Project 365: Day 53 — Fat Isn’t The Worst Thing You’ll Ever Be

Today is a particularly funny day to write this because today’s the day I asked my cousin, a nutrition expert for advice about losing belly fat. I’m not fat by any stretch of the imagination. For context, I’ve been thin for most of my life and have only put on weight in the last few years. I am 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weigh 72 kgs currently. There used to be a time (6 years ago, to be precise) when I used to be the same height and weigh 46 kgs. Yep, you read that correctly! I might have gotten a little ahead of myself when I said I wanted to put on weight (I’m 7 kgs over my ideal weight). But in much of the world, being fat is a HUGE deal. My part of the world is no different.

My mother for instance, frowns every time she sees my belly. Today she pointed to a fat character on television (a stereotype: fat characters are often loud and unwittingly funny) and said, “Look how fat she is!” And here’s my problem, the bulge in most people’s mind isn’t a problem because it bothers them that the person in question might not be healthy. It is a problem because belly fat (or any other kind of fat for that matter) looks ugly. To be honest, I am sick and tired of everyone I know (family included) talking about being fat, as if it’s the worst thing in the world.

So I’m making a list of things that are worse than being fat — mostly because I need to channel my anger somewhere. Things that get my goat, things that I call people out on and things that people say that really make me wish I could shove something down their throats just to appreciate the silence that their fat-shaming whining robs me of.

Here are a few things, in my opinion, that are wrong with you, if all you can see about people is “the fat”. Apart from being fat, here’s what makes you a terrible person.

1. Calling an overweight person “ double seat” is worse than actually being fat. It’s telling of the kind of person you are though when it’s probably the first thing you can think of saying when you think about the “fat” person.
2. Picking on someone, judging someone for their appearance, the way they dress is an actual problem.
3. Judging someone based on how many previous relationships they’ve had is a problem. Ditto, sexual partners, sexual orientation. To each his own isn’t just meant for lip service.
4. Judging someone (there’s probably at least one such moron in your extended family too) based on their religious affiliations and god forbid if someone in your family married someone from another religion and it (gasp!) failed. Blame the spouse’s religion then! That makes you a worse person than fat too — if you are so soft in the head as to think religion and where a person comes from has everything to do with what went wrong in a relationship.
5. Pointing out to people that they’re fat, they’ve put on weight and they should do something to lose weight in a not-so-subtle manner all the time isn’t appreciated. The person in question is fat, you know, not blind. They know they’ve put on weight and were probably not as concerned about it (which is fair, given that they would think they’d have other wonderful qualities aside from being fat), until you pointed it out of course. Stop thinking you’re doing them a favour and shut up!
6. Body-shaming women: I have lost count of the number of men (and women) who think a hot body is the evasive thing everyone should be after. If you think so, fair enough, but don’t shame women who don’t believe that into thinking they need to lose weight. The reasonable standards for beauty that you need to conform to can be set only by you. Please stop telling other women they need to “maintain their figures”. I actually had a cousin saying that to me on social media when he saw my picture. Again, I was so surprised because I find it absurd that having known I’ve been a skinny, underweight, sickly-looking person all my life, he’d find it so awful to see me having put on weight. I made it a point to call him out on his narrow-minded thinking and he justified it by saying that broad women don’t look nice. Not for the first time in my life have I felt the strong urge to hit someone older than myself. The other pet peeve I have is how pregnancy fat is supposed to lend a wonderful glow to the mother-to-be in question and everything before and after is more or less a big slap in her fat face. I have had people joke to me about it and my hand itches to meet their faces, really.
7. Expecting another person to dress a certain way, dress up for other people makes you a worse person than fat. This in particular applies to those wonderful promoters of patriarchy who think daughters and daughters-in-law are living versions of mannequins who need to be dressed-up or else face the wrath.
8. Expecting real people to have bodies like models or whatever other garbage people seem to idolize these days. If you’re really into fitness, it makes sense if you’re willing to put in the effort required to have that kind of fit body. But saying you want these qualities in your partner is bordering on ridiculous. The strange thing is people actually look for these qualities in partners. I myself have ogled at Kit Harington of Game of Thrones on multiple occasions but I know the difference between reel and real. It puts undue pressure on the person you’re asking this of. It also impacts their self-image in the worst way possible. I think it’s worse to be making someone feel bad about themselves and the way they look (which they really can’t control beyond a point).
9. Thinking people are expected / obligated to do / refrain from doing certain things because of their genders is on my list too. Who made these rules for what man and woman must do? What stops people from running their own lives and making the rules? Nothing, it would seem.
10. People who treat daughters and daughters-in-law, sons and daughters differently. I’m not even talking playing favourites or affinity. I’m just talking about treating people fairly, equally.

That was my rant for today. If you’ve made it to the end of this, thanks for reading!