Why is it Acceptable in American culture to bash Overweight Women?

[Bullet1987]

Really. Is it the whole beauty thing with women? People hide behind the guise of caring for people's health, when I highly doubt that's the source for all the attacks. If you care for someone's health, the worse thing to do is belittle and mock them. Would you attack a man with heart disease or diabetes? Or an STD? So why is it ok to attack overweight people? Not to mention it's always overweight WOMEN...not men.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. In this country when you are a woman, you are not allowed to be overweight or over 35.

Maybe it's 30 now . . . It's like a personal failing to gain weight and/or grow old.

[Cleita]

4. +1

[tonysam]

5. It is as much ageist as it is sexist.

Even though weight gain is natural and a part of aging, you have the medical establishment in cahoots with the media and the diet industry creating a hysteria over an "obesity" crisis.

The "crisis" is a way to medicalize what amounts to prejudice against people different from themselves.

[Mari333]

11. Im almost 60 and I cop a fukcing attitude

American society always tries to pinhole people into categories

rebel. and fuck em

Im getting old and they can kiss my proverbial ass if they dont like old people.

[leftofcool]

21. +1000

[hfojvt]

41. some old women are well liked

from ABC news yesterday - Granny D
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/doris-haddock-granny-champion-campaign-finance-reform-died/story?id=10063925

[Warpy]

12. And how! Both are seen as moral failures

and absolute proof a woman is of an inferior economic class. In addition, weight issues prove that a woman is morally lax (never mind medications or metabolism), and if she's morally lax in one area, she's morally lax in all of them and you can be sure she's worthless.

Plus, she's female, meaning she gets bashed every way people can think of the second she sticks her nose outside her front door.

[bluethruandthru]

15. +1

[Cleita]

2. It's sexism, pure and simple.

Guys just laugh at other guys with pot bellies like it's all jolly like Santa. But they are really mean when it comes to women.

[cutlassmama]

58. +1000

[Cid_B]

78. I get on both sexes equally for fatness...

... At least I'm equal opportunity.

[shraby]

3. It seems that something about society requires that

someone has to sit at the back of the bus. If they can find a personal flaw to chew on, it appears to give a lot of them a feeling of superiority. Nothing more, nothing less. It's all about feeling superior to someone else.

[gateley]

9. Agree -- well put. nt

[liquid diamond]

6. We live in a superficial country.

Why do you suppose women are flocking to get breast implants, botox, and nose jobs? That being said, I don't think it is only overweight women that suffer from attacks. Women are just as mean and nasty as men. They just aren't as overt and vocal about judging physical appearances.

[Echo In Light]

14. _

k/r

[Hello_Kitty]

32. Nice attempts at equivalence but fail.

Women "flocking" to get Botox and breast implants is just more evidence that we're under more pressure to look a certain way. Women being capable of being mean and nasty and judgmental too is beside the point of the OP.

[Mari333]

7. men get attacked, too, but I know what you mean

I saw it once on the beach last yr..a bunch of young 20 something guys making loud remarks about a young woman on the beach

of course I, as an old woman , got up in their faces and told them, very politely

"listen you lowlife limpdicked little bastards..you say one more mean thing to that girl and gramma will have you singing soprano in no time flat..now, Im going to call the police"

they ran really fast. I hugged the girl and told her not to listen to the assholes.

call it out when you see it. carry mace. or a taser. or a ballbat.

I hate mean remarks like that but they need to be called out.

[Maru Kitteh]

16. BRAVO! Very well done and good for you! More people need that kind of courage!

[leftofcool]

22. You go granny! You sound like me!

[MindPilot]

35. Yes, threats of violence. Always appropriate when man-bashing.

How very progressive of you. :eyes:

[Hello_Kitty]

42. Seriously, what kind of world is it when men aren't free to berate women in public? eom

[MindPilot]

70. What the hell are you talking about?

I'm going to assume you are being facetious or ironic...or something.

[devilgrrl]

74. So, if someone was demeaning a female friend or family member in your presence - you'd do nothing?

Perhaps you wouldn't threaten to turn them into castrati but I'd doubt you'd stand there and do nothing.

[whathehell]

88. Good on ya, Mari333 !

[NoNothing]

8. I'm mystified

Why you think fat men are never bashed either.

[rcrush]

10. So no one makes fun of fat guys?

I'd like to invite you to go back to my high school years.

Where a lot of the people who make fun of fat guys are girls.

[snooper2]

13. of course not...

Rush Limbaugh hasn't been called a fat pig here say around 47 million times :P

[n2doc]

23. And both Obama and W are said to have favored "fit" advisors

KKKarl excepted. I remember reports of W giving his staffers a hard time about being overweight.....

