The Word "Fat"

[undrcovrbrothr]

Yeah, whats not to like about sluts??
Though, remember, a slut is for xmas NOT for life!! [/
LOL

In that case, it gives "Christmas in July" a TOTALLY new meaning!!!!!

I have been called fat before... three guesses as to why! LOL Just kidding... actually, those who try and use it in a NEGATIVE way are usually lacking something in their life, so I ignore them and just think of it in the way it should have been- Rubenesque, thickness that we all crave.... bootyful, phat, lots of loving beauty... mmm, mmm, mmm!!!!

There, I feel better

 

[TallFatSue]

Are you able to sit out on your patio without the college guys next door laughing at every move you make and snickering while chanting 'lazy FAT f*ck' every chance they get?

Personally I like the word "fat" and find it so liberating to use it about myself. I also think being fat is very liberating, because it lets me shatter so many pre-conceived notions, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Thank goodness I rarely hear comments like that. But every once in a while it happens. Yesterday on my way home from work, I stopped at a grocery store, and some teenage boys thought it was oh-so-funny that a fat woman was actually buying food! "She's so fat, she'll eat everything in the store." Apparently they thought "fat" = "deaf" too, because their comments to each other were just loud enough for me to hear, probably per their intent. "Is that a woman or just some fat-ass FAT f*ck?" FAT FAT FAT. And they couldn't even think of anything original to say! It burns me up when our society takes a perfectly good word like "fat" and stomps it into the ground.

What to do with a bunch of adolescent hyenas following me around? It's probably counterproductive to confront them with my usual witty retorts, but because they just wouldn't get it. So I pretty much ignored them, walked tall and smiled as per usual while I boiled inside. I made occasional eye contact to try to kill them with kindness and show their remarks had absolutely effect, so no response was probably my best response. But if an entire shelf fell over and buried them alive, it would have been soooo satisfying.

Finally one of them gave me just the opening I needed. "Man, if I was as fat as that fat bitch, I'd kill myself." So I let 'em have it with my greatest gleaming smile: "You say it, but you won't do it! Do it now! Or aren't any of you dickless wonders man enough?"

Believe it or not, that actually shut them up, and they couldn't get away from me fast enough. I hate situations like this, but sometimes ya just gotta deliver a verbal kick where it hurts.

"And victorious on the field of battle, Amazon Sue added a chocolate fudge cake to her spoils of war..." :eat2:

I ate the whole cake last night too. Comfort food.

 

[IrishBard]

Fat is a description, and thus should be no more praised or maligned that the words Spotty, Meek, Thin, Big headed, Long haired or Gangly.

I say should, but that doesn't mean they are. Like so many things in our society, words at twisted into double-edged swords for bitching. Calling someone fat is akinned to punching their sainted mother. it's ludicrious.

 

[Tad]

Believe it or not, that actually shut them up, and they couldn't get away from me fast enough. I hate situations like this, but sometimes ya just gotta deliver a verbal kick where it hurts.

"And victorious on the field of battle, Amazon Sue added a chocolate fudge cake to her spoils of war..." :eat2:

I ate the whole cake last night too. Comfort food.

As usual Sue, your ability to handle people wisely while also treating yourself kindly has me seriously impressed. Couldn't rep you right now, so just to say sorry you had to deal with the hyenas, but I think you handled it about as well as could be done.

 

[Redhotphatgirl]

Okay, I can see it your way, however...do you KNOW me? Have you walked in my shoes? By this I mean have you ever walked out to get in your car to see the word FAT spraypainted on your car in HUGE BLACK LETTERS? Are you able to sit out on your patio without the college guys next door laughing at every move you make and snickering while chanting 'lazy FAT f*ck' every chance they get? Have you NOT been invited to your only brother's wedding because his fiance didn't want to be embarrassed by the FAT sister??? Don't tell me the word FAT is just a word, because to ME it is a vile disgusting word. And the last time I looked I had the right to choose which words I use to describe myself...and FAT ISN'T ONE OF THEM!

I am so sorry. But you know what I am fat fat fat fat I use the word all the time and i see people cringe and i smirk....how would you describe yourself if you dont take the word back the world will continue to kick you in the ass.

 

[Redhotphatgirl]

I guess i have learned to say it so often i just dont care. I say things like my fat butt wont fit in this armed chair to the dr. staff, the drugstore staff, the dentist. I also say please I am a fat girl. Do I look like I / am going to do that b/sit there or c/really care what you think?

OMG the whole world can see if your fat. And you know what I am. Just like I am smart. I am tall. I am redheaded. I am freckled.

I say fat is where its at and I am there baby.

 

[fatgirlflyin]

the word "fat" didnt do all those things to you.. ur size and shape did.

No, her idiot neighbors did.

 

[Tania]

I'm gonna preface this by saying that my interest and experience in size matters is political and personal, not sexual.

It really depends on the context. Among other "fat" or fat-friendly people, it's neutral-to-positive shorthand drawn from our common experiences. In those instances, I accept it and sometimes even use it myself.

