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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Opinion: Where you going with that size?

by

1273 days ago
20220111

The last time some­one greet­ed me with that abuse I was at a fu­ner­al. I am self-re­spect­ing and grow­ing in wis­dom and diplo­ma­cy, thank­ful­ly. And, as I pro­fess Christ, I al­so try not to re­pay un­kind­ness with like be­hav­iour so I am re­al­ly work­ing at be­ing slow to speak. How­ev­er, noth­ing stops the re­spons­es that be­gin to play in my head.

Be­fore I tell you about those nar­ra­tives, I would like to state em­phat­i­cal­ly that point­ing to some­one’s weight can nev­er con­sti­tute a greet­ing. In fact, un­less you live in a so­ci­ety where it is cul­tur­al­ly pleas­ing to cel­e­brate weight gain as a sym­bol of “good treat­ment,” com­ment­ing on an­oth­er per­son’s weight is un­man­ner­ly, in­sen­si­tive, and un­car­ing. Frankly, it is none of your busi­ness.

Many peo­ple do this. Of­ten I won­der if those who ut­ter the ques­tion are be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly deroga­to­ry of the oth­er. Is it meant to make the oth­er per­son feel in­fe­ri­or? Ashamed? In­sult­ed? Be­cause sure­ly such an ut­ter­ance could nev­er be meant as an ex­change to en­cour­age or prop­a­gate friend­ship and good well­be­ing.

Sham­ing peo­ple who are not what the world has made us ac­cept or be­lieve is the “cor­rect size” is an on­go­ing on­slaught of abuse that re­mains unchecked. Our prej­u­dice about fat, over­weight, or obese bod­ies jumps out of our mouth with spon­tane­ity and a fa­mil­iar­i­ty most­ly be­yond the re­la­tion­ship that we are hav­ing, al­ways leav­ing me be­mused.

And I un­der­stand these prej­u­dices. I have them, too, be­cause I am a prod­uct of the self­same con­di­tion­ing. But I am proud of the in­ner work in which I am en­gaged that teach­es me to see peo­ple’s hu­man­i­ty first. I live in the same world where thin­ness is proud­ly cel­e­brat­ed and the rest of us are ex­pect­ed to avail our­selves to an over­whelm­ing syl­labus of fad di­ets, juice di­ets, star­va­tion pro­grammes, nu­tri­tion pack­ages, et al, promis­ing an easy way to not be fat and to which all my thin friends prob­a­bly think I should sub­scribe.

I am privy to the fact that the weight-loss gu­rus and sci­en­tists for too long have prompt­ed every fat body to be lumped in the cat­e­gories slob, lazy, and a full dozen scorn-filled phras­es that ex­press dis­gust at oth­er hu­man be­ings. I am ev­i­dence of a body that once was the best fig­ure you have seen now rav­aged by ag­ing, cy­cles of ill­ness, and decades of nec­es­sary med­ica­tion with the dis­tinct dis­claimer say­ing some­thing like “25 per cent of users ex­pe­ri­ence se­vere weight gain” where I have had to take a deep breath and vote on the side of pre­serv­ing my im­me­di­ate well­be­ing.

I am not a slob. I am not a glut­ton. I am not lazy. But I am over­weight and it is a con­stant bat­tle that I car­ry on pri­vate­ly. I am a care­ful eater with in­suf­fi­cient phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty (like most peo­ple we know) car­ry­ing the guilt of a weight on the scale that last showed my Body Mass In­dex above 30. I am car­ry­ing an obese weight. I have been most­ly in­doors for two years, like most peo­ple I know, and of­ten take time to ap­plaud my ef­forts to stay alive and as healthy as I can.

When I dress in my finest de­sign­er frock and go out it would be for a solemn oc­ca­sion like sup­port­ing a best friend in a time of grief. I do not take kind­ly to any­one’s abuse. You do not know the trau­ma you cause me by your reck­less, big­ot­ed, nasty com­ment about my “size”(wear­ing your fool­ish grin).

Frankly, we re­al­ly need to learn good man­ners and kind­ness or just stay home with our lousy so­cial un­gra­cious­ness if we can­not con­trol our­selves suf­fi­cient­ly to shut up af­ter our salu­ta­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when we have noth­ing (good) to say.

We do not know what peo­ple are bat­tling, we do not seem to care what trau­mas peo­ple car­ry as they see their own body size por­trayed neg­a­tive­ly. It will do us well to con­sid­er the sta­tus of the world, em­broiled in mul­ti­ple pan­demics of sundry ill­ness­es and dis­eases, and imag­ine it could use less scorn and sham­ing.

So, if you are blessed suf­fi­cient­ly to see me in 2022 please re­mem­ber to cel­e­brate the fact that we are still alive. I have every­thing else I need for now, thank you.

And as promised, here’s what my head did in (qui­et) re­tort as the man who walks with one shoul­der way above the oth­er as­sault­ed me:

1. Where you go­ing with your size?

2. That thing go­ing down by your knee, is that your bel­ly?

3. Since I small you have a “K” foot, where you go­ing with that?

Those were the kinder things that went through my head in my ir­ri­ta­tion.

I keep say­ing wear­ing masks is a bless­ing be­cause I al­so have a face that could cut you down in re­tal­i­a­tion es­pe­cial­ly since that fool­ish ques­tion re­mains a ter­ri­ble trig­ger for me and al­ways leaves me trau­ma­tised.

It is 2022. Peo­ple are dy­ing all around us. Let’s prac­tise cel­e­brat­ing the best in our­selves and oth­ers.


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