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Article: Don-t-Let-Weight-Bias-and-Discrimination-Ruin-Your-Self-Esteem
I am obese.
It hurts me to say this but it’s true. I don’t know about you, but I think this is the worst word in the English language. I guess that says something about me--the shame I feel about being so overweight that I qualify as obese. Oh, and I saw a story on TV about morbidly obese people and heard that technically I qualify as MORBIDLY obese--which some define as being more that 100 pounds overweight. Great. Really great.
It’s not as if I am sitting on the couch watching TV all day and night, eating bon bons. I am actually relatively fit. Not that that fact makes a difference when it comes to first impressions.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I’m not alone in my negative feelings about obesity. A study was done at Yale University by BA Teachman and KD Brownell testing the attitudes of health professionals who specialize in the treatment of obesity toward their obese patients. I’m really not surprised that the study showed that even these professionals who make their living off the treatment of obesity “have strong negative associations toward obese people” (International Journal of Obesity (2001).
In fact, there’s this book called "Weight Bias" edited by KD Brownell, RM Puhl, MB Schwartz and L Rudd (Guilford Press, 2005) and it is absolutely chock full of studies that show how people who are overweight and especially people who are obese are victims of bias, discrimination and stigma.
Maybe that’s why I have such negative feelings about being obese. I’ve heard about it since I was just a child. “You have such a pretty face--if only you’d loose some weight” still echoes in my head even though I heard that over 45 years ago. Problem is, my own mother is one of the people who said that to me. Nobody talked about self esteem when I was growing up. My mother didn’t say that with the intention of hurting me, but somehow that one phrase has affected my whole life.
So what about being the victim of weight bias and discrimination? What have been the long term affects of this stigma on my life? I guess I’ve been lucky. In some ways I did “Look for love in all the wrong places”,
but I’ve made the best of my life--always seeking to learn more about myself, always willing to do all the personal development exercises that came my way, always having enough self esteem to get by on and even to find a fair amount of success.
What about being a victim? Through that self development work I’ve been doing I have learned this: No matter what has happened to me in my lifetime, I do not ever have to accept being a victim. Yes I am obese, and yes there may be stigma and discrimination, but I don’t have to let those mere facts make me feel like a victim. Being a victim is all in our heads--it’s all about how we see ourselves.
I’m not playing the victim roll any more. I’m changing my mind about my weight. That’s it. No matter how much I weigh, I know that right now I am a beautiful, smart and worthy woman.
How about you? Want to jump off the victim train with me? It leads nowhere anyway, just to more misery, shame and depression. Who needs that?
Maureen Carney is the founder of www.GrandePetites.com, an on-line community for Plus Sized Petite women providing acceptance, encouragement and clothing resources
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