In general, though, I don't really like it. At worst, the term is offensive as shit, so it's not exactly practical in general company unless I attach a huge size acceptance disclaimer (which isn't exactly "hearts and minds" material, either). At best, "Fat" is such a broad and subjective category that when used as an adjective, the term isn't really all that useful to me. I can find other words and phrases that are more descriptive of the individuals at hand, nine times out of ten.

I'm pretty size-blind when it comes to other people (particularly women - I accept large men as normal and good, but I'm not sexually attracted to them), so I'm a lot more likely to notice and remark upon the luminosity of their skin, the kindness in their smile, or the wit in their banter than their size or the abundance of adipose tissue on their person. And as someone who has struggled with fatness in herself for most of her life - coming to terms with what it is and what it means - I have as little interest in glorifying it as I do in vilifying it. I just want to get past it.

While I don't necessarily want to be thin, I do not want to define myself or others by our fatness, either. I see it as unnecessarily separatist beyond a certain point. Ideally, I would like for bigness to be normalized to the extent that it is politically irrelevant.

Anyway. At the end of the day, word reclamation is just semantics. It may be therapeutic for us to salvage the hateful terms for our own use, but to salvage the hateful terms for society, we have to exorcise the hateful thoughts behind them. You can't fully reclaim the word "fat" until it's actually okay to BE fat.

 

[Hathor]

The word used to bother me a lot when I was younger because I had such low self esteem. My mom would throw it around in such a way that it was derogatory towards us both. Now I love it. I use it all the time and I notice that some people cringe when used.

When people, mostly teenage boys, try to make me feel bad by calling me fat I just turn around and say, "I know. Thanks. Durrrr.... Not the sharpest tool in the shed, huh?" It still kind of hurts to hear people say it so mean like that because of my old getting bullied school days, but at least it means I'm not invisible. =D

 

[Ocean]

Over here in the UK they're running a campaign to help get kids fitter, and there's a couple of really preachy animated adverts to illustrate the point of sitting around or eating too much. They show arteries with little splodges of fat dotted around, and then the word fat in big squishy letters, dripping and oozing like it's supposed to be from a horror movie. I know the intention is good, but that has to feel awful for any kid who is overweight.

As other people have said, it's society and the media that have made fat close to being a swear word. It's stupid, but I try not to use it myself, if I had to describe a fat person to someone else (I end up describing people a lot in my job) then I try to use <i>everything/i> other than their size. 'The blond in the green jumper' 'The man with grey hair'. It's silly, I just don't want to end up offending them, or anyone really, by bringing size into the equation, since it's almost taboo now.

 

[TallFatSue]

Over here in the UK they're running a campaign to help get kids fitter, and there's a couple of really preachy animated adverts to illustrate the point of sitting around or eating too much. They show arteries with little splodges of fat dotted around, and then the word fat in big squishy letters, dripping and oozing like it's supposed to be from a horror movie. I know the intention is good, but that has to feel awful for any kid who is overweight.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!" D'oh! Oh right, UK, pardon my French ( ) I mean "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

To show how little has really changed in nearly half a century, those of us "of a certain age" were traumatized as girls by another anti-obesity campaign that backfired. In 1961, President Kennedy and the President's Council on Physical Fitness were alarmed that our nation's youth were too fat, so they tried to make all the schoolchildren do more daily exercise. That led to the song "Chicken Fat" written by Meredith Willson and sung by Robert Preston (both of "The Music Man" fame).

WARNING: This toxic song will weasel its way into the deepest recesses of your mind! The horror... the horror...

Chicken Fat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af2j59zzX3Q

Some of my older friends and relatives said it was a form of daily torture until the schools began to face rising mutinies and finally gave up. An older cousin of mine said high school during the Kennedy fitness craze was an ordeal because she was hounded by a physical education teacher/tyrant and never really got over it. She couldn't understand how we could beat the Soviet Union by being good at volleyball, pushups and situps, but it was unpatriotic to question that mentality.

I was only 4 years old in 1961 and not yet in school, so luckily I missed the full brunt of this assault on our nation's fat, but I was caught up in its reverberations a few years later. That might partly explain my low self-esteem as a girl. Methinx in high school a decade later I had that same cruel phys ed dominatrix, who confirmed our suspicion that she was psycho when her husband committed suicide and she had a nervous breakdown. A tragedy to be sure, but it was one of many pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of my life that made me realize that maybe the problem wasn't really me and my expanding fat. Maybe attitudes were more important.

It may be therapeutic for us to salvage the hateful terms for our own use, but to salvage the hateful terms for society, we have to exorcise the hateful thoughts behind them. You can't fully reclaim the word "fat" until it's actually okay to BE fat.

But it IS okay to be fat, at least the way I handle it. My husband handles my fat too, as often as possible. :smitten:

Maybe I'm a special case, but those teenage hyenas a few days ago reminded me how rarely I actually encounter disapproval about my weight from the general public. Obviously my size is the first thing people notice about me, but I seem to project an attitude that gives me special dispensation to be fat. To paraphrase a positive Rodney Dangerfield, "Wow, she sure is fat! But on her it looks good!"

Well if I'm only deluding myself, I hope I can keep it up.