so much more unacceptable than smoking, drinking, or any of the other million unhealthy practices that fail to have that stigma attached? Why do you hate me?
It's just a short walk
Almost inevitably: no it isn't. Think before you drag any fat person on that 'short walk'. Consider the extra amount of weight they're carrying. Decide whether you'd want to carry someone piggyback that far, because that's in effect what they're doing.
Where did you get all those scratches?
OK, so that one's forgivable. And maybe it's my problem rather than theirs that I find it so hard to tell them that the red scars creeping over my abdomen are the result of my skin failing to stretch with my weight.In all the BBW web pages I've looked at I've rarely seen any mention of stretch marks. Same with the fat models. Are they airbrushed out? Are people still too embarrassed to talk about them? Or is it just that my dry skin (the skin on my lower legs is even too dry to heal properly) makes me more susceptible to the things?
Either way, like any other aspect of living with a fat person, be very, very careful when you mention it.
Sticks and stones will break my bones...
Usually said by people trying to help you get over the world's prejudice. However, as I said in my diary:'Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me'.
What utter pillock came up with that one?
Not only is it an invitation to use said sticks and stones, it is a lie. Names do hurt, and they hurt deeper and longer then the fast-healing scars from the sticks.
Children know that, and they wield the most damaging weapon in their armoury with the power of a bludgeon. And even when its cutting edge is blunted by their lack of imagination, its force still takes it through your defences.
And when it does, who is there to turn to? The ones who told you that names would never hurt you? No, it can only be borne in silence, and the creeping shame that only the weak can be hurt by names, that you have failed all expectations of your strength, that you are worthless. And that name, given by yourself, the most damaging of all.
'Names will never hurt me'. Why do we tell children such lies when all our lives we, too, have been hurt by names? Why do we believe that the mere words will persuade those who have seen the very opposite in the tears of their victims?
Can I ever forgive those who abrogated their duty with that lie, and left me to suffer alone?
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