I have been fat nearly all my life and the one thing that annoys me most (apart from my size 20 (UK) clothes) are the people who discriminate against 'big' people.

I read in a newspaper article a while back that 'big' people are far less likely to get a job if they are up against a 'normal sized' person. ETC ETC....

I have seen first hand that when you are big you are treated differently in society, in my opinion we are sometimes seen as being intelectually slower than 'normal sized' people or sometimes we can be seen as being lazy etc..

I believe that society should not be allowed to discriminate against obese people just as you are not allowed to be racist or discrimitive against people's age, sex etc..

Over here in the UK there are some NHS hospitals that will not give some treatments to obese people because they are obese!! It is disgusting. My mother needed an urgent scan and she was in an NHS hospital for 1 week. The nurse asked my Mum how much she weighed, soon after this each day the scan was cancelled (without explanation) I believe it was because my mother was classed as obese. Also people who need hip operations etc.. are being turned down because they are classed as obese (this particular lady was 14 pounds overweight)

We need to stop this discrimination now, obesity is a illness that is affecting more and more of us, we should all live in harmony no matter what we are like on the outside.

Lauren xx

been thin.... been fat...........working on getting thin. close but not there yet........... what i noticed when thin 1. all men go out of there way to open doors for me and offer to do things for me. 2.some women seem to not want me around. like they are on the hunt for a man and dont want any women around that are prettier....... what i noticed when fat.

1.some men open doors, some men pretend they dont see me. 2. most women dont consider me a threat around there boyfriends or husbands so im safe and therefore , welcome..........

interesting cat- I have been fat and thin as well- my experience is that both men AND women treated me better when I was thin. I grant that some of that is because I felt better and was more confident thin. There is a girl I work with that is much heavier than me, but she is so beautiful and she shines from the inside and everyone loves her.

been thin.... been fat...........working on getting thin. close but not there yet........... what i noticed when thin 1. all men go out of there way to open doors for me and offer to do things for me. 2.some women seem to not want me around. like they are on the hunt for a man and dont want any women around that are prettier....... what i noticed when fat.

1.some men open doors, some men pretend they dont see me. 2. most women dont consider me a threat around there boyfriends or husbands so im safe and therefore , welcome..........

This has been the case for me as well. I have been thin before, in fact I weighed less than my current goal weight is. I have found that men were much more courteous to me. As I got to my heaviest, it seemed I wasn't even in their realm.

Recently however, I have noticed a lot more chivalry amongst them. How can one explain that?

As for women, I find that they didn't mind being my friend when I was much larger, but the more I lose weight, the more these "friends" are distancing themselves. I wouldn't say it was anything else other than I am getting smaller, more attractive and much more confident. Some women find this a bit intimidating.

However, there are still a few who look positively to my new changes and welcome them. This is how I am beginning to see who the true friends are.

Do you know, the longer I've been normal weight, I"d have to say I've felt FAR more discrimination as a thin person than as a fat person.

Sad to say, in an outer suburban group of stay at home mothers, I fit in more at a BMI of 35. Now, although women are friendly and I have friends at school, I"m the "skinny" one. There is a certain amount of envy, lots of those "oh, but YOU dont have to worry" comments, assumptions that I wouldnt know what its like to have to fight my weight, assumptions that I do it without having to work at it etc.

Its not nasty discrimination, nor problematic and it doesnt upset me, but its definitely there. I've never been morbidly obese, but in this neighbourhood, being quite fat is the norm.

I dare say it will be different again when I return to work and join a different socioeconomic circle. Its definitely not the same at uni, amongst the 20 year olds, lol.

When I was in my mid-40's, divorced and weighing about 160, my father said to me, "If I saw you in a bar, I would walk past you."

I replied, "One, you won't see me in a bar and Two, I'd be happy that you would walk past me because that would help me to separate a real man from an asshole."

Story 2--at a family event last year, my mother wanted to take pictures of the family (father is deceased now). I whined about hating to take pictures (I now weigh 200) and she said, "When you lose weight and look at the pictures, you can say, 'Ooh, look how fat I was!'"