[Missy Vixen]

47. If that is true, maybe I should have voted for someone else

If President Obama doesn't want the fat around, I'm sure someone else would have liked my vote, along with the oh, half of American women over a size 14.

:eyes:

[LanternWaste]

61. I don't see that the one denies the other..

I don't see that the one denies the other... :shrug:

[ixion]

17. for the same reason that

- we work people to death
- treat old people like garbage
- throw non-violent drug users in prison

We have a remarkably cruel culture, IMO.

[Sultana]

18. Stop acting like America is the only country with this problem

[FarCenter]

20. Other countries admire stout women for their ability to pull a plough

[Zywiec]

29. LOL

:rofl:

[lbrtbell]

19. Men are bashed, as well

Rush Limbaugh comes to mind (not that I pity him, because he deserves it for bashing others). Anytime any celebrity gains significant weight, they're bashed. It's just that female celebs are usually strikingly attractive when they first become famous, so the difference between that mental image and the overweight reality is more glaring, than is the case with male celebs. (If Christopher Walken gained weight...who would care?)

It's more about how attractiveness is valued in this society, rather than sexism or weight.

And if you want to see a group of people who are REALLY shunned by the public, try child/teen stars. Look at recently-deceased Corey Haim, who wasn't able to transfer teen success into adult success. Hollywood history is filled with dead and/or drug-addled adults who were famous as kids, but nobody would hire them when they grew up.

And they can't help growing up, whereas the vast majority of overweight people can exercise and eat right to regain their healthy weight.

Which reminds me, I've got to get off the computer and go exercise. I've gained some extra pounds, and don't want "chubby" to turn into "obese" any time soon. :)

[Hello_Kitty]

36. Nice try.

Anytime any celebrity gains significant weight, they're bashed. It's just that female celebs are usually strikingly attractive when they first become famous, so the difference between that mental image and the overweight reality is more glaring, than is the case with male celebs. (If Christopher Walken gained weight...who would care?)

Nope, nothing to do with sexism. Not at all. It's just that, well you know, it's different for women.

:rofl:

[sinkingfeeling]

24. I tell my 40 yr.old son to lose 50 pounds every time I see him. He has health problems and looks

sloppy.

[Scout]

26. has he started to avoid you yet? n/t

[PassingFair]

84. I certainly would.

Seriously.

I hope he's joking....

[seabeyond]

27. i wouldnt be coming to visit mama if she told me that everytime i visit. geeez. nt

[eShirl]

30. Does it work?

[sinkingfeeling]

49. He's lost around 10 pounds.

[pnwmom]

50. If he has, it's DESPITE your nagging, not because of it. n/t

[sinkingfeeling]

53. Of course, you're an inimate member of my family and understand the dynamics of it much better than

I do!

[pnwmom]

54. He's a normal human being, right? And an adult? He knows what he needs to do

without your help. If he's purposely losing weight, it's because he decided to, not because his Mommy told him to.

And you said he "looks sloppy." That doesn't sound like you're speaking from the goodness of your heart. It sounds like you're embarrassed by him.

[sinkingfeeling]

57. Got any children, adult or not? I raised my son on my own since he was 10 months old. It's been

just the two of us for a long, long time. I really know my relationship with him. What I can and cannot say to him and now he will react. And he did acknowledge that I was right. That his appearance was getting 'sloppy' and that he needed to lose weight. I sincerely doubt if there are many mother/sons any closer than we are. He's truly brilliant and we have discussed/argued every subject in the book since he was a child. I know why he packed on the pounds in the first place. Do you?

[Zoeisright]

68. Wow. How dumb.

And cruel.

[pnwmom]

71. Yes, I have two children who are adults and I respect their right

to run their own lives without unsolicited advice from me -- much less, an admonishment to improve every time I see them!

You say, "It's been just the two of us for a long, long time."'

Sad for him, if it's really true. A forty year old man should have a richer life.

[sinkingfeeling]

86. Glad I didn't have such a hateful mother.

[Hello_Kitty]

38. How's that working out?

Can't imagine why your nagging and shaming hasn't caused a behavior change in him.

[slampoet]

89. So you admit to abusing your adult son in public. What further proof do we need that the US has an

attitude problem?

[Alias Dictus Tyrant]

25. Because it is visible. The same applies to men too though.

[Hello_Kitty]

40. Um, you mean because women are valued primarily for their looks?

I love how people come up with so many variations to say exactly that while pretending that's not what they're saying.

[Alias Dictus Tyrant]

55. It is more about bashing people for things they are perceived to have caused.

Obese women are "bashed" because they are obese, presumably as a consequence of their behavior, not because they are women.

