I'm NOT fat

[TheJollyPostmansWife]

Name change as about to give all details as too late to text friends for advice. Visiting DHs family today, out for lunch where I had a prawn salad. After I finished I reached over to nick a bit of my dds bread and as I did so My DHs grandmother piped up 'not watching your figure then?'. This is not the first time she has been rude about my weight and to be honest I am really pissed off. We see them very rarely and I don't think she has any right to make personal comments at all - last time she said something she suggested I would lose my looks and therefore my husband if I carried on the way I was. I don't think it's important as I don't think anyone should comment on others appearance but for context I go to the gym 3-5 times a week, walk the dog at least an hour every day and see a personal trainer weekly. I am five foot one, 9 stone 3 and size 8. I'm not normally so sensitive but I don't want to see the woman again, she is elderly and not in good health and adores my dds. Aibu to refuse to see her? I would never stop the dds but we live the other side of the country which is obviously limiting.

it wouldn't be well received if I posted pics because it would be seen as showing off - If you posted them as a reply to a comment where someone claimed BMI 20 must be unhealthily skinny and borderline underweight then I don't think this could be considered showing off in any way.
Might get a different reaction if you posted them with a comment 'Yeah, pff, BMI 24 fatso - but see how much prettier I with a BMI of 20 look!!'

And I agree there were some comments on the other thread saying the woman was unhealthy and too skinny. That's a minority opinion though, she looks fine and healthy to me and of course it's normal that you can see the ribs. Most people objected to the slogan.

laser the thread had moved on to personal comments other people had received on their size of a fat shaming nature, hence why skinny bashing came up. Although there were one or two, which as per expected didn't exactly see a mass of posters piling in to say how unacceptable it was.

proteus tbh if it wasn't for the fact it would be somewhat outing, the fact I'd be slated and judged wouldn't put me off posting pics if I thought it would add anything. Although it's not exactly necessary, there's plenty of threads where posters are piling in to criticise people with either my physiche or body fat levels. On a personal level it doesn't effect my self worth, it just pisses me off in a general 'who gave you the right to judge' way. And most importantly, I don't want my dd growing up in a culture where insulting her body type is seen as an acceptable way to boost the confidence of other women.

Lurked, I said that commenting on a woman's appearance whether it was chiding her for eating, going on about her tiny wrists or shouting out of a car window at her was not acceptable. The person in this thread who has made the most judgemental comment about another poster's size was Proteus when she jumped in to announce apropos of nothing that she'd calculated the OP's BMI and she was close to overweight and that if Proteus had the same BMI she would weigh eleven and a half stone - the implication being that such a weight would be quite shocking. As I have already said on this thread, im sorry for anyone who has received unpleasant comments about their weight and body and I'm sorry you have experienced posters on MN doing the same thing. It hasn't happened on this thread though so I found the implication that we would all pile on Proteus if she posted a picture but fawn over an overweight person's picture to be unfair and unfounded.

Proteus, I've never been bothered by other people's bodies tbh (I don't mean that horribly in an "oh, my mind is on much higher things" sort of way, I genuinely am not affected or bothered).

I always notice if someone with my body type looks amazing though (I am a Jennifer Lopez sort of shape), and then I feel better about having a big ass & hollow back

I think I was about 30 when something just clicked and I was suddenly comfortable in my own skin tbh.
I'm 41 now and after a couple of years of sickness & massive weight gain I'm hugely overweight, but I really am not bothered - I'll get back to a happy size at some point, but it's not a priority right at this moment.

Katharina yes, I agree it would be less relevant - it just struck me how nice it would be to have those sort of affirming comments that were posted in response to Heidi's pics, which in turn made me think about how that would be received on this thread if i (or one of the other posters with a lower BMI) did it.

I certainly wouldn't be posting anything to say "look how pretty I am!" - trust me, that's far from my view of myself (not in a 'get out the tiny violin' way but I really don't have that sort of relationship to my own appearance)

Laser "The person in this thread who has made the most judgemental comment about another poster's size was Proteus when she jumped in to announce apropos of nothing that she'd calculated the OP's BMI and she was close to overweight and that if Proteus had the same BMI she would weigh eleven and a half stone - the implication being that such a weight would be quite shocking."

That is not a judgemental comment - judgemental would be if I said "and that would be disgusting / ugly / horrible".

It's factual.

I was one of the first posters on this thread and was responding to the thread title "I'm NOT fat" and did the BMI calculation to check my intuitive sense that 9 stone 3 must be overweight, or very nearly, for someone of that height.