Discrimination instead of unconditional love. I pray for them anyway.

The band is going to be for ME and MY HEALTH! No other reason!

I replied, "One, you won't see me in a bar and Two, I'd be happy that you would walk past me because that would help me to separate a real man from an asshole."

Plus incest is illegal. :cheers2:

Seriously, parents can be so weird sometime. I'm not sure why they think this stuff is motivating, but I think they do. My mom would say things to me when I was growing up like "You'd be such a pretty girl if you'd only stop biting your fingernails." As if feeling bad about myself was going to get me to stop.

They made similar comments about my weight. And what gets me is that I wasn't actually overweight at the time -- at least not according to those BMI calculators.

Edited March 22, 200818 yr by MacMadame

I answered no because if you have confidence in yourself, and the job you can do, you will be hired.

you can have all the confidence in the world, but if they don't want to hire you, there is nothing you can do to change thier minds. currently i work in a field, actually i was orginally hired as a "girl friday" (basically office help), where i see many business owners who did not hire me. and now that i am saving the company at least $30,000 in payroll alone(by doing the job of more than one person), i hope they are kicking themselves.

confidence can be an awesome tool, but confidence doesn't change one's perception if they have a discrimination against anything. do you seriously think that a confident black man in 1950 stood a chance against a white man?!?

Oddly enough the thing I find the most interesting about being fat is the fatter you get and the more space you actually take up the more invisible you seem to be. You can't get help in stores, men certainly ignore you but also women. I just think it is so strange the opposite of what you would think. :crying: It really pisses me off sometimes. I want to scream.....yeah you know what I am still here!!

If you think about it everyone who is overweight has felt discriminated at some point by either others or themselves they just have to stop to think about it. Consider this if there was no weight discrimination then there wouldn't be so many words to describe weight. I always hate looking at the BMI because I work so hard to loose weight and I feel isn't it bad enough that I am overweight I mean why do they have to add all these degrees of fatness. I mean overweight, obese, extremely obese, morbidly obese and now new bariatric journals are adding a new category called super obese. I have losted 100 pounds and are still considered morbidly obese how is that for motivation.

Jessica

Jessica

Hang in there! It is terrific that you have lost 100 pounds. You are doing terrific. Hopefully you are no longer super morbidly. In two more pounds I won't be morbidly obese any more. Hang in and keep doing what you are doing. You are doing the right thing!

It's so true. I am a very confident girl, whether fat or thin, and I've been both. When you are thin, you see how some thin ppl treat fat people and many of them mock fat people and totally discount us regardless of how cool we are.

You can have the best self esteem in the world. If a person hates fat people, it won't matter what kind of job you do or what kind of person you are. It's like racists & homophobes don't recognize the accomplishments of people they hate, even if they are Oprah Winfrey or Calvin Klein.

Its good to have high self esteem, and when the haters treat you badly, just ignore them and realize that they must be really unhappy in their own lives to spend their energy on hating others.

you can have all the confidence in the world, but if they don't want to hire you, there is nothing you can do to change thier minds. currently i work in a field, actually i was orginally hired as a "girl friday" (basically office help), where i see many business owners who did not hire me. and now that i am saving the company at least $30,000 in payroll alone(by doing the job of more than one person), i hope they are kicking themselves.

confidence can be an awesome tool, but confidence doesn't change one's perception if they have a discrimination against anything. do you seriously think that a confident black man in 1950 stood a chance against a white man?!?

U know I have always said that FAT People are not treated fairly. It is not only African American people, Gay's, Lesibans, Bi-Sexuals, the Poor, It's Fat People also. One thing that I have and will always live by is no matter how skinny, or fat you may be, or how long or short your hair is, how small or how big your lips are or how tall or short you may be some one some where will always find something about u that they don't like... So who gives a damn.... When i use the toliet i wipe my own backside and down that crap goes right along with their opinion....

