You know those people who pride themselves on “telling it like it is” to fatties. Jillian Michaels, the authors of Skinny Bitch, Dr. Oz, random people I meet in the gym…People who defend their bullying actions by saying “Someone needs to be brave and stop coddling these fatties. I’m that person, put down the bon bons and get off your ass fatty”. Here’s what I would like to say to them:
Newsflash dude – there is not a fat person in this culture who hasn’t heard this before. There are very few fat people who haven’t heard it in the last two hours. We know what you think of us. We are all too aware that you let your assumptions run wild and then treat us like your assumptions are true. We are aware that you think “Fat bad, thin good, shame the fatties grunt grunt grunt”. We hear this message about 386,170 times every year. I’ve been fat for 17 years, which means I’ve heard it around 6,564,890 times. How can you possibly think that hearing it 6,564,891 times is going to improve my life? Are you also planning to win a land war in Russia? Being 6,564,891 does not make you special or brave, it makes you one more doody in a big pile of crap.
Maybe you aren’t aware of this because you aren’t fat so you don’t notice. Maybe you are aware and this is all an exercise to stroke your massive ego by being the person to save the fatty. Or maybe it just makes you feel good to treat people like crap. I don’t really care because bullying is inappropriate in any guise. If someone is interested in hearing your “tough” talk I’m sure you’ll be among the very first people to know and then let ‘er rip, otherwise how about you sit down and shut up.
Or you could swim against the stream and treat fat people like the intelligent human beings we are- not like confused sheep who need your strong guidance – and encourage others to do the same. Let there be a fat person who only hears 386,169 messages about their body because you refused to pile on the shame and body hate. That’s brave.
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Or as I like to say to them, “Do tell me where the fatties are being coddled! As long as I’ve been involved in fat acceptance, I’ve never heard of such a place.” Ya think we should maybe stop coddling Jillian Michaels and Dr. Oz?
Ya think we should maybe stop coddling Jillian Michaels and Dr. Oz?
Can we? Can we please?
Is it wrong that I immediately thought of the sort of coddling you do to eggs? Because they’re certainly half-baked. (Or in Ms Michaels’ case, hard-boiled.)
I think they might believe that fat people are coddling themselves, so they feel the need to verbally beat their logic into them. Just as assumption though.
Regardless of their prejudices and assumptions, though, the verbal abuse is not okay.
No, it’s not. And I frequently see “I’m just honest” or “I’m telling it like it is,” as an excuse for being a total butthead and calling it a virtue.
I agree with you and Kelly. I think there’s always a possibility of being honest without being a jerk.
forget “coddling” and lets get with the cuddling!!!
I’m down for the cuddling.
I freakin’ love to cuddle!
Right on! And who wants to cuddle a bag of bones? I’m all squishy and cozy, bitch!
Oh oh oh..you probably didn’t write this piece with it in mind, but I almost split my sides laughing as you called Dr Oz a doody,, which he has deserved for so long.
Don’t worry, Frannie, my maturity (or lack thereof) last night got the better of me and I started giggling saying, “Ragen called Dr. Oz a doody! giggle giggle*
My Mom would want me to say that I called his actions doody, not the man himself (but it’s a really fine line…)
We are the sum of our actions. If most of what we do is doody, then doody we become.
Ok, *technically* I think my first reaction was to giggle and say, “Hehe, Ragen said doody.” Like I said, my maturity level was at a very low point last night.
A lot of this is because they still believe the fat=unhealthy, thin=healthy myth. I have a friend who is super skinny but about to undertake a 140 mile charity bike ride. He’s come in for teasing about his body, can he do it etc. Fact is, although he may be naturally very skinny (I’ve known him for years, he couldn’t get any bigger if you put a gun to his head) he’s incredibly strong and I know he’ll be just fine.
The sooner the world stops the focus on body size and starts to realise that this focus is in fact leading to incredibly unhealthy behaviours in some people (I’m thinking not only of eating disorders, but also of the numbers of people who continue to smoke as they think it helps keep them slim .. or the drug takers) the better all round. THAT will sort out the body bullies from the people who have a genuine interest in health.
