Standing Up for Yourself

I came across an article on Shine from Yahoo titled "Overweight and Proud : Standing up For Myself." I'll admit I wasn't looking for anything having to do with weight loss or plus sizes, a link from a Blake Lively photo shoot took me to the site and I just happened to find the other article.

I'm not going to recap the whole article for you, but the gist of it is that this writer, an overweight woman, was ridiculed at the grocery store for being overweight. Specifically, someone yelled "Lose some weight," as they passed by in the parking lot. The writer decided to confront the shouter and the article basically concludes with the idea that she was proud for standing up for herself.

So I got to thinking about how I felt regarding this situation. Luckily, the only time I was ever ridiculed for my weight was during one of those weekend long super important football games in college, by a very intoxicated sorority girl who then proceded to fall in the middle of the bar and get kicked out. So I can't say that I have ever felt the rage that this writer must have felt towards the stranger who embarrassed her. Skimming the comments in this article makes me see that we still have a long way to go with fat discrimination and that standing up for yourself, no matter what you look like, is something you can and should be proud of.

Many of the commenters in the above article are saying things like, "Yeah, that woman was rude, but you shouldn't be proud to be overweight, it's unhealthy." Well, what do they know? How do they know that this extra weight is actually unhealthy on her frame? How do they know she's not already working out, already eating healthy? And so what if she's not doing any of that? What if she is choosing to be the size she is?

Why do people assume that because you are overweight you are ashamed of it? I know exactly what contributes to my extra weight. It's my love for ice cream. And everytime I go to the doctor I ask if I need to lose weight and they tell me not if I'm exercising already, which I am. So, why should I convince myself that I'm not ok when everything points to that I am fine?

If you saw someone with pink hair covered in tattoos, would you feel compelled to yell something at them? If you saw someone dressed in religious clothing you were unfamiliar with, would you feel compelled to ridicule them? Hopefully most of you are thinking that you wouldn't, but the woman who yelled at the writer of this article probably does all of that. Some people just can't tolerate anything different from what they consider to me the norm. The fact of the matter is that this intolerance doesn't only have to do with your weight. It goes much deeper and expands much broader. Intolerance is ugly. It makes you much uglier than 15 extra pounds. If I have to choose between being intolerant and skinny and the way I am now, I'll take an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.