justinh wrote:
!!!
Move along, nothing to see here…
The concept of a stereotype for fat is only relevant to the age you live in. Today, it is not appropriate to be fat since the ideal human is supposed to be firm and slim. To be socially accepted by others is to be slim and beautiful as told by fashions and models and some such other incompetents. 50 years ago and further back, it was preferred that a woman have some meat on them, no one wanted a bony wife. Look at Marilyn Monroe. Today she would probably be considered somewhat fat if she lived in today.
Look even further back and you would see that to some, being fat was evidence that you are wealthy or able to provide for yourself with out most of the difficulties others had in the same age. There was no such thing as a fat peasant.
In my opinion, fat people come in two flavors.
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Fat, and don’t care. These are the people who are either so focused on other aspects of life that they don’t give a shit about their physical appearance, or who are so ambivalent that they don’t give a shit about anything. I think the former are making a big mistake (but hey it’s their choice,) and the latter are pretty much useless. I disdain nothing more than somebody that doesnothing.
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Fat and wish they weren’t. Again, a couple of categories here. There are some people who are obese due to medical conditions, such as diabetes. There are others that simply don’t know how to take care of themselves properly. There are also those who know better, but lack the inner resources and discipline. This last, is the majority of overweight people that I have known.
Let’s face facts, being significantly overweight is unhealthy and undesirable. It’s not attractive. To me it speaks of disdain, and lack of respect for oneself.
When I wrecked my knee, I gained weight, and hated the way I felt. The machine that was me ran poorly. I didn’t have the energy and outlook that I usually enjoyed, and I didn’t feel better until I lost the weight.
The body is just another belonging, like a car or a house. I don’t like to visit somebody who lives in a pigsty, or ride in a car full of crap, and I have similar feelings towards a person who doesn’t bother to maintain themselves.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not insisting that everybody needs to be an Adonis, live in a museum, or wax and wash their car everyday.
To use the house analogy again, there is a difference between a house that is “comfortable,” and one that is a pigsty.
I have no problem with comfortable. But, if either your house, or your body is a pigsty, you’ve got problems you need to address. The mind does follow the body.
This in a thread questioning stereotypes. Lovely.
Last remaining acceptable stereotype? Hardly. We will always feel free to make idiotic comments about skinny people.
Scylla said:
Well, I suspect you’ll get a fair amount of disagreement here about whether or not being fat is undesirable or unattractive. I don’t think you can really say that any more than you can say that thin people are unattractive. They may be to you, but body shape is one of those “whatever floats yer boat” things.
Biggirl, you don’t have to justify to me why you’re fat. But if you’re going to start a discussion saying that the stereotype of
is in most cases wrong, then I want a cite. If you’re going to bring it up as a topic of debate, you’d better be ready to defend it. This is Great Debates, after all. You don’t just get to toss things out and then have them be accepted just because you said so. I think in most cases fat people do choose to be fat, and thus disagree with your assertion. Can you please provide a cite saying that, oh, seventy-five percent of those in America who are obese are not that way because of their own behavior?
Tymp, this galls me. There have been several examples in this thread of stereotypes of thin people, and in other “weight issue” thread, there has been a reasonably overt hostility toward them. Physician, you might say, heal thyself…
Sojourn makes a very good point. Our concept of what is fat and what being fat means has changed a lot over time. We have now reached the point where people like justinh feel that it’s just fine to make drive-by rude remarks.
As I’ve said before, what actually constitutes a fat person could be a GD all by itself, so my next comments are about the clinically obese.
The Truth About Being Fat
It is unhealthy– There is no getting around this fact. It is bad for you. It can even kill you.
Most people find it unattractive– Sure there are those who are turned on by the obese, but a person who is 20% over his ideal body weight will not be a thing of beauty to the general population.
Umm, that’s it. Is there anything else anyone can add to this list of what is the truth about fat people?
Scylla, there are two flavors of people, those who seperate others into lists and those who don’t. (If I used smilies, I’d put one here).
I think your list and sublist of characteristics are true of many people. Do you think that all people who don’t give a shit about anything are useless, or is it just the fat ones?
The southerner, the transgendered, the old, the short are all individual people. There is nothing you can know about their character without knowing them. The same applies to fat people.
Biggirl:
I am egalitarian in my prejudices. All such people are useless regardless of weight.
And as for the last, being born Gay, Southern, Black or what have you, is different from being fat. In most cases people aren’t born fat, they become fat through the choices they make. Nothing says more about a person than the choices they make.
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And how is listing how many calories I eat in a day and how much exercise I get a cite for or against choosing to be fat?
In fact I did not want to bring my own personal history into this because I am not representative of fat people. My dietician (I’ve gotten one since learning I am diabetic) has told me that my caloric intake is too low. So, since you insist: yesterday I took in 1,760 cals. The day before that 1,653.
I take a brisk (well brisk for me) 15 block walk every day. On weekends it is 30. I used to walk home from lower Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Park Slope twice a week. I no longer work in lower Manhattan so this is impossible.
The above is just one person’s story and is representative of absolutely nothing. Which is my point. You cannot make assumptions based on how a person looks. Well, you can apparently and you seem to think it’s up to me to prove you wrong about it.
Biggirl:
As a diabetic, you don’t represent the majority of large people.
My sister-in-law (the most evil individual in the world) is hugely fat, because she lays around and eats pizza and twinkies and soft drinks all day, and doesn’t bathe often.