Several years ago I broke a bone in my foot… my ortho tried and tried to get it to heal, I was casted for nearly six months. Finally, he looked at e and said, “So, diets just don’t work for you?” I sat there for a moment open-mouthed and finally said, Diet? I’ve never heard of that, what is it? The look on his face was priceless. Shortly thereafter he went to surgery with me (something he should have done 5 months earlier!). When he got inside my foot he realized that the time plate and two little screws were in no way going to hold my foot bone, He had to go to the Home Depot of the hospital store and get a much larger 3″ screw and other appropriate items to fix it. Afterwards he said, hummm, you DO have large bones! We need our health car professionals to become educated… it starts one at a time.
That’s fantastic! “Diet? What is this… diet… you speak of?”
I would desperately love to snark my doctor like that the next time she suggests it to me.
Also, what the heck at a doctor who wants you to lose weight while you’re laid up in a cast for 6 months! How’s about he just fixes your bones like you’ve asked him to do.
Yeah, they really try to redefine what “brave” means.
Normally, “brave” means doing something risky and impressive, facing a high possibility of serious negative consequences in order to do something one considers worth doing. Clearly, that definition doesn’t apply to people who become rich and famous humiliating fat people. That means they have to use a special definition of bravery, where they are brave for doing something that gets any disapproval, even if most of society is lining up and going “Right on! You get those fatties!” while throwing mountains of money at them.
There is much of value in these replies. If we could compile a statement board, and post it we can all profit. No one part is the whole. A balanced synthesis approach is I think, a healthy beginning in healing any angst. Takes time, attitude and strategy. Being born female in this culture–even if one is “Marilyn Monroe” does not escape the discrimination of dominance–”the dumb blonde,” Vulnerability and exploitation are ubiquitous. Any, and almost all in human form can be–are bullied, whether overtly or covertly. What I have experienced for eight decades is the refusal to identify with a fellow human as ONE. Fat-slim, young-old, healthy-disabled–any life condition is subject to ridicule, by the insecure. Without self identification there is always limitation of “the other.” I was thin, and counted “pretty” for the first decades of my life. At midlife, a 20 year old male said, “I bet you USED o be pretty.” After retirement and sedentary inaction, my best friend,since I was five, said, “Did you ever think you’d get fat?”
Being dismissed and denied as a woman of color by persons who have a fraction of my intelligence and accomplishment, I know that being denied is a human condition. Some attacks are obvious,. some are not. All, if done with awareness reveal the attacker, not the victim. The effect on the psyche is the same-pain-shame-anger-withdrawal.
Inhumanity to fellow humans is an evolutionary defect, perhaps.Whatever, it hurts. I was told that it is not what happens to one, but how one handles it that counts. Noting heals the pain. Self-caring (inner security) and support are salve, a remedy–a bit. Forgiveness is dual healing. We are all doing the best we can with what we have; If we could do better, we would. I, definitely, would. And i try.
I think you’re so right that bullying is universal and fueled by insecurity.
You know, sometimes I wonder what would happen to the world if for just one week all the “magic numbers” just disappeared. Suddenly our pants don’t have a size, our scales just register “You’re awesome!”, oh and no reflective glass at all (of course it somehow all became frosted). Sure other people could still see what we look like, but would the universe collapse on itself if we were forced to focus on the quality of person we are, instead of such emphasis on what we look like to ourselves?
I have a particular hatred for this one, as I grew up with ‘I’m just being honest’ used as an excuse for verbal abuse. It took me years, and many counselling sessions, to realize that cruelty and honesty are not the same thing, at all. Consequently, whenever anyone comes out with that crap, I know that what’s about to follow it is nothing more or less than their own, usually hateful, opinion.
Seriously, people, if you think you’re big and brave? Say that your opinion is actually just your personal opinion. Don’t hide behind ‘what everyone else is really thinking’. You’re not psychic, you just have a massive enough ego that you think nobody in the world could possibly disagree with you. (And this also goes for any number of ‘edgy’ comedians and self-styled defenders of ‘free speech’. Please.)
Seriously, people, if you think you’re big and brave?
