There are several people walking along the sidewalk with us, some alone, some in pairs. Some in professional dress on their way to a smartly designed office somewhere. Some are casually dressed, with a messenger bag or back pack slung over their shoulders. Some are pushing strollers, some are chatting on their cell phones, some are sipping coffee or an icy blended drink of some kind. Some are walking with determination and speed, maybe running behind schedule, maybe just eager to get where they are going. Some are strolling, stopping occasionally to peer in a shop window. Some smile and nod in greeting as we pass by, some look straight ahead.
Tell me ...
- Which person is embezzling thousands of dollars from his company?
- Which person is having an affair on her husband?
- Which person has a collection of child pornography in a locked drawer at home?
- Which person is an alcoholic who abuses his wife during drunken rages?
- Which person screams obscenities at and verbally abuses her children?
- Which person is wearing something that she recently shoplifted?
- Which person eats too much?
That last one is easy, huh?
I know ... appearance is the first thing we see and we judge people on this first impression. But the thing that irks me is that so often the overweight and the obese among us are thought of so disdainfully simply based on the fact that they are carrying extra weight. Simply written off. Either ridiculed or ignored outright.
Wouldn't you think twice about a friendship/relationship with some of the other people listed, even if they were in amazing shape and incredibly physically attractive?
Thin doesn't necessarily equal good. And fat doesn't always mean lazy, smelly and worthless.
And that's not even getting into the reasons why someone may be overweight - medications, physical disorders, emotional issues, anxiety/depression, simple gluttony and lack of self-control, etc.
You just don't know people until you know them. That goes with all stereotypes, of course, but weight is the one I deal with. Like I wrote in my bio, I've been thin and I've been obese. Outwardly I've looked different, but inside I've always been the same person. And it would kill me when I could see the judgement/disdain/disgust on someone's face, simply due to my size. I'd want to shout, "I'm a nice person. I'm generous. I'm funny. I'm a hard worker. Get to know me!"
We've all seen the undercover reports featuring overweight people- I remember one where they had an overweight woman asking for help carrying something, I don't remember how far, maybe a couple blocks or something, and NO ONE would help her, but many people (men) were willing to help the thin woman, even to great lengths, offering to help beyond what she was asking.
I remember a magazine article from a while back in which the author spent time in a fat suit. She recounted how she was walking down the street eating an ice cream cone one afternoon, and a man passing her in the other direction said "Unbelievable" when he saw her. She talked about a time when she and a male companion went to a restaurant, and when she excused herself to go to the bathroom, a pair of ladies nearby commented to her friend that he could "do a lot better." Ack! How the hell do they know that?
The author returned from the bathroom sans fat suit, and apparently the women left in a huff. But the nerve! First of all, none of their business! The friend certainly did not ask for their opinion. Second, they didn't know anything about this woman, but because she was fat, she was low on the good-catch totem pole.
I know fat and flab are not attractive. Trust me. I know this. So, certainly, I can understand someone not being attracted to an overweight person. But what about just basic common decency? What about empathy and giving people the benefit of the doubt?
Hey, I'm not perfect. I can be just as judge-y as the next guy. It's human nature, maybe some kind of protective mechanism, like if I can find something bad or unappealing about someone else, I may not be that bad in comparison.
Speaking of human nature, maybe there's some kind of instinctual thing to this thin worship, like cavemen sought out the skinny cave women because they worried that the fat ones would eat all their food, and it was damn hard going out and clubbing those saber-toothed tigers.
Plus the skinny ones were easier to drag home by the hair.
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