Hmm, a thing I am wondering about is possibly the psychology of your posting what could essentially be a college paper on the subject, especially as you mention that you expect yourself to be considered overweight/possibly obese in the future, and more, glad of it. Yet you seem very concerned about the conceptions/prejudices people have about overweight people.
That's an interesting post, Rat.
I say that I expect myself to be overweight in the future for two reasons: The first reason is that I like to eat! Accepting the ramification of that is just honesty in action. I'm not planning a systematic campaign to get fat, but I do go try and go for that extra helping of food when I feel like it, much in the same way people express their desire to lose weight by doing the opposite. The second reason I said I expect myself to be overweight someday is that the thought of being fat does not inspire the sort of dread in me that it does in most people; rather the opposite. I like it. Now, you might ask yourself how anybody could like the thought of being fat, but you would be forgetting that the reason this question occurs to you so intuitively is that you've grown up in a culture where fat prejudice is very strong. In the grand scheme of things, "fat" is just one more point of interest in the national park of human fascinations. Even if a fondness for fat doesn't make sense to you--a question you can mull over on your own time--you can at least take the lesson that people's viewpoints and tastes can be so diverse!
However, my oddball fascination with fat and my disgust at the bigotry directed against fatness are two unrelated things, that only happen to overlap in a roundabout way. The reason I'm concerned about "the prejudices people have about overweight people," as you put it, is not because I worry about being a target myself--you should know by now that I have no interest in winning the approval of petty people--but rather because the prejudice itself is just so darn...well...
wrong. It's almost the most virulent prejudice in society today; the only one that is still universally acceptable, and the degree of hatred that it elicits from people is just stunning. This bigotry can dehumanize people to the point where their worth as sentient beings comes into question. And the suffering inflicted upon people who are fat is something I have witnessed all too often. It serves no purpose other than to hurt and to diminish these people's quality of life, and it is a waste and a disgrace.
Assuming that you are straight and white, possibly you're more worried about people aiming their prejudices at you in the future, and this worry has worked itself out in an abundance of text?
Now, what does "straight and white" have to do with the rest of your sentence? What does it have to do with anything? Maybe you have some other prejudices to work out, too.
But, as to your proposal: No, I am not worried about being discriminated against in the future. I certainly don't relish the prospect of it, but in absolute terms I just don't
care as much about social posturing as many people do. The people whose esteem I covet are not likely to lose their respect of me for putting on a layer of fat.
And what you see as an "abundance of text" is simply par for the course when it comes to me writing down my thoughts. The only fear I have in this arena is trying to explain my point of view properly, because I would hate for people to misunderstand me on such a charged topic.
....Although I am curious who think 120lbs is ideal for someone 5'8. Geez that's freaking skinny. What about T&A!?
That is skinny; maybe not "freaking" skinny, but certainly well down the light-weight end of the graph. In the military, female weight ideals for a height of 5' 8" are just over 150 pounds. You can expect that some of that is additional musculature that may not be necessary in most avenues of civilian life, but mostly that is the correct number for a 5' 8" woman's physically ideal weight. Therefore, all of these votes in our poll for 120 and 140 pounds indicate a rather unsettling trend: Most men don't like full-sized women.
Instead, women are discouraged from achieving their full healthy weight both in terms of body fat percentage
and muscular mass. In short, women are encouraged to be the junior partner in a male-female pairing. Here's something I can add to the discussion today, which I had meant to touch upon last night but failed to for lack of time:
One of the vehicles of misogynist sexism in all human societies is that the feminine ideal is consistently skewed toward the realm of
neoteny. Neoteny is a rather disturbing tendency which, in this context, distorts the ideal female form away from that of an adult and toward that of a child--a girl. Small stature--including thinness and shortness--as well as lack of body hair, high voice, weakness and submissiveness...all of these things are characteristics of children, and yet they are also typical statements of female beauty.
I actually think it's a bit creepy that somehow our entire culture freely embraces what is basically a weak flavor of pedophilia. It is as if men were originally so contemptuous of women whose presence might loom as heavily as theirs. Men don't tend to prefer women who are larger, stronger, more strongly-scented, more confident, more intelligent, or more ambitious than they are. This preference has become so entreched that it has even contributed to an increase in our sexual dimorphism, so that, today, women all over the world are smaller and weaker than their male counterparts--because that is held to be attractive...not just by men, by by women too! It is very near the root of sexism.
Aren't those the longest poll AND longest post ever in a same topic?
