I just saw your post which makes me so sad. The VP from American Express should have a lawsuit on his hands. But I did want to tell you that there are tons of guys who like fat chicks. Seriously. I get hit on all the time and I’m much bigger than you. A lot of guys tell me that they think the majority of men like fat women but are afraid to be open about it. I think the cultural baggage around women’s sizes affects men too, and when you have a guy like that one on the Wiki answers (moron) there’s a bit of that internalized fatphobia he’s espousing that makes me think, Hmm, wonder what “fat” secrets are his closet? It’s a bit like the research studies that show that people who are hte most homophobic are often the most easily aroused by homosexuality; perhaps that guy doth protest too much.

Be sexy, be fat, I promise there are plenty of men (and women) who want to date you.

Diane

This year I’ve come up against the brick wall of a personal tragedy, and I’ve not been able to get past it by eating my way through. I felt incredibly betrayed when I realized my usual mode of operation wasn’t going to work. I’m still trying to work my way into a normal relationship with food, but I’m having trouble understanding what normal is for me…Is overeating “loving” for a child, but “unloving” for an adult? I don’t know yet…

Anyway, thanks again for this post, it really made me think.

i try to be cofident about myself…but how can i when i look in the mirror and i don’t even like what i see?
i don’t like my size, i don’t like my legs, my arms, my tummy…but i do admit i love my ass..lol…[the reason why i love my ass is because every girl says they have a nice big ass...and i am like puh-lease....my ass is soo much cuter and rounder and bigger and definally nicer then your small skinny ass]
but it’s not like i can just be coffident cause i love my ass…that would just be werid.

“People who take care of themself want to know they are going to be with someone else who feels the same way. Maybe they like the fact that their woman takes pride in herself and has a sense of who she is. Men who are normal find this even more sexy and a turn on. Overweight women, more than a size 10, are often suffering from mental illness or they are lazy with no personal pride. The lady on a man’s arm is a sign of his own self esteem. If she is fat or is obviously older than he is, then the guy has problems. Sorry to sound like a pig ladies but this is the truth. Any man or woman who is not sloppy or a mess mentally wants a person to be with that is like them and men like a nice looking woman on their arm. We are visual creatures.”

I am not fat becuase of being lazy, stuffing my face, or having a mental problem. And I resent being inundated with this crap. A disabling car accident left me with a spinal chord injury and two smashed knees when I was 24. I went from earning a good paycheck to being poor because of the physical disability. Even a college degree earned at age 34 did not improve my chances for good jobs, not only due to the gap in my work history from the accident and years of physical therapy, not only because of the poverty and bad credit that accompanies being disabled without any income, but also because I was no longer “eye candy”. I wasn’t a super thin 21 year old - I was a slightly overweight middle-aged woman, which our society treats as third class citizens because that is deemed “too fat”, “a mental mess”, “unworthy”, and “undeserving” by our society.

It is not only the men who treat fat girls like crap by either totally ignoring us or making rude, thoughtless and abusive remarks which undermine our self esteem (as women of any size), it is also the routine discrimination we face getting good jobs (and then condemned and put down for not being economically successful). If overweight women and girls are a “mental mess” it’s because of the job discrimination, plus all the emotional and verbal abuse we get daily across the board because we’re not able to be thin and “perfect.”

I’ll never forget the VP of American Express Financial who was chomping at the bit to hire me when I told him I already had all the licenses and credentials plus the university degree in mathematics, only to have him treat me like crap when he saw me in person at the face to face interview - he wrote “DO NOT HIRE - TOO FAT” on the top of my resume. Although that was not the only job I got denied for no reason other than my body size, it was the one where the interviewer was actually blatant enough to write that where I could see it in plain sight.

Of course, there is never any sympathy for us from the thin, beautiful “perfect” people for their mistreatment of us. We’re somehow always expected to just suck it up and take it. They say, “Do something about it. Join a fitness club. You can do something about your figure, etc” without realizing that when you’re unemployed and poor, you have no money to afford to join a fitness club…let alone afford a house in the suburbs with a pool in order for an overweight person with a spinal chord injury to be able to swim and thus get the only exercize they can.

When thin people say they resent the anger and attitudes from overweight people for accusing them of starving themselves and being rude to them, have they ever thought about how they treat overweight people? They don’t stop and think how we’re sick of hearing that the reason we’re fat is because we’re lazy, can’t put the fork down, etc. I eat less than 1,000 calories a day and NONE of it is junk food! I can’t afford to eat expensive organic stuff, so I have to make do the best I can - and that means being stuck with the meats and veggies that is infused with growth hormones because Monsanto knows better than Mother Nature. And you cannot tell me that growth hormones in foods has no bearing on alot of people’s weight problems! Yet, it’s the fat person that gets shit on, not “Big Ag” giants like Monsanto.

I have suffered from unwarranted abuse that all overweight people get when we try to “do something” about our weight - like being run out of the fitness club by those with the attitude of “how dare you bring your fat body into the gym where I have to LOOK at you!” My accident left me unable to bicycle and walk any distance. I cannot stand for any length of time. The only exercise I can physically do is swim. But when you’re financially limited, you can’t afford your own pool (or a fitness club membership). So just how am I supposed to be able to “do something about my figure” since I am not one of those who is lucky enough to be naturally skinny as a rail if, I as a fat girl, am made blatantly unwelcome at the local fitness club? Even before my accident 17 years ago, I was never skinny. So what am I now that I am no longer the young 21 year old who could fit into a size 10? The WikiAnswer above which mirrors men’s and society’s judgment of me says exactly what I am - and it doesn’t matter that they’re the ones who are f’d up in the head. Majority rules.

I’ll never forget the abuse I got at the local YMWCA that I belonged to briefly by the athletic gym jerk type of people who rudely complained to my face in front of my husband. They said that they couldn’t swim in the pool and get their laps in because his fat wife would make splashes too big while swimming. I was teaching my husband how to swim and we were sharing one lane in the lap pool and none of the other lanes were occupied at the time. I am supposed to take this kind of crap and then be told how considerate I should be of not hurting skinny people’s feelings? What about MY feelings for once?

I have already accepted the fact that I’m not desirable or attractive to 90% of the male population out there and therefore can’t take my pick when I’m a “non-person” who is ignored or reviled by men and therefore stand very little chance of ever “getting lucky”. But dammit I AM just as deserving of a job to support myself and the ability to participate in society as all the thin beautiful people out there, including being able to swim at the local fitness club and I am tired of being denied fair treatment, consideration and respect as if I was less than human.