"She's so fat! She better do something if she wants to get married later."
I heard this conversation between two women while waiting for the lift at the hospital..then it occurred to me, why is it OK to discriminate fat people and it's not OK to discriminate others about skin colour, races and religions? We have been taught that discrimination is not OK.
Period.
Weight discrimination is everywhere and we use the word "fat" ever so freely without realizing how much it might hurt those on the heavy side. Fine, so FAT is not a four-letter-word, it's an adjective, just like short, tall, thin and blonde. But society has given it a derogatory meaning, it is used to casting off the shame we have been taught to feel about our bodies. Large sized people suffer from discrimination in all areas of life.
We see stick thin people in magazines and televisions everyday and the media has defined beauty so narrowly that is is unattainable by most people. Stereotypes are always degrading, they destroy people's individuality and emphasize only the negative qualities. People who are larger have to live with stereotypes on daily basis. Fat actors on sitcoms are usually shown eating constantly, and are portrayed as lazy and stupid. The one that causes most distress, is the fact that they show on TV that fat people don't mind when people make fun of them. It is as though they are giving the society a loud and clear message: accept fat people if they allow you to humiliate and make fun of them. It's just wrong. Out there, in the real world, people come in all shapes and sizes, and people are attracted to people of all shapes and sizes..tall, short, thin, fat, voluptuous, you name it.
This standard of beauty makes extreme thinness is the only acceptable body type. Hence, leads to other
medical and psychological problems, especially among women, suffer from anorexia nervosa, bulimia, and depression. The result of the media's constant reinforcement of this standard is the world obsessed with diet
ing and weight loss.Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Twiggy may have seemed the right size in the sixties, but in the fifties, they preferred Marilyn Monroe's fuller figure, which would be considered as "overweight" today. It changes from time to time, and of course, the usual culprit for these changes, again, the media.
I don't
want to be a hypocrite. I admit, I am guilty too. I sometimes caught myself staring at a person just because he or she is on the larger side and I criticize people/actors/actresses/singers on TV if they don't have the "right" body size. But I have experienced the feeling of discrimination when I was 60kg (a few years back) and trust me, it was a painful experience, especially when people say it to my face or mock me if I eat anything. I lost weight because I got sick and not because of weight-obsessed-related problems. I'm comfortable with my body even though I'm not as thin and scrawny as Mischa Barton or Paris Hilton.Discrimination against fat people has got to stop.
0 is NOT the new 2.
Currently listening
