Seeing my husband in his suit does make me a little weak at the knees. No surprise to me, at all, to hear that a man is treated differently when he’s wearing one.
I’ve lost about 25 pounds in the last year and am at a healthy weight (and very fit because I run, cycle and lift weights regularly). I have been slim in years past, but it was because of an eating disorder - this time I’ve done it the right way.
Anyway, yeah, people treat me different. Because I treat myself differently. I put more effort in to my appearance and have purchased new clothes. Because I know I’m hawt (seriously, I tell my husband how lucky he is to have such a smokin’ wife all the time), I walk and interact with people differently. I think it all directly relates to how I carry myself now vs. a year ago, when I had a little bit less self confidence.
I never said it was okay, I just figured WHY they are doing it. Myself included. I don’t do it so much anymore, but growing up I had a lot of built-in animosity towards fat people. And there are plenty of people who have good reasons for being overweight, but there are many more who are just plain lazy and don’t want to put down the fork.
My issue with fat people is they don’t want to admit to the last two. YES, I have the same damned temptations that you do, I just don’t indulge as often. It is called self control. Quit blaming everything under the sun and take some responsibility. And so their lack of self control becomes society’s problem with their fat dripping over your seat in plane rides, them trying to lay claim to the lion’s share of the food at events to support their girth, etc etc etc.
No, it isn’t fair how fat people are treated. Sure. But to pretend that nothing could be causing this, to liken it to racism or bigotry is a crock. The truth is that people should be nicer to overweight individuals, but good luck getting anyone to respect someone who doesn’t respect themselves.
Why don’t you take it somewhere else and stop thread-shitting ffs. :rolleyes:
If fat people are responsible for their own fatness, then rude people are certainly responsible for their own rudeness.
I’m not thread shitting. You want everyone to agree with OP? Too bad. If you just want to cry oh woe is me and pretend that the situation is completely one-sided, then enjoy the fact that you are always going to suffer.
Yes, they are. I never implied otherwise. I know that there are things that people cannot help - skin color, sexual preference, etc etc. But for MOST PEOPLE being fat isn’t one of them. Some people have medical issues, other people are just plain lazy. To pretend otherwise is simply that - to pretend. It is much easier to shirk your responsibility and ask why all these people are being so cruel instead of asking yourself if you are in the body you want to be in. In fact, these cruelties being suffered seem mild to me. It doesn’t seem like anyone is actively seeking out and ridiculing fat people, just avoiding them. That is what I do when I don’t like something - I avoid it. Seems reasonable.
The OP was a question to other people who had lost weight, asking whether they had had similar experiences to hers. There was no crying. I’ve already addressed the rest of your post.
AnthonyElite, this is an MPSIMS thread with people sharing experiences about being treated differently because of their changed appearance. If you want to talk about how much you hate fat people, start a new thread in IMHO or the Pit.
Silvorange, it is not threadshitting to post an opinion that is not supportive of the OP – threadshitting is when you tell people they’re idiots for having the conversation in the first place. Let the mods do the modding, pls.
Thanks,
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
I read an article on physical attractiveness once that made the point that there are outliers on both sides - some people are remarkably good looking and some people are unfortunately very ugly. But most of us are quite average, and for us, the top factors that effect physical attractiveness are very adjustable. They mentioned dressing neatly in attractive clothes, wearing an attractive hairstyle, personal cleanliness, and maintaining a healthy weight, etc.
It stuck with me because I realized I had never thought about a healthy weight as something a person could change easily. It’s pretty clear why, too, since it’s certainly more work than getting a good haircut or nice clothes. If you have a mullet, a nice haircut is $30 and a good stylist away, but if you’re obese getting to a healthy weight can take years. Even so, on the basis of whether or not you can do anything about it if you’re motivated, losing excess fat is much closer to a haircut or clean skin than it is to having the misfortune of being born with a profoundly ugly face. People might find you unattractive if you’re overweight, but for the overwhelming majority of people, you can change that with time, diet and exercise.
From that perspective, being fat per se is not taking care of yourself. Clearly you can read way too much into that and assume all sorts of horrible things about fat people. Judgmental people are going to judge people in stupid ways. But you can’t swing all the way in the other direction and pretend it says absolutely nothing about a person. We take in all sorts of information about people and coalesce it into an opinion of a person. Being fat is just one definite tick on the “doesn’t take care of themselves” side.
I’m not arguing with you twickster, but I am offering the other side to the equation. And for the record, I don’t hate fat people. I dislike some of their issues, but we all have our own issues, I don’t begrudge someone for having their own struggles. I am simply trying to help the OP understand WHY someone may treat them differently after weightloss. I even stated multiple times that it may NOT be fair for them to be treated that way. A reason isn’t always reasonable.
Um, reporting a post to you and calling it threadshitting in private is not letting you do the modding? I just brought it to your attention and gave you my opinion. Privately.