Originally posted by mstrina27

U know I have always said that FAT People are not treated fairly. It is not only African American people, Gay's, Lesibans, Bi-Sexuals, the Poor, It's Fat People also. One thing that I have and will always live by is no matter how skinny, or fat you may be, or how long or short your hair is, how small or how big your lips are or how tall or short you may be some one some where will always find something about u that they don't like... So who gives a damn.... When i use the toliet i wipe my own backside and down that crap goes right along with their opinion....

__________________

It is true I used to work face to face with the public and if you did not give them the answer they wanted you could see them looking at you to find something wrong with you so they could insult you with it. Once someone could not think of what to call me so he called my a child abuser. I did not even know that the child existed LOL

As obesity rates continue to rise in the U.S., so might our acceptance of those who are overweight. But a new study from Yale University suggests the converse trend: rather than feeling tolerance in our society, the overweight and obese say they feel more heavily discriminated against now than they did a decade ago.

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<!-- End Article Side Bar --> Led by Tatiana Andreyeva, a postdoctoral research associate at Yale's Rudd Center for food Policy and Obesity, a team of researchers questioned 1,100 subjects, aged 35 to 74, twice over a 10-year span (once between 1995 and 1996, and again between 2004 and 2006). The respondents answered 11 questions about whether they had been discriminated against in the context of common life experiences — including applying to college or for a scholarship, renting or buying a home in a neighborhood they desired, applying for a bank loan or dealing with police. Participants answered nine additional questions about everyday experiences, such as how they were treated in restaurants, and whether they had encountered name-calling, harassment or threats. The subjects were asked to indicate the reasons they felt they had been discriminated against (facing police harassment, for example, or being denied bank loans), whether it was because of age, gender, race, height or weight, physical disability, sexual orientation or religion. Between the two survey periods, the rate of discrimination due to height or weight increased from 7% of respondents to 12% of respondents. (The scientists determined separately that the people who reported discrimination due to height or weight were also more likely than other participants to be overweight or obese.)

The study is one of the first to track patterns of discrimination based on weight. It's worth noting, however, that the survey relied on people's own perception of discrimination — the authors did not require the subjects to document bias in any way. In addition, the authors found that rates of discrimination by age and gender also increased in the same time period, suggesting that several forms of bias — or perhaps sensitivity to perceived bias — is on the rise overall, not just against the overweight. Nevertheless, the study did track the same population over time, and Andreyeva says that an increase even in people's perceived sense of maltreatment is an important measure of our society's attitudes. In this report, weight ranked third behind age and race as the most common form of prejudice. "If a person perceives he is being discriminated against," Andreyeva says, "it might have significant consequences for his or her health and mental health. Even the perception of discrimination can be important because it is self-perpetuating." And if rates of weight discrimination are indeed on the rise, say the authors, then it's up to society to mandate legal protections for those who are overweight, just as laws protect people from discrimination by race, gender, disability and age.

I believe there will always be discrimination against fat people. I am in the dating world and even at my age (43) I still meet people who just don't like (can't tolerate, are disgusted by) overweight people. It is horrible, I wonder what their parents were like to make them be so ignorant. It is like they think a fat person is stupid, lazy and "why do they let themselves be so disgusting)? I have a young friend who talks about fat people without thinking that it might hurt my feelings, but I make a point of calling her attention to it and she always tells me she doesn't think of me as being like "them" but when she brings up something about someone fat, it is like she is repulsed. I always tell her it is mean, and ignorant. I try to appeal to her sensitive side by sharing how hard it was to grow up heavy and how mean people can be, but she might be too far gone to change. People are mean, and trying to meet someone (blind date, etc) is awful cuz you just don't know what someone's perception is like.

I know it's an old thread but I had to add this.....

Turns out there's at least one (but if you read the comments, probably several) bridal salons out there who "don't dress fat brides" (their words) as a matter of store policy. Apparently having a larger woman wearing a dress she bought at your store gives you a bad image or something....

Vendornistas Jan-Jun 2005 Archive