Sorry, I meant to add - I say this as someone who is moderately overweight, who gains weight when she’s depressed and is sure that if she led a less stressful life, she could lose weight more easily.
I don’t know, I’m a skinny guy and when I get depressed, I STOP eating so I’m more likely to gain weight when I’m not depressed. There are all kinds of people out there.
This pretty much clinches it why prejudice is ridiculous. If you’d replaced fat with black and mental problems with violent tendencies, you could probably find some people in your area who share your opinions.
I think it’s pretty unhealthy to have thought about the matter in this way long enough to have come to any kind of sweeping conclusion, whatever it might be. And, since we all discriminate in our own ways, I personally prefer not to hang around with people who are deeply invested in making up stories about the myriad ways in which there must be something seriously wrong with other people whom they do not even know.
I have never had the opportunity to choose my children’s teachers, around here kids are assigned to a class. And all the babysitters we have had are related to my children. So I have no exerience with that.
I think in general the amount of time people spend thinking about, talking about, worrying about, noticing, postulating about, opining about, >insert your verb of choice here< weight and particularly women’s weight is seriously perverse. Perverse, opressive, and, may I add, counter productive.
The kindest thing you could do for your children in this area it seems to me would be to chose teachers and babysitters who do not have the kind of unhealthy obsession with the imagined lives of other people that you have (evidently) been saddled with.
I thought I would get at least a couple of responses here that would cause me to think about my prejudice. I needed a board that wouldn’t solely react with negativity to help me look at my viewpoint differently rather than putting up defenses or just slinking away.
So for that I thank you, it was valuable for me to express that in a safer forum and be able to work through that a bit. Your sentiments were appreciated.