That said, I agree that more value is placed on a woman's appearance -- both by men and women -- such that equivalent unfavorable attention is perceived as worse. There are similar asymmetries for males where equivalent facts are perceived much more negatively for men than women.

[Bluerthanblue]

67. word up-

it's an ugly truth.

[PVnRT]

60. Not even close to the same degree

[Peacetrain]

28. You want to hear bashing of women with weight issues.. go to France

Wow, they really are harsh over there..

[seabeyond]

33. ahhhh. i thought europeans were perfect and we all wanted to be them. nt

[Peacetrain]

34. I have lived overseas..Lovely people, lovely place.. Just as many problems and prejudices

as we have here.

[eShirl]

39. Not all perfect. Rememebr Europe brought us the Inquisition, Hitler, and discotheques. n/t

[KamaAina]

31. Beats me.

As a rather large man, I'd much prefer to "pick on someone my own size" rather than someone "starved to near-perfection" like James Cameron's trophy wife.

[treestar]

37. I don't think it is limited to American culture

I get the impression it goes on elsewhere, too.

People just have to feel superior to others. Or at least a great number of them do.

[flvegan]

43. It's not. n/t

[Lerkfish]

44. I beg your pardon. As an overweight MAN, I get plenty of bashing.

I'll agree with you that women may get more, but to imply we get none is simply wrong.

[chrisa]

45. Misogyny

We're supposed to pretend that misogyny problems don't exist anymore, even though they're right in front of our faces. It's everywhere - even in the judicial system.

[Missy Vixen]

46. Oh, this will end well

:popcorn:

Thank you, though, for hitting the nail on the head: It's NOTHING to do with "health". It's all about boinkability.

Women who commit the cardinal sin of aging or gaining weight are open season for those who believe it's just fine to kill someone else's soul.

There, I said it.

[laconicsax]

48. I blame the Patriarchy.

[reflection]

52. The pastryarchy?

:shrug:

[laconicsax]

66. Close, but no.

[reflection]

51. Because it's also apparently acceptable to bash overweight men.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Next.

[Hello_Kitty]

56. Bullshit. Kevin Smith was treated like a hero on DU during his feud with Southwest

A few "health" concern troll comments but nothing like the vitriol strewn when the subject is a fat woman. Also, no one accused Smith of "whining" when he complained about his treatment by the airline but that's what fat women are doing, apparently, when they report a doctor who makes offensive comments to them.

[reflection]

59. I remember DU coming down on both sides of the Kevin Smith issue.

Just like they'll come down on both sides of this one, and the next one, and so forth.

Some people hate fat men.
Some people hate fat women.
Some people hate fat people.
Some people don't hate any fat people.

And so on and so on.

[Hello_Kitty]

63. Right, maybe 3 negative comments to 97 positive ones in those threads.

The reverse was the case in threads about fat women (and it's ALWAYS women) being verbally abused by doctors.

I'm fucking tired of having to acknowledge that men have it hard in some ways when the topic is about discrimination women face. No discussion about women's issues can proceed unless every man who shows up to remind us that "teh menz have problems too!" is reassured.

[reflection]

64. Meh, if I said that men were victims of something,

you can bet there would be plenty of "but, women" responses as well. No matter what the subject.

See the "Every year X men are raped in prison" thread for a nice example.

In any event, GD is pretty simple. Everyone gets a say. If the OP wanted an echo chamber with viewpoints that don't vary, this should have been posted in the Womens Forum.

[guitar man]

62. I don't know

But I think it's callous and cruel to bash anybody because they're overweight, female or male. We all have our flaws, everey one of us, even the so called "beautiful" people.

I've been married to a "fat" women for 18 years. She's big, she's bold and she's beautiful. Anybody that want's to be cruel about it can just go suck on it :grr:

[upi402]

65. +1, and men - all wrong IMHO

Commercials are the worst for both of those. Overweight Americans are victims of advertising and big agra. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqQVll-MP3I

[kctim]

69. I adore overweight women

probably a little too much.:loveya:

[troubledamerican]

72. Woman-bashing or man-bashing, I shrug and say: "You've got serious personal issues."

That's all there is to it. Stand up & fight for the underdog -- whenever it's a woman, whenever it's a man -- and then move on.

[SmileyRose]

73. Society beating up on fat people turned me anorexic.

As I've said here before, I'm an anorexic. I'm reasonable healthy now but still underweight on the charts. My body image is A LITTLE more realistic than it used to be, and regardless of how I FEEL about my appearance I have learned to judge my health by the cold hard facts of the scale - not my twisted subjective view of myself. I religiously follow the eating and exercise plan and fight off the view I'm a fat pig every single day.

