Colleen, I just caught this thread and I feel so badly for you. I'm sorry that that ridiculous woman could get to you. How ignorant she sounded in the log thingy and her ideas are in no way a reflection on you. If nothing ele, you are so much inspiration and such a source of strength to evceryone here...that alone counts for a lot. I hope you are Viking-ing it up at this very moment. I can go hunt her down and give her a kick if ya wnat.

Barb

I think you hit the nail on the head - especially when editor of the magazine essentially supported it, calling it provocative, as if it were a good thing that could open dialog on the problem of obesity, elevating the article to a much higher purpose than it deserved. Calling someone disgusting does not open up a dialog, it shuts down the possibility of one.

Oh and I did Viking it up. I was a little nervous walking into the bar, but I had so much fun. Friends AND strangers complimented me on the costume. I was the biggest woman there, by at least 50 lbs, but I didn't sense any hostility at all, except one guy who shoved my chair (while I was in it) to get by (even though there was a lot of room behind me for him to get through).

At first I did think it was my weight that he had a problem with, but then he shoved past my friend too (and she's half my size). Turns out he was just an equal-opportunity jackass.

I can't wait to post pictures (they're on hubby's camera, and he went back to the party, after dropping me off at home).

I'm back to my sassy, strong, confident self. Sticks and stones, as they say... but we all know that words do hurt, often far more than a physical attack, because wounds of the spirit seem to linger longer.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blo...rie_clair.html

the blogger wrote an apology. (but personally I think a chunk of this is a stunt to get attention and magazine sales, hence the word "provocative")
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http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/...-on-television
UPDATE: I would really like to apologize for the insensitive things I've said in this post. Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this, and I sorely regret that it upset people so much. A lot of what I said was unnecessary. It wasn't productive, either.




I know a lot of people truly struggle to lose weight — for medical and psychological reasons — and that many people have an incredibly difficult time getting to a healthy size. I feel for those people and I'm truly sorry I added to the unhappiness and pain they feel with my post.




I would like to reiterate that I think it's great to have people of all shapes and healthy sizes represented in magazines (as, it bears mentioning here, they are in Marie Claire) and on TV shows — and that in my post, I was talking about a TV show that features people who are not simply a little overweight, but appear to be morbidly obese. (Morbid obesity is defined as 100 percent more than their ideal weight.) And for whatever it's worth, I feel just as uncomfortable when I see an anorexic person as I do when I see someone who is morbidly obese, because I assume people suffering from eating disorders on either end of the spectrum are doing damage to their bodies, and that they are unhappy. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to judge based on superficial observations.



To that point (and on a more personal level), a few commenters and one of my friends mentioned that my extreme reaction might have grown out of my own body issues, my history as an anorexic, and my life-long obsession with being thin. As I mentioned in the ongoing dialogue we’ve been carrying on in the comments section, I think that's an accurate insight.



People have accused me of being a bully in my post. I never intended to be that — it's actually the very last thing I want to be, as a writer or a person. But I know that I came off that way, and I really cannot apologize enough to the people whom I upset.

i'm so tired of people saying horrible things, then issuing an apology essentially asking us to feel sorry for them instead. eff that noise!!!

I read it as saying "I didn't mean to make all you fat people feel bad. I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about people who are morbidly obese. You know, the disgusting ones. Y'all get it, right?"

The idea that people who are "morbidly obese" are also people, who might actually read her article and have their feelings hurt, hasn't really occurred to her. They aren't really people to her.

I saw the apology, and have read various responses from other bloggers and commenters. The apology itself left me untouched, I'm afraid, thinking mainly that it was a political act. ("Be provocateur and then apologize, and you can get away with it! Great job, Maura." - the editor)

In some ways, I'm at a complete loss for words. Petty meanness make me incredibly sad, and that blog post stirred up the mean in everybody.

Anyway...I'm going to go do something fun and non-angry, like play a game with my children. Hugs for you, Kaplods, and I'm very glad you enjoyed your party!!!

I think it was her apology that offended me most (I didn't read the post until after the apology). What bothers me most about the apology is her stressing that she wasn't talking about ALL overweight people, just the morbidly obese ones (implying it seems to me, that what she said really was ok because she was only talking about really, really, fat people - you know the gross ones?).

When she says

I think it's great to have people of all shapes and healthy sizes represented in magazines (as, it bears mentioning here, they are in Marie Claire) and on TV shows — and that in my post, I was talking about a TV show that features people who are not simply a little overweight, but appear to be morbidly obese.

It still sounds like she's saying that morbidly obese people (because it's unhealthy) shouldn't be represented in magazines and on tv.

Why not? When it's ok to represent serial killers (Dexter), neglectful parents and semi-delinquent kids (Married with Children), the mafia (The Sopranos), all manner of crimes (Law and Order and CSI all their spinoffs) and all sorts of deviancy.... As if fat was the worst thing that could be portrayed on tv.


She's still confusing portraying with endorsing. She's still suggesting that ignoring the problem and pretending people don't exist somehow solves the problem.

She still seems to feel that any compassion amounts to approval and endorsement. Showing two fat people (no matter how gigantically fat - they could even be bed-bound half ton people) show affection does not send the message that it's great to be fat, or even that it's ok to be fat. It just shows that fat people are people, and no matter how fat you are, there's more to you and your life than just your fat.

The further away I get from this story, the less angry and the more sorry I feel for Maura Kelly. I've read a few of her older and more recent posts, and the shallowness is astonishing (even by fashion magazine dating column standards). It does make me marvel at how I let such a shallow piece of writing affect me so profoundly.

What still does anger me is the number of people who supported not only the content, but the tone of the piece. The number of people who seem to believe that being kind to a fat person amounts to putting the twinkies in their mouths (because after all we're all shoving twinkies into our mouths hand over fist, right! By the way, I hate twinkies). Ah, but if it were only that simple. No matter what a person's undesired issues, cruelty doesn't solve it. We learned that with prisons. Harsh treatment doesn't change criminals for the better, it just makes harder criminals.

I don't want people to stop talking about obesity, I want people to talk about it more (and not only the people who agree with me), but for dialogue to truly open up, the shame, blame, and hatred has to stop. I'm not going to talk about obesity with someone who unashamedly tells me that I disgust them for the "offense" of simply walking across a room.

A good question: Is our society good at giving apologies or at accepting them? Do we care about the hurt we give others only when we're called on it, and do we tend to doubt the sincerity of apologies by others because we think "they wouldn't say sorry if they weren't caught"?

I think as a society, we're not very good at either giving or accepting apologies. "I'm sorry you feel that way," has replaced "I'm sorry I hurt you." However, as individuals, it of course varies. In general I'm pretty forgiving, even without any sort of apology at all, but I do find it hard to accept an apology, when the apology itself proves the person has absolutely no understanding (logically or emotionally) of the hurt that was done.