One can draw a valid conclusion about her from the visible results of her behavior.
Yes Scylla. I am not representative and your sis-in-law sounds like a disagreeable individual.
We are both fat. We are different people. All fat people are not X.
But some people think that they can look at a fat person and make judgements without knowing the person. As if you can look at a fat person and say “Boy, she’s lazy, just look at her!” Or “I can’t stand people who choose to look that way.”
And the worst part is most everyone agrees with this!
Biggirl:
I’d bet that most people that draw an invalid conclusion about you based solely on your weight are doing you a favor by saving you the trouble of having to figure out that they’re assholes.
For a lot of other people, how one wears their body is a valid clue to knowing them when compared with all of the other available data.
Biggirl,
Your problem is you live in NY. In the south or in the country Girth is not a defining characteristic. Can you get some input from a blind or wheelchair bound person on how they are treated? People in the city seem to be put out by anybody that doesnt get out of their way fast enough. (Maybe this is the subject for another debate). If you want my advice , and you know I am an Ahole, I would change my name. If you were Brenda and I called you biggirl then you would be upset.
An English teacher in college once told us, Beauty is inversely related to the economic climate, in times of plenty then be skinny but in lean times be fat and happy.
oops I did it again. (I always thought brittany was too puggy)
Anybody can judge another person by how they look. You can do so on their race, height, weight, what they are wearing, saying, the accent they are speaking in (I am Texan and trust me I do get that)so forth and so on…
There is absolutely no excuse for judging a person by the way they look. You cannot say also that a persons apperance reflects who they are. Some of the best looking people I know do not work out at all and are absolute slobs. Some people just blame their own psychosis on others through judging them.
Remember this: If you think that a person who is fat is lazy or ignorant or what-have-you, remember that when are judging them w/o finding out yourself, you are being lazy and ignorant. And you will be judged.
I did not want to make this a thread about how people judge Biggirl. Believe me, I am a force unto myself and anyone who meets me will get to know me for the extroverted, opinionated, loud person that I am.
I think the problem is that there is a preconcieved notion that fat people are, in fact, lazy and greedy by virtue of being fat. Some fat people are lazy and greedy as are some skinny people. There is nothing intrinsic about fattness besides the actual physics.
And the physics are: Eat more than you burn and you will gain weight (thanks for the correction tracer).
Anything else is pure speculation.
Biggirl said:
OK, then feel free to provide any other cite you wish supporting your statement that the majority of overweight people are not overweight because of their behavior. I was asking participants in this thread because of two reasons:
- It’s an easy cite, and we could get a small, non-scientific sampling;
- Because all of these fat-related threads tend to get very personal, not without reason. Witness the one you and Nacho4Sara participated in (I think you were in it; if not, I apologize). So, I figured, let those who get defensive cite themselves.
Oh, be a bit realistic. I’m not saying that you’re stupid, or evil or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because you are fat. I’m making assumptions that directyl corrolate to the matter at hand. If the vast majority of those who are overweight are that way because of their own behavior, then I think using that as a working assumption is warranted.
An example:
If I’m driving down the road, and in the course of an hour all of the cars I see cut me off, run up on the median and smash through parking meters, I think I’m justified in saying to myself that lots of people are bad drivers, and that I should be wary of the next car I see. Now, it may be the case that in one out of ten cases, their steering linkages failed and caused them to lose control, and that they were not at fault. But it’s probably not a good idea to count on it.
Or, say I see a bunch of people stumbling around, reeking of alcohol. Some of them may have been assaulted by a crazed Johnny Walker-weilding loony, but my basic assumption is going to be that they’re people a little too fond of alcohol. I think you’re most likely kidding yourself if you don’t make the same assumptions based on behavior in issues you see every day.
I’m not saying “Black people are good athletes because they’re black.” I’m saying that a characteristic that is directly, scientifically related to a certain behavior tends to indicate that those having that characteristic engage in that behavior. We don’t see any reason to reject this in the diagnoses of diseases. Why here?
FTR, I am not saying that fat people are lazy, stupid or evil. I know first-hand how hard it is to lose weight.
You do realize that asking for this information from only the fat people proves nothing. And what were you hoping to see? That fat people take in more cals than they burn? Well, of course they do. That’s how you gain weight.
I don’t see how asking for personal information on what you eat and how much you excersize will keep a thread from getting personal. The exact opposite will happen.
That fat people are fat because they have eaten more than they have burned is the only assumption that can be made. Are you trying to tell me that you can then know that this fat person chooses to be fat?
So what are you saying?
Let’s clarify. I am saying that you cannot make personal and moral judgements on people you do not know based on their weight.
Now you clarify for me what it is you mean.
Ahhh! Too many quotes! My eyes!
Biggirl this is what I meant:
You said Fat people choose to be fat was a stereotype. And it is, according to the strict definition of the word. But this is one, unlike the others with which you grouped it, which has substantial basis in fact. That’s what I’m saying.
Wait a sec. blink
So…they’re being forced to eat copious quantities? You’ve lost me here.
AH HA! The chink in your reasoning is revealed. Eating more than you burn (which tracer pointed out, means that you are gaining weight, not that you are fat) does NOT mean you eat copious amounts.
Since too many quotes hurts your eyes (this is not a slam, I hate reading all those point counterpoints also) please read back in this thread. And read Cecil’s column which is linked in this thread.