From my earliest memories I can remember people getting made fun of for being fat. From kindergarten class to overhearing the man next door belittle his wife in public because she was gaining a little weight while pregnant to a life of TV and radio where any woman bigger than Twiggy was without value.

I almost died because society is all twisted up.


However, I have to respectfully disagree that it's only the women who get slammed. Generally, overweight men are held in higher regard than women, but that's only because men in general are valued more than women - at least as far as the job market is concerned. But in every other facet of life I think the overweight men fare about the same --- and I must point out that even on the DU Rush Limbaugh is belittled on a daily basis about his weight.

[Maine-ah]

81. and on the flip side of it

I see plenty of bashing of skinny women on DU too.

My anorexia was caused by depression. When I'm depressed, I don't eat. I was at 97lbs, 15 years ago. I have gone up, and gone down this roller coaster. I am currently maintaining 110lbs. :hug:

[JI7]

75. on DU it's mostly Rush Limbaugh who is attacked for being fat

[carolinayellowdog]

76. It's ego-driven, status insecurity

I recently saw a thread (not here) in which well over a hundred posts replied to an inquiry along the lines of "would you do it with a fat girl?" Some were positive or at least humane, but a horrifying percentage were so hateful that I'm still pissed off about it. As a skinny gay guy I have no stake in this. But the repeated "eww, yuck" that some straight young guys insist on expressing at the mere mention of gay sex seems to come from the same ugly inner place. Sex with the appropriate partner elevates your status, about which you're insecure. Even the thought of sex with an inappropriate partner-- one who might cause you to lose status among your peers-- provokes such feelings of insecurity that you have to reassure yourself with loud protestations that you'd NEVER screw ANYBODY who might not meet collective standards imposed on you by peer pressure, advertising etc.

[raccoon]

82. Great post. nt

[Lyric]

77. Because regardless of how liberal we think we are, we like to be self-righteous

just like everyone else--and the only people left that it's "politically correct" for liberals to bash are the obese. There's a psychological reason for it, of course. We try to cloak it in concern-troll language about "health" and "concern for resources," but really, we're just id-driven animals who resent the hell out of them because somewhere deep in our reptilian brains, we believe that they're taking food that's meant for US. Combine that with a deep resentment that someone else is living a happy life outside of the rigid beauty norms of the West (beauty norms that other people have literally DIED trying to uphold), and you have a recipe for bashing.

And we liberals are OH so crafty about cloaking our true motivations--even from ourselves. We always use the PC "escape hatch" qualifier: "Oh, I know that SOME people can't help it. SOME people have medical reasons." But that never stops us from feeling disgust, does it? We certainly never give people the benefit of the doubt. We CLAIM to acknowledge that some people are fat due to causes beyond their control, but we certainly don't act like it. It's like we believe that there are maybe a scant handful of such people in the world, and our odds of running into one are so low that we feel no guilt at all about insulting, degrading, and dehumanizing fat people at will.

It never occurs to us that the kinder, fairer course of action is to give people the benefit of the doubt. It never crosses our minds that destroying someone's sense of self-worth and making them feel guilty just for EXISTING is incredibly counter-productive to any "health" related goal. We don't give a shit that our cruelty tends to drive stress-eaters right back to the food, and also tends to make obese people MUCH less likely to feel safe and comfortable exercising in public. No, we don't care about actually HELPING obese people. We just want our god-given right to insult them about their size, their smell, their unattractiveness, their ugliness, their selfishness, and their perceived greed--and we get PISSED if someone dares to imply that we're doing something wrong.

Self-righteous judgement: it's not just for Freepers anymore.

[timtom]

79. I have never bashed overweight women.

(Not that the rest of America doesn't.)

I have found so many of them to be incredibly beautiful in so many ways.

[AngryAmish]

80. Have you ever been to China?

People don't like overweight people.

[Odin2005]

83. It's because in our society women are expected to be as thin as sticks.

Us guys are allowed to be fat as long as we have a "good personality" and lots of money. With women, if you wear a size 10 or more you are declared "fat". :banghead:

[xiamiam]

85. another sad commentary on our culture..mostly because of media hype

and their spoon fed illusion of what is beautiful...for example, yesterdays front page at huffpo had a shot of kendra (one of hef's girls) calling her post baby body 'culture shock"..poor girl has nothing between her ears, although she looks good...and most probably could not define culture shock with a gun to her head..we celebrate the outer shell instead of the inner being..sad sad sad.

[Threedifferentones]

87. Huh?

What's your evidence overweight men don't get picked on? That you're not one, and so you don't notice it?

[Last_Stand]

90. I agree with many posters here...

there are many cruel, sexist, and hateful aspects to our culture.

These aspects are perpetuated and encouraged by both sexes, but I can safely say that it originates from the patriarchy.