I’ve read the 2 threads lately dealing with one person’s “curiousity” regarding the fat people in these United States.
I wonder why anyone feels they have the right to comment on another’s weight? Do they feel they are performing a public service with this type of comment? A person who actually believes that is dead wrong.
I guarantee that every single person who is overweight is painfully aware of that fact. Additional comments are neither welcome or required. Neither is the approval of some nameless coward who posts inflammatory comments on a message board just to see what kind of reaction it will illicit. The only proper reaction and one I intend to employ is deafening silence. I refuse to stoop to his level of ignorance.
At first I thought trollmastr was merely ignorant but now I’m convinced that he is fully aware of the reaction his comments will provoke and he revels in the uproar.
I can only guess that it makes him feel just a little bit better about his pathetic self. I pity him.
So fellow fatties …DNFTT
It’s not just fat people… It’s everyone. People feel they can comment on things that are really none of their business. I can’t tell you how many times random people have seen my tattoos and piercings and decided that gives them the right to ask if I have a Prince Albert.
Well, that might be a little personal, but still, don’t you have all that body modification partly for the express purpose of making a statement, drawing attention, getting a reaction?
I’m the wrong person to ask. It’s ok with me if people ask me any ol’ thing they wanna ask. I don’t have to answer, but they are completely free to inquire. (As it happens, I usually will answer. I have no secrets, I have no privacy issues, I don’t care who knows what.)
But just as a point of debate, I don’t think your example is equivalent. There is no correlation at all between trimming or shaving one’s pubis and having a short haircut. On the other hand, there is a large correlation between people who pierce their penises and who also pierce other body parts. In fact, I’d vernture an unproven assertion that the more piercings you have, the more extreme they are, the greater the liklihood that you do indeed have a Prince Albert. Every genitally pierced person I have ever seen invariably had lots of other unusual piercings…nipples, eyebrows, tongues, lips, navels.
stoid
Not only do people ask if you have piercings but they also ask if they can see them. I have talked on this message board about my pierced nipples but IRL I don’t tell a lot of people. My husband and my sisters OTOH seem to think it’s perfectly OK to discuss it in public. As in…you won’t believe what Cindi did… I have actually had people I don’t even know ask about them.
I really did do it for me. It pleases me. I’m very happy that my hubby thinks it’s hot, but that’s not why I did it either. I am not an exhibitionist but I’m not a prude either. It is a private issue, exactly the same as my weight. If I want to talk about either subject, I will be the one to bring up the issue. But I gotta admit, I only get positive comments about my nipples, I can’t say the same about my weight gain.
My best friend is a big person. She and I went out to lunch a few weeks ago. She went up to the dessert bar, and came back to the table, face flushed, and teeth clenched. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that as she was topping her sundae, a woman had leaned over and whispered to her that she didn’t really need a sundae, and she should eat some fresh fruit instead.
I was shocked and appalled. How incredibly rude of a total stranger! I cannot fathom ever doing something like that! Had it been me, I’m sure I would have seen to it that the insufferable woman went home wearing that sundae.
It’s not the first time such things have happened to her. Once, when we went to the movies, she offered to pick up my refreshments as well as her own from the lobby. As she walked away with two large popcorns and sodas, a man snickered and said, “Hungry, are ya, tubby?”
It saddens and sickens me that people can be so cruel and rude.
She takes it pretty well; better than I would, anyway. Once, she made me laugh so hard I nearly cried. We were bowling, and something she did (I can’t remember what) pissed off the guy in the lane beside us. My friend apologised, but he was still ranting. His rage must have rendered him inarticulate, because after a stream of sputters and curse words, he finally spat out, “You’re FAT!”
She stared at him as if dumbstruck, looked down at her body, and gasped, “My God, you’re RIGHT! I never noticed!”
“Fat” is the last accepted predjudice in American society. You can’t make cruel jokes about race, but you can still mock heavy people with impunity. A fat man in a movie will almost inevitably be a clumsy buffoon, and a fat woman will eat everything in sight. There’s no dignity allowed them.
I guess I qualify as “fat”, 5’11" and about 210 lbs, I’m comfortable at this weight and I think I carry myself fairly well.
In my life I have been clean shaven, 8" beard, trimmed beard, hair to my ass, crew cut, buzz cut and razor cut. I have worn everything from suit-and-tie to my present outfit of black-tee and jeans. And yes, I have a few tatoos.
