“People who would never dream of cracking a joke about or saying something totally rude to a person who was overweight for fear of hurting their feelings”

Ummm…  What planet do you live on where this is not the case? Which of these words is a pejorative in our society and which is the compliment:

1) skinny

2) fat

Case closed…

I mean, if you can show me a movie where Eddie Murphy elicits guffaws by portraying an entire family of the morbidly skinny, give me a holler because I must have missed it.

Not to be disrespectful to the pain of exceedingly skinny but your statement here is completely, demonstrably untrue and, frankly, the kind of thing that only someone who has never been heavy could ever utter with some degree of seriousness.  This kind of thing has never been my burden, but it has certainly been one for people I’ve been close with.

If someone was knowingly, intentionally rude to you about being thin, better believe that they won’t have any problem making fun of a fatty!

Now, perhaps the underlying point you are trying to make is that because skinny is supposedly a positive, people don’t realize that calling attention to someone who is particularly skinny - and self-conscious about it - could be hurtful and perceived as rude.

Or, put more simply.  It is possible to be just as insecure and easily bruised about being underweight as it is about being overweight.

That strikes me as a totally fair statement - one that could be made about any self-perceived physical flaw.

robot-heart-politics:

needtherapy:emptythoughts:iamthegirlanachronism:

Oh whine whine.  This stuff always irritates me.  Society WORSHIPS the thin, rich and beautiful.  No one ever says they hate being so rich, so don’t pretend it’s terrible to be thin (and/or beautiful…for some reason, pretty people complain about that too).  What, you’d rather be fat?

I was the recipient of so many nasty comments when I was at my skinniest. People who would never dream of cracking a joke about or saying something totally rude to a person who was overweight for fear of hurting their feelings had no qualms about saying just plain awful things to my face or behind my back. Or they’d spread rumors about how I must have an eating disorder. (I didn’t.)

Certain segments of society certainly “worship” thinness, but usually that appreciation only extends to those who are also very tall, have large breasts, and are generally unusually beautiful. For the rest of us, we not only run around in ill-fitting clothes because nothing is our size and look more awkward than attractive, we also get shit from everyone around us who fall into the other segments of society that don’t worship thinness about how we must be trying so hard to be so thin, how we must have an eating disorder, and how something is wrong with us because of how we look. I don’t know how many “Love your body!” screeds I’ve read over the year that attempt to make larger women feel better about themselves by positioning thin women as these scrawny unwomanly creatures that look like 12-year-old boys instead of women and how could anyone ever possibly find that appealing blech?!?! I’ve even read some that insisted that men who find women like that attractive must have repressed homosexual/pedophiliac tendencies. How that qualifies as anything short of insulting and offensive is beyond me, but it’s been my experience that it’s a fairly acceptable part of the “Love your body/real women have curves” movement.

Trust me, it’s no more fun when people criticize you for being thin than it is when people criticize you for being fat, especially when there’s not much you can do about it short of magically changing your metabolism, just like it’s no less annoying when you can’t find clothes in your size because you’re too small than it is that you can’t find clothes in your size because you’re too large.