Omoni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yukinoomoni) wrote2011-04-27 02:48 pm
yukinoomoni) wrote2011-04-27 02:48 pm
Entry tags:
Gruh (rant)
Here's the thing. I don't mind being fat, in the long run. I mind occasionally when I have to fit into a swimsuit, or strip naked in front of Terry, but for the most part, I don't give a shit.
Therefore, it really gets my goat that now, when people notice I've lost a significant amount of weight due to being sick, and they tell me I look "good now", I want to ask them what the fuck that is supposed to mean, even though I know full well what it means.
It means that fat is unattractive. Fat is not nice. Fat is ugly, and if you can get rid of it through any means, you are successful. It doesn't matter if your insides are rebelling against you and the loss is a result, if you have lost that weight, you are a winner.
And I just want to say, you know what? Thanks, but no. I looked fine when I was twenty pounds - even forty pounds - overweight, and no amount of weight loss will change that. I look how I look, just with more or less padding, and telling me I "look better now" makes me wonder where the fuck you've been all of these 27 years. Why does losing weight change how I look? I look the same, only smaller. It's not like I had fucking plastic surgery. It's fat. It's not evil. And I look the exact same as I did a year ago, only now I'm a size 14 or 16 instead of an 18 or 20.
Are we that jaded by weight loss that losing some weight changes our point of views on how people look? Do twenty pounds really make that much of a difference, or is it all in our heads? I personally think it's the latter rather than the former, and while I understand it's all meant well when people say I "look better now", the fact is that I'm not - I'm sick now, and losing weight is negative - and thus I can't help but resent it.
So, okay. Am I overreacting or are we really all just afraid of fat people? Go ahead, tell me.
Therefore, it really gets my goat that now, when people notice I've lost a significant amount of weight due to being sick, and they tell me I look "good now", I want to ask them what the fuck that is supposed to mean, even though I know full well what it means.
It means that fat is unattractive. Fat is not nice. Fat is ugly, and if you can get rid of it through any means, you are successful. It doesn't matter if your insides are rebelling against you and the loss is a result, if you have lost that weight, you are a winner.
And I just want to say, you know what? Thanks, but no. I looked fine when I was twenty pounds - even forty pounds - overweight, and no amount of weight loss will change that. I look how I look, just with more or less padding, and telling me I "look better now" makes me wonder where the fuck you've been all of these 27 years. Why does losing weight change how I look? I look the same, only smaller. It's not like I had fucking plastic surgery. It's fat. It's not evil. And I look the exact same as I did a year ago, only now I'm a size 14 or 16 instead of an 18 or 20.
Are we that jaded by weight loss that losing some weight changes our point of views on how people look? Do twenty pounds really make that much of a difference, or is it all in our heads? I personally think it's the latter rather than the former, and while I understand it's all meant well when people say I "look better now", the fact is that I'm not - I'm sick now, and losing weight is negative - and thus I can't help but resent it.
So, okay. Am I overreacting or are we really all just afraid of fat people? Go ahead, tell me.
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But! I have strong feelings about this. In america we have a gigantic weight problem, but it's not just the number of overweight people...it's the discrimination. We changed the limit for what qualified as obese and then ALL OF A SUDDEN more people that were previously 'normal' were now 'overweight', and we had a 'obesity epidemic' on our hands when in fact nothing had changed from the month prior to then.
In the arts it's especially bad. Not only to people assume I am a less competent person (let alone a less competent artist) because I have a 34 to 36 inch waist, they pass those same assumptions on to drawn female characters. I ditched the thesis I wanted to do on my own IP because of this exact issue. One of the core races in my IP is genderflopped, with more traditional male fashion issues (muscles, overweight is ok, etc) applying to chicks and vice versa...aaand I knew that if I brought it into class, I'd be forced to change it. I've seen more females painted in the past six years than males, probably on a 2:1 ratio at least, and of that number I cannot recall one single fat chick that wasnt also old or a villian (Ursula from the Little Mermaid). Not one.
Honestly it seems fat has become a visual shorthand for some type of failing or character flaw- especially for chicks. Of course, individual people can deviate in mindset quite completely from the norm, but, that's the undercurrent I've seen.
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I really do think you got it right, here: Fat has been equated with negative qualities rather than just seen as a physical trait, when it doesn't even make sense for such a thing to happen. I don't really understand it.
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