I think twickster is meaning to say that to FloatyGimpy.
Well, they’re just plain lazy about exercise. That doesn’t mean they’re just plain lazy about everything else, or even anything else. Everybody is lazy about something, including you. Plenty of skinny people have disastrous-looking houses or yards, dogs and children who run wild with little to no training, or their dress and grooming habits barely reach “slatternly” because they’re too lazy to put effort into those areas of their lives. Do you hate working with them because you assume they’ll shove all the work off on you? Do you go around talking about how they bring the rudeness of others on themselves by their own behavior, and if they don’t like that rudeness, they can bloody well get off their sorry asses and change already? Or do you give them the benefit of the doubt and separate their work ethic at work is unrelated to their work ethic in other areas? Do you even know about the areas in which they’re lazy when they don’t wear the evidence on their faces?
I freely admit that I’m fat because I eat too much and don’t exercise enough. I find exercise, for the most part, boring as shit and would rather spend my time and energy cooking or reading or sewing or knitting or spinning or playing with the dogs or pottering around the garden. Or, yes, watching tv. That’s never stopped me from being the woman you come to when you really need something done at work.
I hate this, too. Honestly, I’m not judging others for not losing weight. My success has nothing whatsoever to do with any other person’s success or lack thereof. If you feel guilty for not losing weight, and for some strange reason feel the need to justify it to me just because I have lost weight, trust me, you don’t.
I’m trying to say this without junior modding (maybe it can’t be said without junior modding, in which case my apologies and I’ll make a note for the future) - we’ve gone around on why people are fat about a hundred times before, for hundreds of pages. The bottom line is that if it was simple to lose weight, there would be no fat people. It’s possibly the most complicated common issue we have at this point. Anybody who thinks that reducing it to, “Fat people are lazy and have no self-control” is accurate is willfully ignoring about a thousand things that make it more complex than that.
And you know who really dumps their work on other people? People with kids. Come in late, leave early, take many more days off than anyone else, spend all day on the phone on personal calls, et freaking cetera. Don’t even TRY to pin that one on fat people!
Yes, I think we can all agree that parents at the workplace tend to dump their work on the single folks!
I recognize that it is indeed a complex issue, but I think a grand majority like the complication because it removes them from blame. Own up to it. Do you want to be healthy, or not?
To the OP: I had naturally bad teeth, and lost quite a few of them in my college years. The way people treated me before they were ruined, after, and after I had them fixed was day, night, and day again. I sort of could see it, though - they didn’t know the story of my teeth and didn’t care to. It was simpler to assume I wasn’t maintaining them. I didn’t particularly mind the treatment as I had a girlfriend, a job, and an education. Nobody could cost me anything. But if I were single, or looking for employment…god help me.
Congratulations Gimpy! That’s awesome.
Your experience reminds me of my own experience with my hair. For most of my life I’ve been pretty much invisible. Two years ago I decided to start coloring my hair the golden blond color I had when I was eight. Not because I particularly wanted to be blond but it meant that I could go longer between dye jobs (grey roots show less in lighter hair.) So I went blond, then I grew it longer, then I started wearing it curly.
So now I have long, curly, blond hair and all of the sudden I’m worthy of noticing. It’s weird. I haven’t changed. My confidence level hasn’t changed. My weight hasn’t changed. Just my hair. People are nicer and are more inclusive. I get more complements on the rest of my appearance as well, not just my hair. Maybe blonds have more fun because people treat them better?
Maybe someday I’ll kick my weight issues (not caused my laziness. And I can run a 5k in under 30 minutes, not fast but not exactly a couch potato either.) and I can see how fun it is to be skinny and blond.
My parents and siblings are heavy. I’m trying to break the cycle I was born into (“eat almost nothing but burgers and potatoes with LOTS of butter and get heavy enough that working out is uncomfortable, so it’s easier to just sit and eat snacks… and butter”).
I’m the only one in two generations who works out, or even walks any appreciable distance, and I’ve started hearing a lot of Seething Sibling Justifications. I never know what to say when they start another kvetchfest with “Well, no wonder I’m fat, I [insert rationalization of the week here]”.
I really want to say “Sure, I know you’re busy, that you were raised to reward yourself with sweets, that you can’t buy fresh vegetables (huh?) or whatever your latest excuse is. But when I started eating less and exercising more, I lost weight. No magic, no excuses.” After reading threads here by overweight posters, I’ve kept my tongue bitten.
So, Miss Woodhouse, you think you look prettier (I’ll assume, since otherwise you wouldn’t maintain the color & curls) AND people are nicer to you AND you get a bunch of compliments … yeah, I’m pretty sure *anyone *would feel an improved confidence level.
I don’t know what you do at your job so I cannot confirm what you say. I suspect that you probably are better at your job, though. You have more energy, feel better about yourself, look better, and I’m guessing that your mood is better too.
It’s not just about looks, either. Cite.