What does it all have in common? Just the fact that it’s nobodys business but my own. What does this have to do with the OP? Just the fact that my real friends know that I’m the same person inside, regardless of how I might look at the moment, so fuck the rest of them, If they don’t know the person inside, they have no business judging the cover.
If you’re too immature to get past the skin, then just do us all a favor and keep your mouth shut.
I’m a somewhat picky eater, much less now than in the past but still not one to scarf down anything that’s put on my plate. I was allergic to a bunch of foods when I was very young, so I never acquired a taste for some veggies. I also never got used to the texture of certain food combinations, too – eating 'em will trigger a gag reflex. I can usually find something to eat in any restaurant, but when someone offers to make me dinner, I usually have to turn 'em down.
It drives me nuts whenever anyone gives me the third degree about my food preferences – what I like, what I don’t like, what combinations make me gag, what my logic is, and so on. When people question me on my food preferences, I tell them that it’s too complicated and silly to answer in a few sentences, and I don’t want to talk about it, but they insist. I’ve ended up YELLING, literally screaming, at some otherwise well-intentioned people who continue after telling them three, four, five times that I DON’T WANT TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT!!!
In that sense, I understand what overweight people are going through when they’re quizzed by strangers and acquaintences about their physical condition, or told that they shouldn’t eat something because they’re too fat. Excepting the alleged consumption of domestic pets by members of certain ethnic groups, what someone decides to put into their stomachs is none of my damn business.
I’m a bit overweight, but nobody would call me fat. However, my wife is, shall we say, of a comfortable size. I have also seen what she’s gone through in her attempts to lose weight. So when people like buttwipr start off on how heavy people could be thin if they wanted to, I get pretty burned up about it.
Sure, we could all do certain demanding things if we wanted to, but for some of them, you’ve got to want to quite a bit. I could run 6-minute miles, but fortunately nobody’s jumping on my ass because I can’t. Because to run a 6-minute mile, I’d have to make the effort to do so the central focus of my life for many months. And it would be easier for me to achieve that goal, than for my wife to diet and exercise her way to a ‘normal’ weight.
Over on Fathom, SUEp Du Jour, a physician in the military (used to be MajorMD/Sue from El Paso, here at SD), explains from that standpoint why it’s unrealistic to expect people who are morbidly obese to permanently lose enough weight to get them back to normal. (Click on the link, then scroll about 2/3 of the way down. Or use ‘find in page’ to search by username.)
I’m with Lissa’s friend (“My God, you’re RIGHT! I never noticed!” - gawd, I wish I coulda been there) - overweight people are quite aware of their state, and getting flak from total strangers about it certainly doesn’t help one deal with it. If the assholes could all kindly shut their yaps, then overweight people could deal with it as a health issue, not as part of an emotional complex, at whatever time, in whatever way, and to whatever extent they’re inclined and able to do so. And it would be a damned sight easier for them to deal with it that way, too.
[/soapbox]
My advice to my wife has been to try to be happy with herself, regardless of her weight. Unfortunately, she’s pretty susceptible to all the societal messages that say that if you’re female, you’ve got to be thin to be acceptable.
[sigh] I’m probably gonna regret asking this, but this is the second time it’s come up this week (it’s also in the “copious amount of ejaculate” thread).
Um, people ask you if you have a double-breasted frock coat with the upper part fitted to the body?
[DDG braces self for onslaught of factoid she’d probably rather not know]
DDG: Prince Albert = Cock-Ring and not cock as in rooster. I don’t know the details of how it goes on.
Stoidela: My brother actually has one, but no other piercings on his entire body. Oh wait, a nipple ring too, but none of the other (eyebrow, nose, lips etc…).
Well, she’ll probably never be completely cured of the desire to be slim, but any unhappiness at being fat is surely mititgated by you making hot sweaty monkey love to her and telling her what a sex bomb she is.
I have SO lived this! All through high school, I was called a 'fat bitch' so frequently that I'd answer to nothing else. It took me years to work out that people did that because they couldn't honestly have been able to call me 'stupid' or 'ugly'.
