Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

[shylock]

I have a question.

Healthy and ugly are often very very different. As is ppointing out a fact "she is fat") and having any value judgement attached to it.

And in terms of beauty...what about the (cliched, in this context!) Rubens paintings, or Lucien Freud, or Bacon? Fat is considered ugly in none of thier works. And this clearly demonstrates that the perception of fat as beutiful or ugly is not an absolute standard but a shifting one.

It's just the opposite, Anna. People in this country (and in the West generally) are obsessed with 'fat' being equated with 'ugly'. I'm all for political correctness if it means that my 5-year-old (who was weighed in school yesterday and was just below the 25th centile for her age, though she is around the 50th centile for height... in other words, she's as skinny as a rake) doesn't go around saying that she's fat . It freaks me out when she says that. Thankfully, she also eats like a horse, so I'm not desperately worried for now. But where has she got this idea that she's fat from? Not from me... I won't have a scales in the house! She's got it from people who think that looks are everything.

Mind you, in general, I think that political correctness (aka not hurting people's feelings unnecessarily) is A Good Thing!

Sorry... was disagreeing with Anna there, obviously. Am totally with Blu on this one.

I need to be more precise.

When I say "fat" I don't mean a couple of kilos here or there on a healthy body (and we do have quite good - and getting better - information about healthy body weights, look at the WHO website if you want more info).

We all know that there is an epidemic of obesity in the UK. When I talk to doctor friends of mine who deal with obese patients, the issue they have the hardest time dealing with is patients' perception of their obesity. They live in a world where there are so many fat people around them and it is considered "bad manners" to point it out (though I consider it very good manners to comment on people's weight and health, and this is true in many societies) that they have literally no clue about how distorted their bodies have become.

Anna, you really think it is good manners to say 'you are fat'? Would it be equally good manners to say 'you are stupid' or 'you smell'?

What utter tosh!

Anna Rubens models would have been described as morbidly obese had they lived in our times - but that does not necessarily make them ugly.

What some of you call "good manners" and "not hurting other people's feelings" is just cultural convention. The big problem with not telling the truth and creating taboos is that ignorance and denial set in place, both of which are far more detrimental to human progress and happiness than the very momentary pang of realising that everyone can see you've gained 3kg.

I always comment on people's weight and health and so does everyone I know around here. Totally standard behaviour and keeps us all slim and healthy.

What on earth are you wearing that everyone can see you've gained 3kg?

Seriously, Anna is a parody or something, yes? I hope?

Well frankly I rate social skills and kindness and consideration for others way above any notion of physical beauty.

I'm not sure I'd like living in Anna's world - it just seems so 'ugly'!

Whereabouts do you live Anna?

Paris.

Do men comment on each other's weight, too? Or are they spared the delights of such honesty?

Tosh Anna - that does not keep people thin and healthy. France is one of the highest users of weight loss surgery in Europe. People are going through a lot of pain to conform to a hideously distorted idea of what is 'beautiful' in France.

NQC - jeans and a shirt most days, like lots of SAHMs.

Freud doesn't pussy-foot around with a couple of kilos!
I think there are two (probably more!) comnpletely different issues here. One to do with perception, discernment, ability to look, understand, appreciate and sensorially experience beauty, and one to do with facts, manners, and minding one's own business! (and I agree with Soapbox. the degree with which someone can discern where the boundaries of manners and minding your business fall has a great deal to do with beauty of spirit!). It doesn't mean that people should be brainwashed into bellieving they are seeing something they are not...and in the case of people with body-image problems, i would think that that is far more to do with more complex psychological processses than the fact that people ae too politically correct to say they are big. In fact i was of the understanding that fat people endure a ceaceless parade of comments from strangers pointing out that they are fat.......

What is the opposite of inner beauty, I wonder

Men definitely comment on each other's weight. My partner has lunch with friends most days and they always comment on each other's weight.

I actually feel that there is the opposite problem in that people don't realise how beautiful they are and that is ver ys sad

there is a female artist whom somebody might know as I have forgotten her name who paints self protraits i think of obesity..interesting work from the nineties

Your dh and his friends always comment on each other's weight? Are you serious? And this is a healthy environment for your children? Sheesh.

My children (age 5 and 6) always comment if I get a spot ('Ugh! Mummy... Why have you got that big red blob on your face?') and often say I'm fat. They tell me if they don't like what I'm wearing (most often not pink enough for them) and comment on my hair (too short, not enough potential for bunches/plaits/other girlie styles).

Perhaps Anna is still in the Infants? Because her sense of what it's appropriate to comment on seems to have stopped developing at age 7!

Indeed Tamum - horrible, horrible, horrible.

Oh Anna, I am very tempted to lay aside my cultural conventions of 'good manners' and 'not hurting other people's feelings' and tell you truthfully exactly what I think of you in the hope that it will lift you out of ignorance and denial with only a momentary pang.

Methinks anna has gone a bit native