I'm much taller and weigh about the same so I don't have an immediate idea of what the healthy weight range is for someone of 5 ft 1.

It wasn't 'apropos of nothing' - it was a response to the thread title and the opening post.

Mango I wish I had that ability to be genuinely not affected or bothered like that.

I have never been upset or disturbed by images of models. I have however felt like utter shit on beaches when I realise that the often-repeated cliche about how "models are unrealistic and airbrushed" covers up the inconvenient truth that there ARE girls and women who DO look like that in real life .

Proteus, you imagined how people would respond to pictures of someone with a lower BMI but your imagined response does not seem to bear any relation to what has actually been posted on this thread. You have no reason to assume that posters on this thread wouldn't have made affirming comments, no one on this thread has criticised a slim shape.

Laser Yes, it was my imagination. But based on some real posts - such as Garlic 's responses to Lurked above, about her 'privilege'.

I take your point though. You may be right.

laser that's what I was trying to say, obviously not very well , my comments on skinny bashing weren't inspired because I thought everyone actually discussing it was doing so, it was just to illustrate that it's just as rude and judgy from the other end. Just like nobody on this thread said they shout fat comments from car windows, but other posters mentioned their experience of it because it was relevant to the way the discussion was going. Sorry if you thought it was directed at you, it certainly wasn't.

Although I disagree that proteus was judgemental, and even if you are of the opinion she was, then there have been far nastier comments, one about hoovering up bread springs to mind. And one about jutting bones and actually eating the other way.

Garlic said she was privileged to have a shape deemed more desirable than others. That in itself doesn't seem insulting to me - people do generally prize height and slenderness in women. That doesn't mean I would assume a tall, thin woman is happy with her appearance or that she has an easier life. I'm not sure about the discussion of privilege in general. I would count a naturally slim body as a blessing like I count my good skin as a blessing or my health or my hair colour or loads of other things about my body that I'm happy with and grateful for. I'm more inclined to agree with your earlier analysis of privilege applying to race, gender etc - we could end up with some ridiculous 'privileges' if we start extending it to every aspect of someone's life and appearance. I think it's a term which is being overused and misused a lot at the moment.

All of that said, I still doubt Garlic would have made harsh or judgemental comments if someone had posted a picture of their own body with a BMI of 20.

Back to the OP, I would take MIL's comment as a dig at your table manners. To me it's plain rude to take food from someone else's plate like that, regardless of whether they've finished or not. To do it when eating out would just annoy me no end.

Laser Garlic's post had a bit more to it than that, there was definitely an undertone. I won't hypothesise about what she might or might not have said though - I accept that was at least partly me imagining things - just a sense of how I felt about the 'atmosphere' of the thread.

That doesn't mean I would assume a tall, thin woman is happy with her appearance or that she has an easier life.

This is really important, I think.

I don't know how many people are 'naturally slim' - in the society we live in, being slim for most people is hard bloody work. I know it is for me -
I have never been one of those people who just 'forgets to eat'! - and I think that's part of why some slim people get upset by the denigration of slim bodies - because we sacrifice a lot to get them.

We say no to food even when we're hungry, we go to the gym when we'd rather veg on the sofa, we do worse...

I think there's a sense of resentment that fatter women can enjoy both the immediate pleasure of eating, and then subsequently get loads of praise, sympathy, support and affirmation from other women.

(I am slightly tipsy so sorry if this is not well-phrased.)

But often eating isn't a pleasure when it's accompanied by self-disgust, shame etc and it can become an exercise in self harm in itself. Having had beautiful, slender friends wracked with awful eating disorders and struggled with despair about my own eating and weight at some points in my life I can appreciate just how hard we can all be on ourselves - and often on each other. That's why the point I wanted to keep making upthread was that we are all poisoned by a culture which keeps on judging us, finding us deficient in one way or another and keeping us at each other's throats instead of being able to see past our own feelings, our own pain and resentment and support each other instead of sometimes falling into sniping and spite. Which is why I don't like that bloody beach ready advert and I don't like people telling someone off for having a slice of bread and I don't like someone dismissing someone else as salad-obsessed or not a 'real woman' or whatever other horrible stuff people can come up with. It's shit!

While I think people like Heidi look fantastic and would kill to be toned, I have to say that we - as humans - are not very good at making judgements on sizes. We have been affected by seeing bigger people and we normalise it. The BMI range is what it says on the tin, a range. Some people look good at BMI 24 and some people look unhealthy. I look fat and flabby because, due to my health, I can barely walk so I need to be lower in weight to look slim. I am a couple of stone at the moment, so I'm not stealth boasting about my weight.

