This week I received this email from a lovely reader, who has granted me the permission to address it publicly.
I am writing you for a bit of advice. I have this friend who is sweet and nice and so many ways, but like so many others she speaks carelessly when making comments about people who are “overweight”. When I bring  to some friends attention attention when they bother me,  they often scoff as if I am being sensitive for no good reason, or acting as if I misunderstood them because they couldn’t possibly talking about me, and I am not the same as those other people because I am pretty..blah blah blah… Calling someone sensitive in this type of situation is just as inappropriate as calling someone insensitive when responding to a racial slur… An attempt to take away their power to feel and have an opinion, and I always get upset and sometimes back down, which isn’t like me at all.
I have written before about how to determine if a friendship is toxic and how to fire a bad friend, but I wanted to address this question on the site because this is an issue that feels larger to me than whether or not someone deserves your energy and time.
Namely, how do we begin to address the insidious nature of sizeism and weight stigma in our daily lives?
When we, as a society, permit ourselves to villainize an overweight faction of the population, labeling them lazy and fat and worthless, or viewing them as a problem to be fixed, we are limiting ourselves. Yes, there are many unhealthy overweight people. There are many unhealthy underweight people.
There are many unhealthy people. Period.
There are many people who are caught up in some facet of trying to achieve the thin ideal, and who are dying trying to become something that they aren’t.
However, it is still politically correct to make jokes and comments about people who are overweight.
It is quite interesting how many people who would never dare to make fun of someone based on their race, ethnicity, disability, difference, or even sexual identity, but they merrily laugh along when someone dons a fat suit or scold their daughter/sister/innocent stranger on the street about their body mass index.
Now, I’ll hop partially off my soapbox to talk with you about the ways in which you can combat weight stigma and sizeism in your daily life.
- You’ve got to stand up for yourself.I know it’s scary. I know that standing up for yourself can feel like shining a huge spotlight on your body, but, you impact the world when you tell others, out loud, that they are offending you.
- These conversations can be uncomfortable. I recommend that you watch this TEDtalk with Jay Smooth about how to talk about racism, which points out the difference between saying “You’re a racist” and “that thing that you just said was racist.” I find this tactic HUGELY useful when talking about sizeism and weight stigma.
- Surround yourself with a supportive community – online or in real life. Find yourself some people who like you just the way you are, and watch how much more comfortable you are able to become in your skin. That comfort level will ripple out and touch all of your relationships. When you speak calmly and with careful intent, you deliver your most powerful message.
- Get media literate. Come up with a few blatant examples that have felt particularly offensive to you, and use them to remind you why it is that you care about this topic.
Try to remember that, for the most part, people are acting out of their own insecurities and body neuroses when they are making statements such at these. That isn’t an excuse, but we can choose to have compassion for them regardless. In a world where everyone wants to say something about your body, it can be difficult not to pick this habit up. Take to reminding them of the reasons why what they are saying is hurtful, and how you would prefer if they didn’t say things like that around you.
At the end of the day, feel free to employ this tactic: Ask for what you need, get what you get, and decide if that’s enough. Repeat twice, and if you aren’t getting what you need out of a situation, determine whether or not it is worth your time or energy to keep trying.
How do you experience weight stigma and sizeism in your daily life? What do you do about it?
“labeling them lazy and fat and worthless, or viewing them as a problem to be fixed” <– It seems that this is the dominant cultural belief, supported by thousands of pieces of marketing to support it.
Perhaps when someone expresses this view personally, it's because they really haven't taken the time or opportunity to think critically about these assumptions. Rather than attack them back because we're offended by this view, why not use it as an opportunity to spotlight even just a few cases in which that cultural assumption flies out the window?
It might not make enough of an impact to change their minds right away, but our words can at least fight it out silently in their brains for a long time to come.
I really responded to what she said about her feelings being invalidated. That is more of an assault than the feeling itself. It’s especially infuriating when someone prods you to share your feelings and then goes on to invalidate them! I tell them I don’t like having my feelings brushed aside. They usually aren’t even aware they did it. If they continue I get away from them fast.
This is a subject near and dear to my heart and one that confuses me. Your suggestions are very helpful, Mara. I can tell you’ve given it a lot of thought and have had a lot of experience with it.
When I’m with a certain friend of mine, I consistently end up feeling very aware of the size difference between us and feeling bad about myself and my body, even though this friend says nothing directly offensive. I bought into the old “I’m being too sensitive” routine, until the day I realized that just wasn’t the truth.