[bold]elmwood[/bold]:
An excellent point. I must admit, I'm am increasingly mystified about what people do and do not feel is appropriate to discuss with perfect strangers (I suspect I'm just getting old, confused, and out of touch.). For example, the other day, I'm sitting at the local bar waiting for a friend to get off work, and I started chatting to one of the local firefighters who happened to be sitting next to me. There had been some sort of language mix-up, and he was resignedly starting in on the first of the two burgers he'd accidentally ordered, so he offered me the spare one. I politely decline, explaining that I'm a vegetarian. He asks me how long had I been one for, and I tell him since my mid-teens, at which point he expresses incredulity, as he would have thought I was 'too fat to be a vegetarian'. To paraphrase Bart Simpson, that's wrong on SO many levels. Anyway, this launches him, thin-streak-of-piss type that he was, into a catalogue of 'what I should do if I want to lose weight', i.e., all those handy diet hints that thin people assume you haven't been locked into mortal combat with all your life- chief among these being, in his case, that I should 'drink more water' (I have to buy a new 5 L bottle every two days, but, yeah, whatever- I'll look into that, buddy, ta.). I just sort of glazed over, smiled, nodded a lot, and hastily bid my goodbyes.
It seems to me I get this rather a lot, considering I live in a Mediterranean country where many of the women appear to have a genetic propensity to fat. And I'm not even THAT heavy.
This is getting long- that’s part of the reason why I don’t post so often- but here’s another example, when I walked into a shop the other day:
ME: I need a pair of black tights, 30 DEN.
STOUT, MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN BEHIND COUNTER: (looking me up and down, critically) Hmmm…What size would that be…Let me see…Let me come 'round and see if you’ve got a waist…
[If I have a waist!!! Huh? As it happens, yeah I have a waist, and it’s rather small for my size. I have a pronounced hour-glass figure, actually. Hmph.]
SALESWOMAN CONTINUES, AS I WATCH HER POKE AROUND MY PERSON, LIFTING BAGGY SWEATER, ETC.: Well, I’m a size 2, so you’d have to be at least a 3 (pulls packet of tights off shelf, hands them to me).
ME (reading packet): But it says here that this is for women 80 kg and up, and there’s NO way I’m 80 kg.
SALESWOMAN (with conspiratorial wink): Sure you’re not. I’ll just wrap that up for you then, shall I?
…And she wrapped them up for me, I paid, and left the shop. Oh, sure, I never went back, but still one wonders at the gall.
Incidentally, those tights must have been designed for 7-foot-tall Valkyries, as they went on far further than where my legs ended. I never did wear them.
I know some chicks who appear to be unaware that they are bigger than average since they wear really tight and revealing stuff that even perfect 10’s won’t venture out in.I like to believe that I’m not prejudiced and superficial but I find myself wondering if they wear stuff like that because they really are accepting of their bodies or if they’re just in denial about how they look…
One thing that does piss me off though,is the assumption that others make about fat ppl ie. they’re greedy or lazy or have poor self control.I think that being in control of your weight is seen as ultimate control : you therefore have willpower and self-respect etc.I don’t think that most ppl realise that these are not mutually exclusive qualities and traits.
I think there’s a distinction between making fun of fat people generally, with regards to which I agree that it has unfortunately become an entrenched part of the pop culture, and making derogatory remarks to specific fat people, which I believe has not. This is not to discount the many tales of people doing just that which have been recounted here, but I don’t think any of these examples are things that polite society finds acceptable, in contradiction to the general rules of polite discourse. There are rude and obnoxious people everywhere, and when such a person is being rude to an overweight person their rudeness may manifest itself in regards to their weight. But I don’t think it is correct to say that people who would not make rude comments to thin people will feel free to make them to fat people.
BTW, the above would also apply to bald people, another much-ridiculed group.
A slight hijack for oldscratch:
Surely you got all your tattoos and piercings for you. No one would suspect that you went out and did it for the benefit of the general populace, so that they might have a more attractive looking oldscratch to behold. But I’m curious as to whether you did it in order to project an image of yourself to other people (for your own benefit) or you did it with no one else in mind at all. IOW, if you were confined on a desert island, with only yourself (and perhaps a mirror) would you still have the same desire to appear this way?
This is not to say that anyone has a right to pry into your private affairs in any event. But your remark had me wondering.
Yes! I could rant for days about this, but it would be against myself and I hate to do that. That whole, I’ll mention my weight so they know that I know about it, so when I eat my usual big meal they will know I feel bad about it and am not just obliviously enjoying it.
I know this is all my issue and but I hate feeling that I’m in that position in this society.
