Sora's Musings

ever since I had my bros over for a sibling fun night with collective spouses. I asked my brother how his trip to see my grandmother was...and he and his fiancee were talking about how great she is...how she just says it like it is. Then they used the example of my cousin, saying how my grandmother showed them the picture of her wedding dress, (wedding is in 2 weeks) and said "now here is the dress, but picture it 2 x as wide". My brothers all laugh and say how big she is, and I was starting to feel pretty uncomfortable. I get this feeling that people don't think "fat" people should feel proud of how they look, or of what they wear. It feels like there is this whole conversation that sits around the implication that fat people should go out of their way to conceal to the best of their ability their size. Only some dresses are "suitable" for fat girls. I mean it's bad enough to make fun of someone because of their size, but there is this unspoken vibe that feels like fat people should feel ashamed. That pisses me off. Don't get me started on the conversations I have heard about how my cousin is such a pretty girl, but would be lucky to find someone who would want to marry her because of her size. What the fuck kind of comment is that to make about someone? That comment says "you are not lovable because you are fat and therefore your worth is determined by your body mass". As a girl on the plus size of things, I find that offensive. In the extreme.

I was really bothered by my brothers talking about her like that. I wonder, do they think that of me as well, considering I am the biggest person in my family?

I had an epiphany when I was in my 20s. My mom had always told me how fat my aunt was, even when she was young. She had always said that she "ended" up with my uncle because boys didn't want to take her out because of her size. I was going through my mom's early photo albums one day and saw the picture of my aunt at my mom's wedding, and thought "OMG, she isn't fat at all, she was NORMAL". In fact at that time in her life, she looked like a size 10 or so. Beautiful. My aunt did gain a lot of weight, and I always knew her as quite overweight, until she got wickedly sick a couple of years ago and went from a size 26 or something to a size 6. Back to the epiphany..I was just struck by how skewed my mom's perspective was on the weight thing. I was struck by how very judgmental they were, almost disgusted by my aunts fatness. I had always just accepted that before, but suddenly in my mind, I saw how wrong that was.

The concept that someone overweight is unlovable is so destructive and cruel. And seems so false...why do people buy into it?