Also, if you think you’re big and brave, make room for the possibilities that what you have to say might be erroneous, redundant, or flat-out harmful to the person saying it.
In yoga, there’s a concept called satya, which is a commitment to truthfulness with the full realization of what consequences speaking any given truth (or when we speak it or how we speak it) may have for others.
For example, due to the onset of cold weather and crotchety chronic pain, I didn’t run as fast as I would have liked tonight. I suppose I could have pushed myself more — and it might have worked out for me — but I made a judgment call to take it easier, a judgment call about which I already feel sort of guilty. If my running partner had said something like, “If you don’t go hard now, you’ll regret it later” (which he didn’t but some trainers have said to me) — that might be “honest,” but it’s not satya.
Love!
~ManDee
I like that concept. It reminds me of something else I heard, that before saying anything, you should ask yourself: Is it true? Is it necessary? And is it kind? Unless it fulfils all three, it’s probably better not to say it. I forget where I even heard that, but I often remember it when someone comes out with something that isn’t any of those things.
Also, if you think you’re big and brave, make room for the possibilities that what you have to say might be erroneous, redundant, or flat-out harmful to the person saying it.
-Or in some cases harmful to you. I know that there are days where one more hurtful, hateful, mean spirited comment is very likely to cause expensive dental bills to the person making the comment.
-other days I just refuse to deal with the stupid. “That’s what you think of me? Well apparently you are in the wrong line… this is the line up for people who think I’m amazing, the line you are looking for is over there in front of that bus.
Emerald, that was the first thing I thought of when I heard the concept of satya too: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? I’m not sure I agree that a thing has to be all three for you to say it–more like it has to be definitely two of the three, and you work to make it as much of the third as possible. Like, if it’s necessary to be kind to someone you don’t like, you find the truest kind thing to say that you can. If it’s necessary to tell a painful truth, you make it as kind as you can. Also, if it’s true and kind, it doesn’t have to be necessary.
I think that where people get into trouble is that they set their bar for truth way too high, and their bar for necessary and kind way too low.
” I am a flip book”
FTW, for the t-shirt, for life!!! Emblazon this, please, on every available surface right now…
Can’t stop smiling at the phrase & the images & movements conjured!
Thanks Amy!!!
It is one of the super coolest things ever to happen to me. We did a video and then they made the flipbook from the stills they pulled. I can’t wait to get my copy so that I can see how it turned out
~Ragen
I thought I was too thin to have to put up with this, but I got it over Thanksgiving, from a relative. She’s been eating as little as she can get away with, exercising as much as she can, for the last 89 years, to keep her weight under control, thus has earned the right to say whatever she wants to me. She was surprised that I didn’t jump at her offer to let me into the gym after T-giving dinner.
Brian of Red No. 3 once said this, referring to this kind of “I’m sorry, but” trolling:
“What’s so unpopular about shaming fat people? Well, because most people don’t like to think of themselves as the enforcers of the status quo, so they fantasize that is actually them who are speaking truth to power. This self-flattery of their perceived righteousness really informs much of what they have to say. Which, again, is nothing fat people haven’t heard before.”
This is when it really came together for me. These people are coddling themselves believing that they are the rare voice of truth amongst all this glorified obesity.
I just very recently stopped trying to lose weight and started focusing on cutting out processed foods and moving my body for at least 30 minutes, 4 times a week. I have never been happier.
Every time I go in to the doctor’s office he would ask, “Are you trying to lose weight?” and I would say “Yes, but it’s not working.” I finally switched to a doctor who hasn’t asked that question and when she does I will quickly reply, “No, would you like to go race me around the parking lot though? I’m pretty sure you’d lose.” I run often and I’m damn fast. I look forward to her face if and when she chooses to challenge me about my weight. I look more forward to perhaps not having to challenge her at all.
I think that’s a fantastic answer. I’m hoping to work up the courage to be that honest with my doctors. (Though it’d actually help if I *could* challenge them to a race around the block.)
I try to run in the other direction when I hear that sentence. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to live every day knowing that people just generally don’t like you, think you’re ugly and presume you are stupid. I often see the glint in the eye of the speaker; you can tell how much s/he enjoys giving that speech. It is sickening.