I finally realized my friend is using our time together to make herself feel good about herself and her body at my expense. Is she conscious of it? I doubt it. At least I would hope not. Is it more about her and her conflicted feelings about herself and her body than it is about me? Absolutely. Does it still do a number on me? Yes. Is it acceptable? Absolutely not. It used to be acceptable, but it isn’t any longer. No way.
So what am I prepared to do about it? Well, I no longer agree to do certain things with her — like go clothes shopping. She is very insistent she buy me clothes for my birthday, and I have said no thank you twice.
Once I asked her to take photos and shoot videos of me for my business. Not only was she downright lousy at it (although she thinks she’s great) and erased the best photo of the day by mistake, she was completely insensitive to the torture it was for me — even though I told her it was and why. Twice now she has said quite gleefully how much fun she had that day and can’t wait until we do it again. I told her not to hold her breath!
And the next time she starts to talk about body size and weight and does the make herself feel good at my expense act, we are going to have a very frank discussion. If she gets it, fine. If she doesn’t, then we need to go our separate ways. I’m a very loyal friend, but my first loyalty needs to be to myself.
You know what’s interesting? My friend has always been fat phobic and very prejudiced against overweight people. I wonder how our friendship withstood that all these years? I’m not sure it will for much longer.
Thanks for letting me vent and think out loud. A great topic, Mara.
This sounds very familiar Carol. I have a couple of friends who make me feel very self-conscious. They don’t have a weight problem themselves although one is obsessed with being ‘a fat tub of lard’ (her words not mine) and she is probably a UK size 8! Both me and a mutual (overweight) friend have mentioned that her comments are very upsetting to us but she doesn’t stop. It’s got to the point where I feel like ending the friendship because being around her makes me on edge wondering if she’s going to bring up her ‘weight problem’ again. Glad I’m not alone with this sort of thing!
That is very difficult, Tadeudz, especially when you’ve asked your friend to stop. I know what you mean about being on edge, waiting for the subject to come up. Can’t we please find something else to talk about?
I don’t know the situation here, but please bear in mind that anyone can feel self concious about their body. I wear a US size 2-4 and still have issues. When I bring this up around overweight people, I’m sure they feel awful about themselves because they’re not even close to that. But I really do have the same insecurities and while I’ve almost wrestled them, it’s unfair to assume someone is acting insecure just to make you feel insecure.
Again, I don’t know the situation and am assuming things…I just wish people would understand that we ALL have our issues.
I completely agree. I went from a size 22 to a size 4. I am now an 8/10 depending on where i shop..you all know how that is…I will always have issues. I will always feel on the inside like i am still a size 22.
I get what you are saying, Lauren. My friend does indeed have issues around her size and weight. And that’s why I’ve cut her a lot of slack for many years. No matter what her motives for discussing her weight with me, the fact she does it at all demonstrates a remarkable degree of disregard for my feelings — especially when she knows what a source of pain my weight is for me. So I will tell her what’s going on for me when she does it, ask her to stop doing it, and we’ll take it from there.
I’m glad to see this — I was wrestling with a review of a poetry book last week where I was ultimately not okay with a poem picking on fat Baptists, but simulateneously fretting over whether I was being overly politically correct. (But I opted to comment on my discomfort with the poem anyway, because I figured it would come across as an unwelcome ambush to a number of readers if I didn’t warn for it.
What happens when this person is your family? Your extremely fit, very diligent-to-diet-and-exercise family, who are being not a single bit hypocritical when they say that they’re sure that if people just try harder, they can make it to a lower weight and fitter body and look exactly the size they want to look? (As in, they are trying hard, and they are making it, and they look like they want to look, so they can’t be called on that fact.) My family is the classic “health nut” family — they only eat Really Healthy food; I haven’t seen Mom touch a piece of cake or a candy bar in years; they make comments about my friends’ weight; they say that I would look better if I just lost ten pounds, and say that it’s easy to do so. When I say that I feel sad when I hear that, that I’d rather not talk about all of this, I can manage my health and am a very healthy person at my current size (not particularly overweight), they feel judged and say that they wish they could just talk to me without me getting unhappy at them. What do you do then? It’s not worth dire consequences, but it’s hard to take “Oh, you look fine the way you are,” seriously when they’re judging everyone around them and when they make offhand comments about how I’d look better in that swimsuit if I tried harder.
