The
Wii Fit called me obese in its cute little voice. I shut it off
immediately, had a good long self loathe and haven’t played it since. It
defeat its own purpose.
There
are polite ways to say fat. There’s adjectives that imply
attractiveness, like full-figured and plump and chubby and such.
There’s also hedging around the term that’s awkward but at least says
that someone doesn’t want to have the same connotations fat does, so
they’ll say “sizeable” or “large” “hefty” and basically a million ways
to say someone is “Big But Not Because of Height.” Actually considerate people have come up with a lot of ways to describe people.
Obese
is not one of those ways. Obese is a cold clinical term that says
being fat is unhealthy, undesireable, objectively bad. It tells us that
the person saying it thinks that they are being nice, but they are
looking down on you and think that your body shape is a failure of some
sort. And it has the weight of having a specified medical definition,
meaning they are trying to present this as an OBJECTIVE FACT rather than
merely their relative opinion of what constitutes a normal weight.
Fat, on the other hand, is a matter of opinion. Fat and thin are used
relatively, like “Lisa is fatter than she was years ago” or “One sister
was thinner than the other.”
“Obese” is a WAY more hurtful term than “fat.”
I
even wrote my doctor a letter about the use of the word “obese.” It
isn’t that she tries to shame me into losing weight. She understands
that my dumpster fire of an endocrine system is a major determining
factor in my body type and DNA is responsible for the rest of it.
However, she makes the mistake of thinking that “obese” is a neutral,
clinical term. It is not.
Obese is not a neutral clinical term
like “hypothyroid,” which means that my thyroid gland doesn’t produce
enough thyroid hormone. It is not a neutral term like “diabetic,” which
means that I have a dead pancreas floating around in my body being a
useless piece of shit. It is not a neutral term like “menopausal,” which
denotes a woman who no longer gets periods.
The difference
between these terms and “obese” is that people in the medical profession
don’t judge me as some sort of disgusting failure for being
hypothyroid, diabetic, and menopausal. “Obese” is a word that is sneered
and spat out like the person saying it just tasted something bad.
“Obese” is an extremely loaded word.
I said that I would
straight up rather be called disgusting and ugly than referred to as
“obese.” The fact that the first description of me in a medical setting
is going to be “obese, elderly woman” makes me not want to talk to any
medical professional ever.
I further went on to say that “obese” is not even a human being. “Obese” is a pariah. “Obese” is a thing, not a person.
You
can refer to my body type as large, heavy, big, stocky, chunky, or
straight-up fat. Fat isn’t an insult, it’s simply an adjective.
Never
refer to anyone as “obese.” It’s a gross, nasty, ugly word. It is
dehumanizing. I would love to see it stricken from the lexicon.
I
would also love to see people treated as people, regardless of their
size. We sure as hell ain’t there yet, but I will keep fighting for it.
Per my resolution to minimize the amount of toxic, ignorant, psychic attacks negatively impacting my life, I kicked the radio station which had been my primary choice to the curb following an onslaught of weight loss surgery ads and the afternoon DJ making the inane remark that "exercising makes you feel thinner. This is especially true for women."
I now have the radio in the Forester permanently tuned to the publicly funded jazz station. I have satellite radio in the Fusion, which tends to be on one of the 70's or 80's stations or the Underground Garage. They don't blather on and on about bullshit calculated to offend and shame people with non-optimal appearances: bigger people, older people, women who aren't conventionally attractive.
It's a huge relief to be able to do my job and have some music to keep me from dying of boredom without some stupid advertisement or idiot remark from one of the DJ's raising my blood pressure multiple times during my shift. I've thought about writing a letter to the radio station, but I doubt it would do any good.
I hope one day we will have a world where a radio station playing such toxic advertising would be flooded by emails rebuking them.
People deserve to live their lives without being constantly reminded that they are seen as undesirable thanks to the constant brainwashing by mega-corporations hell-bent on taking their money.
Advertising is usually a form of attack rather than an informative medium.
It's time to stop kowtowing to the Frankenstein monster which was in no small part created by behaviorist John B. Watson. Watson was a bit of a shit in any case. He was unscrupulous in his experimentation on vulnerable subjects.
We need to learn to think for ourselves rather than allowing advertisers to mold our beliefs.
From a discourse on the following post at We Hunted the Mammoth.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/12/26/resisttrump-today-by-treating-him-like-the-clown-he-is
"I mean, I do get doing it just because it gets under his skin, but at the same time I hate to contribute to the insecure macho mentality making fun of people’s penis size promotes, not to mention the shaming of fat and elderly bodies."
Thank you, @Michael Brew.
I had to stick to my guns when it came to saying that size shaming was never appropriate even with an odious asshat like The Rump, even though mine was an unpopular opinion.
I worked with the geriatric population for close to 25 years as a CNA before going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and working with pediatric patients as an LPN starting last year. There are a lot of elderly gentlemen who have bodies similar to those nude Trump statues. To imply that it is a disgusting or laughable thing to have such a body is wrong.
I hate to break out this old chestnut, but two wrongs don't make a right. The Rump is a horrid human being for his body shaming, particularly where women are concerned. However, it would be equally odious for me to ridicule his body type because he said bad things about mine.
Certainly, his actions give us a veritable bottomless Christmas stocking full of laugh (and cringe) worthy material.
I do agree with those who say that calling him a Cheeto gets a pass. He doesn't have to put on the Deplorable Orange spray tan.
Naomi Wolf says in her book, "The Beauty Myth," A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience." In other words if people (women here) are always focusing on losing weight, they don't pay attention to bigger, more important issues in the world.
