Do people judge me unfairly because of my obesity?
There is no doubt people judge the obese harshly by perception and not fact. I experienced this growing up fat.
The question is, do we feed into this judgement?
Do we believe “fat people are disgusting”, as we heard many times growing up.
Something else to ponder is if we even notice the stigma of being fat or have we become immune to it in our quest to just carry on with our lives.
Things like:
- People watching you eat in a restaurant
- Getting onto public transport and a passenger preventing you from sitting next to them or you looking for an empty seat away from everybody
- Continual fat jokes everywhere
- People noticing me shop in the oversize section for clothes
I experienced these and more, over decades of obesity. I even had a nickname at school-fat cat.
Believe me, it had nothing to do with the definition, and everything to do with my size.
A major problem as a fat child is we take any suggestion you are overweight as criticism and not as good intentions. This mistake moulds mindset over decades.
The biggest mistake people make by judging our girth is they do not understand what may cause it. There could be several reasons.
Only we know the truth of why we are obese.
As I have no medical issues and am not on any medications, I have decided I am obese through choice and my relationship with food. Those of you reading this may have other reasons.
The issue I have with being judged is the person doing so is an unpleasant human being. These are the same people who criticize height, colour, sex, age or whatever in those around them. But let us call them out on their judgement of us, and they usually crawl back into their holes.
Why do you think I have been fat my entire adult life?
Hearing people say they don’t think what I look like is acceptable, has never changed me, and never will. What someone I don’t know says about me has absolutely no bearing on my life. Why so much concern about my obesity now? Are you pandering to the media storm or do you genuinely care? Is someone in your family fat or overweight, and therefore you see obesity everywhere? You have no notion of my life circumstances, so who are you to judge?
I have become my obese self.
Obesity has become so much a part of me I don’t even notice it, and those around me see it as who I am, as this is all they know.
My obesity has never affected my work.
It’s funny though. It is illegal to discriminate along race, religion, sex, age and other characteristics, but to discriminate against weight is acceptable in society. Luckily, I have never experienced this in an official capacity.
I am no less intelligent because of obesity.
I have never been to hospital because of obesity, and I am over fifty. In fact, every check-up I have my doctor tells me everything is working fine, I just need to lose some weight. Cholesterol and blood sugar are within normal ranges, as with everything else tested. If I weren’t so healthy, I would be told any health problem is because of my weight.
As an obese person, I am invisible.
Think about it. People automatically write me off as one of a thousand negative things and don’t take notice of me at all. People gloss over me once and then turn their attention elsewhere. Being a bit of an introvert, this hasn’t bothered me much, but has possibly also allowed me to stay obese for too long.
To decide I am useless because I am obese is harsh.
I believe obesity is a lack of self-control, but that can change.
Taking back self-control is what this is all about.
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