Lord J should be in the Chrono Guiness 
Chrono Guiness...hmm...
Chrono world records...Interesting idea.
Guinness happens to be humanity's crowning achievement when it comes to beer. I'm not a beer fan, but Guinness is to beer what Josh is to the masses.
Interesting sidenote: The Guinness Book of World Records owes its namesake to the very same folks who produce Guinness the beer. The book of records began as a publicity stunt and succeeded so wildly that it took on a life of its own.
Another interesting sidenote, more apropos to this topic: The Guinness Book of World Records stopped recording "fattest person" statistics several years back...because apparently they were unsettled by the fact that people were actually trying to break the record.
Well, for me its just personal preference but I'd have to say maybe 120 or 140, just because I think women prefer a guy who's heavier than they are. As such, being merely 145lb at 6ft tall...
Actually, maybe I should have voted different because, thinking about it, that's too light. I have a little sister who's maybe 5'8, and she probably weighs 140lb, but isn't overweight. So I guess up to 160lb would be fine as well.
And what do you mean by "160 lbs would be fine as well"? Do you mean that you would still be able to find women (of the given height) attractive up to that weight, or were you saying that you would no longer approve of their weight once they exceeded that mark?
Anyway, I suppose prejudice is bad but, hey, it just exists Lord J.
That's an interesting remark, coming from you. And I see you meant it to be taken in more than one way. But we'll refrain from that argument for today. In the meanwhile, we can at least agree that prejudices which serve no purpose, even though they may exist, are not something whose continued existence we should bolster, support, accept, or ignore.
Like I said, I'm 145lb and 6', which is incredibly scrawny. I look very gaunt, in fact. That puts me in rather the same position, you know? You might say that guys have a prejudice against overweight women, but I can tell you that women are just the same against scrawny guys. It's a two-way thing.
Yes, you're certainly right. This isn't a topic about prejudice against scrawny men, but I agree with you that it exists and is often detrimental. Nonetheless...that's not what we're talking about here. We're not even talking about overweight women in particular; I simply used that in the poll to hook people into the discussion. (That, and I have a genuine curiosity to see how these people's attitudes toward women's weight lies.) Rather, this is a thread about all fat-bashing prejudice.
Okay, I admit I only read about half of that essay.
I'm sure you read more than most. =)
But that last line... 180lb? Well, that seems decidedly odd to me. I mean, all the people in my family are tall. My little 12 year old sister is something like 5'5, and the older one is at least 5'8. My mother is 5'10. And none of them are anywhere near 180lb - maybe 160lb at most. Neither are they overly thin, save for one sister who just seems to have that in her genetic disposition... but even she is 120lb at 13!
You must simply be failing to appreciate how overweight people in America have become. It's happening all over the industrialized world now, but America is still the furthest along. The "totally average" man is 5' 9" and weighs about 190 pounds, while the totally average woman is about 5' 4" and weighs 160 pounds. Carry that out to a height of 5' 8" for women, calculate the new average, and you get something like 190 pounds. Then factor out the detail that women continue to gain weight until their midlife, and you derive a value of approximately 180 pounds for the average, 5' 8", 20-year-old American woman.
Look at the spread! Most people here prefer a woman of about 130 pounds, but the ideal female weight for this height is 150 pounds...and the
actual average weight for these women is 180 pounds! Your tastes are definitely skewed toward the skinny...which is bizarre, because I pegged you for somebody who pays little attention to the Hollywood message of Skinny At All Costs!
But, hey, if someone's a little overweight, I guess I could live with that. I'm not the sort that's motivated purely by physical looks, you know?
So, your tolerance for female attractability encompasses "a little overweight"--not as something you might like, but as something you would be willing to tolerate. How generous. But at least you are honest enough to admit your prejudice.
There! I went easy on you. =)
Thanks for posting in a Lord J, Esq. topic. It always takes an extra degree of courage to do that if you're Daniel Krispin.
I think that 'heavier' girls can be totally sexy and definately cute. I don't really hold any sorts of restrictions in that sense towards girls...My only rule so far as weight is that they can't be under my own weight by more than about 15-20 lbs (at my current weight of around 110)...Because then they just look like sickly little freaks that probably have way too heavy issues or something...And who needs that? I suppose the same can be said for the obscenely overweight...but I'm not sure exactly what my lines are in that direction...
*shrugs*
So, basically, whatever, I guess.
Truly, you have achieved the least-prejudiced reply of all, thus far. Nicely done, V.
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