Oh Ash, yes – what happens when this person is your family. This can be the most difficult and heartbreaking of any size or body related conversations, and unfortunately one that I know quite well. With some, I’ve had to just accept the fact that we are not going to see eye to eye on this issue and essentially forbid them from discussing my body with me or in front of me. While this may seem childish, the feeling of not fitting into your family of origin DOES bring up some especially childish “love ME,” “accept ME” kind of feelings. Be kind to yourself. Fortunately, you are lucky enough to be able to live your life however you’d like, and the stronger you feel in how you present, what your body weight is, and how you eat/exercise, the more impenetrable you will become to these kinds of comments. GOOD LUCK. xo
I agree with most of what you say ..my only problem is when compare the different prejudices. People can’t change their race, ethnicity, disability, or sexual identity. You can however change your weight if you so choose.
Nobody has the right to make you feel like less of a person because you are overweight. I was 220 pounds a few years ago and i remember walking into a store to buy a gift for a friend that was getting married. It was a cute little dress…the sales woman looked scared that i was going to ask to try it on. Then at the checkout she said to me..You know we don’t take returns on clothes you try on at home. I proceeded to tell her a few things..get her name and call the home office. I noticed after that she seemed not to work there anymore..
Hi Vanessa, I agree with you completely that sizeism and weight stigma is different than other prejudices. I bring them up here only to mention that, for many, fat is the final frontier of what is culturally acceptable for people to make fun of or discriminate against. Some people truly cannot change their weight if they so choose, but some can, that’s true. However, it is unfortunate that today, even when we have been able to eradicate so many forms of discrimination, that the bias against people who are overweight is alive and well – gaining in momentum daily.
I know it really hurts me when i hear anyone making fun of someones weight. You only make yourself look bad.
Ugh, yes. This is a topic very close to me because some of the closest people in my life are overweight. I hate when I hear comments and it honestly, no matter how bad it sounds, makes me want to walk up to those ignorant people, grab a body part and ask them why they have any right to comment when they are not perfect themselves. We never know the struggles that others are facing. There are so many reasons for being overweight/underweight, and it’s absurd that there are people making fun of the struggles of others. Saying they’re fat or lazy is absolutely awful. I don’t know a single overweight person who is lazy. I also know several who eat healthier than me but I am still smaller. Many times, it’s just the luck of the draw. And why does it matter anyway?! We’re all beautiful people.
I’ve also been on the other side of things. I’m very much into fitness and at one point had about 17% body fat. I believe this is a little under the healthy range and nowhere near fitness model range, but I was by no means starving myself. Instead, I was eating TONS and lifting weights. I had several people comment that I was anorexic (mind you, I had muscles, not bone!) and that I needed to eat. I was even told that I was “going about this the wrong way.” Who knew that eating healthy and exercising was the “wrong way” to lose weight (which wasn’t my goal in the first place!). It’s just absurd that no matter what , no one is safe from these judgments. The skinny are too skinny, the average are too fat, the overweight are too fat. Where is the line drawn?
I just don’t know what it is about others’ bodies that makes people so insecure.
I – or rather, a good friend of mine, but I’m on her side – is having this problem, only sort of the inverse. She’s very thin – healthy, though. She is active and strong, cooks a lot and eats well (makes AMAZING marble cake), and her whole family is just tall and thin people, so I think a lot of it has to do with genetics.
In high-school (we’re both college students now) people would ask her (jokingly) if she were anorexic. Like, a lot. She was already an insecure person coming into high school because she had been relentlessly teased for her curly hair in middle school, and this just made it worse.
Now she doesn’t get the anorexic comment much, but people have still told her to “put down that salad and grab a burger, girl!” (She’s a vegetarian, so this just annoys her on a whole other level). She is also getting increasingly angry about being told over and over that real women have curves (she has a very straight figure). She once told me, very sarcastically, that she was going to stuff her bra and pad her butt and go as a real woman for Halloween.
She’s a little more confident than she was in high school now, but she still scoffs when I tell her she’s beautiful.
I feel like sizeism can work both ways – really against any body type. Which sucks hard. I have friends who are a little bigger who also experience sizeism, and I try to stand up for them if I’m there when it happens, and I’m sure they would do the same for me.
I sometimes feel like bigger women and smaller women are pitted against each other, so both “sides” have developed “bad things” about the other side to make themselves feel comfortable. :/ It’s a complicated and tricky situation. I don’t really think it’s a fight any woman wants to have, either.
Sorry for going a bit off topic, the friend in question had just talked to me the other day when she was having a rather bad day confidence-wise, so this stuff was still pretty fresh in my mind. I do agree with what you have written here though. Good article.