Rant - Treatment of Obese people

I am sure I am not alone here but I am getting sick and tired of it being okay to be discriminated against for being obese.

It seems it must be human nature to have a group of people we make fun of and it is politically incorrect these days to make fun of anyone else so now the new group is anyone who is overweight.

In a single night's TV watching I can easily count 10 or more fat jokes.   It wouldn't be so bad if they were based on any facts at all.   If they, for instance, showed a fat person having problems running or climbing stairs. Those are pretty real.   But, inevitably they are showing or speaking about a fat person sitting around doing nothing stuffing their face with doughnuts and assume that all overweight people do nothing but eat all day long. 


I personally experience discrimination for being obese all the time:

• I have had sales clerks ignore me.
• I have had waiters give me the smaller portion (trying to help me I am sure).
• I have also had the opposite where when someone at the table turns down the free desert waiters assume I would want it and just scoot it over to my area.
• I often have teenage kids laugh, point or make snide remarks.  
• Just last night I went grocery shopping and had a group of kids behind me make mooing sounds.

I live with this all of the time.

When did this become acceptable???

The thing that irritates me about this ridicule is it in unfounded.

We don't all sit around all day eating.  I actually think I ate too little for the past decade or so and that was keeping me obese by messing up my metabolism.   I would skip breakfast and lunch most days.  I would then eat an unhealthy dinner full of carbs and eat it too late but overall I would still consume fewer calories in a given day than my thinner friends.

I also didn't just eat bon-bons or doughnuts. 

I actually was on a health kick a few years back where I didn't eat anything from a box or a can for almost a year.   I still try to limit my intake of chemicals.  That doesn't match the picture portrayed by Hollywood and being propagated by the general public of overweight people living on ice-cream and potato chips. 

The same rules we now live by in other discrimination / prejudice areas should apply to this area too.   Don't assume that someone who is overweight just sits around eating all day.  Don't assume they are lazy.   Basically, don't assume anything.   Get to know the individual.

Because of this type of treatment, I went through about 5 years where I suffered pretty severe anxiety. I even had a few out and out panic attacks.

I had a time where I left a party at a friends house and went running to the car to lock myself inside.  No one had said anything or done anything but I felt like they were all staring at the whale and judging so I freaked out and left.  My poor husband was so shocked and so was my friend, they had no idea what happened or what they should do.

Remember the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you and remember to be kind. Your judgment may have an effect on people way beyond what you can imagine.