Disgusted With - or - Feel Sorry For

I think it's the first and second points.

 

More active. They don't watch 50 hours of TV a week.

I think I mentioned this a while back, but I saw more fat kids at Myrtle Beach last year than I have ever seen in my life. We rode the elevator with a 12 year old that was at least 200 pounds and was wheezing after walking from the pool to the elevator. Scary.

 

No fat people in Boulder, CO.

Or for that matter, Eugene, OR.

For the first coupla years we lived here, when people would ask Janelle about Charlotte, she'd answer 'Lots of fat people here.'

 

While this argument probably applies to the vast majority of overweight people, feeling free to judge them this way carries with it the same pitfalls as prescribing completely to any stereotype. When people see really fat people, especially when they're eating, they automatically judge them as lazy. We've been much more conditioned over the years to be careful about judging other people in such a way. For instance, while many of the steroetypes about people of other races may be generally true on average, most of us know that it's unfair to assume those things about any person of another race we meet without having spent time to get to know them. As ecilam also alluded to, we also assume that overweight people are unhappy being overweight. This may also be true in general, especially of the "morbidly obese", but not all bigger people. The diet and exercize thing is also a somewhat sticky issue. A lot of people don't have time or money to do these things in such a way as to help their situation. While eating nothing IS cheap, eating foods that aren't loaded with fat and carbs is not. Finally, doctors are putting kids and adults on mood altering drugs by the scores these days (which is fucked up), and many if not most of them promote weight gain. I have to believe that with such high numbers of people on these drugs, it has to add to the general trend of obesity.

Again, I'm not disagreeing with you, but there are numerous factors out there that can invalidate the steroetype for some percentage of obese people. To me, that's a signal to refrain from judging any of them in the same way I would refrain from judging anyone who looks to have the potential to meet a racial or other stereotype. I think the problem is that people often WANT to assume the stereotype is true because it tweaks their competitive nature and makes them feel better about themselves. It's about the predisposition to judgementalism.

 

if being fat were out of control to certain people, then we would have seen fat jews in nazi concentration camps....I don't recall seeing any, do you?

 

I think if we started making fun of all those other groups too, things would be just fine.

 

What exactly is your point?
If you aren't disagreeing with me, then what are you doing?

 

Please bear with the spirit of what I'm saying here. Starvation and dehydration will always make you skinny. I wouldn't call someone lazy simply because they were unwilling to live like people in concentration camps. Also, I don't think many of them were on Prozac.

 

I'm saying that anytime exceptions to a steroetype DO exist, and in this case we know they do, the error is not in acknowledging that the steroetype is generally true. The error is in assuming it's true of every individual you encounter that looks that way. As a society, we seem to feel more free to do that to fat people than we are to people of different race.

 

Well, this has been an interesting read.

I think what most people don't `get' about overweight people, is that is the result of an addiction. Just like drug addicts, gamblers, alcoholics - there are the same triggers, the same patterns and the same struggle - but with a different `drug'. Whether that addiction is triggered by a horrific childhood, or whether it's a coping mechanism for stressful times - whatever, it's has the same components of any addiction. For those that think this is a bit of a giggle, and have enjoyed sitting back taking pot shots at how they need to get off their bums and exercise - I wonder if you'd do the same to an alcoholic or a drug addict? I guess there is more sympathy to those addictions because people can (perhaps) see that their `thing' probably creates a physical need for more and more. It's not so much that with overeaters, but a propensity to use food as their outlet for the issues that they're facing. The woman with the four hundred pound body has the same addiction as the woman who weighs 125 pounds and chooses to purge her binges and control her addiction through vomiting and laxitive abuse - it's the same addiction. Generally people who are obese tend to know far more about what they should be doing in terms of diet and exercise and the workings of the metobolic system, just like an alcoholic would know about liver damage and what his addiction is doing to him/her.

BTW, I'm referring to women specifically when talking about eating disorders - mainly because women in general have a greater propensity to use food as their dependency - it's not to say that men don't have this addiction.