However, evidence shows us that fat shaming makes it worse. We should focus on health and fitness, not weight loss and looking good. I know that when I'm not overweight, I feel more confident which encourages me to wear nicer clothes, not massive sack cloths. Nobody has the right to pass uninvited comment on how you look.

laser while I agree with most of what you say, I don't give a toss about the beach body advert (horses/courses etc.) and I don't think we should lose sight of the actual bad effects of being overweight/obese.

Things like dementia, cancer, heart attacks etc. are real, and that the UK population is getting (much) fatter is also true. Whatever people say about 'fat shaming' it's not very powerful compared to the forces acting the other way.

The 'fat acceptance', 'health at every size' etc movement are not doing any good. They are encouraging people to give in to temptation and to endanger their own health (and yes in many cases their appearance too).

I have a friend who got sucked into the 'fat acceptance' movement when she was only a bit overweight - she ended up at 22 stone. She then lost 8 stone through Overeaters Anonymous and ended up completely calorie-obsessed and crippled with anxiety about eating at all.

the right path is incredibly difficult to find but I don't think that the automatic response of "of course you're not fat! of course there's nothing wrong with eating whatever you feel like!" is helping anyone either

Again, not an attitude I've seen expressed on this thread.

I disagree with what you say about health at every size. To me it's being able (for me personally) to be both obese and fit. That I'm entitled to go to the gym and exercise and still strive to be healthy despite my BMI or what I weigh

proteus for me it's the other way. I don't work at it, it's just how I am. Dd is the same, as were past generations. I do eat more than most people as it is, but food in itself doesn't interest me except for hunger. So eg tonight I've eaten what most people would consider a family size bowl of potatoes with dinner, on the other hand I recently threw out some biscuits which have been in the sideboard since xmas, because it never occurred to me I fancied one till then. My appetite just self regulates to my needs, and while I do count that in itself as a blessing, it makes it a major struggle to gain weight after illness, because I forget to eat if not hungry, or have better things to do. So when people tell me I'm too thin, they are telling me I should change a natural part of how I am, when I can't change it anymore than I can change my eye or skin colour. Gain half a stone back when needed, yes, hit a bmi above 19 in pregnancy, yes, have none visible bones, the odd wobbly bit and double the width of my frame to something deemed more acceptable for someone of 6', no, won't ever happen. It's like telling a greyhound it should eat more and stop running so it can look like a retriever, it's futile.

I've been away but Proteus, once again you are picking your own interpretation from posts. I was saying that nobody said that the picture of the slim woman was fat shaming. I never contradicted you about negative opinions being expressed about her body.

I mean this in the nicest possible way but I think for your own benefit you might be better off avoiding threads on these subjects, you sound overly judgemental and obsessed and you've said yourself that you have struggled with an eating disorder. If I were you I'd be staying well away from engaging in such discussions

hollinhurst of course you are just as 'entitled' to go to the gym as anyone else, and I wish you well with your exercise etc., but that doesn't take away from the fact that obesity is dangerous to health, and it's wrong to promote it to people and to encourage it in others.

laser on every thread I've ever seen about weight, the OP is always told she is fine no matter what, and anyone who disagrees is always shouted down in the most vicious way - this is true even if the OP (unlike this thread) is dangerously overweight/obese.

what is wrong with a bit of reality in these discussions?

Lurked you are one of those 'naturally slim' people - good luck to you (and a bit of envy) I realise it's not the same for everyone. But a lot of women work really hard to not be fat. It's so easy to be fat in the world we live in.

But there's obese and there's obese. There is the can't get off the floor or out of bed obese and there's goes to the gym and eats well obese and lives a perfectly healthy normal life

there ARE girls and women who DO look like that in real life .

Yes there are Proteus, and they are bloody mesmerising when you see them sometimes!

There are just so many body types though and each one has its pros & cons.

A very few women are naturally perfect, the rest of us should embrace what we have.

Like I said, I have always had a disproportionately big bum with a hollow back - I have large upper thighs even when mega fit, and bigger arms than I'd like; but I have an almost perfect hourglass shape, nice boobs, good legs from the mid thigh down. And I like my face.

Proteus, every thread about weight on this site is always full of people who are more than happy to inform other posters that they are fat. Always. There is a huge amount of judgement directed at overweight people on here. People discuss the health consequences of obesity on this website all the time.

And an awful lot of women work very hard not to be fat and fail over and over again, which is soul destroying. They aren't chomping cake in a carefree fashion, they are struggling and fighting themselves all the time.