The Cheese Grates It: The Elephant in the Room

Had a nightmare which details why I never go to stuff like high school reunions, aside from, you know, the usual social anxiety.

I was with a couple of people that I'd hung out with in the past. Because of the way this society treats weight fluctuations, rather than these people reacting to me, the person, they reacted to the Elephant in the Room, aka, the fact that I'm bigger now than I was back when they knew me, when I was a lot younger and also full-on bulimic.

One of them said to me "you look good even though you got fat."

See, this is the sort of thing that people say. They think they're being kind while "keeping it real." Actually, this is a terrible thing to say, but it's the way we've been trained to think. Being fat is a terrible, horrible thing, like worse than being a child molester horrible. Yet it actually doesn't hurt anyone. Still, people will always find a way to drag a big person's size into the conversation. People can't just say "you look good" or even "it's good to see you."

I tend to steer away from talking about people's physical appearance. That's just what they look like, it isn't who they are. I prefer to say things like "how are things going," or "what have you been up to?"

But yeah, this is why you'll never see me at a high school reunion. Even though I've learned a lot about what being fat isn't (it isn't a horrible thing and it isn't even "unhealthy") thanks to size acceptance and Health at Every Size, I still don't like being The Elephant in the Room, and I always will be in such situations until a radical shift in thought happens. Hopefully one day such a shift will happen. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~