haha just realized I wrote hate ! I meant had sorry!

I think the problem with just looking at it as a 'description' is that kids/teenagers/adults don't say "Hey, look at the skinny/tall/dark/etc... person doing (insert activity)." Well, I'VE never heard those types of comments anyway. I truly feel as though these comments about fat people are meant to be rude, not just matter-of-fact statements. Oh... I just remembered (thus the edit) that I HAVE heard comments such as "Hey, look at that BLACK man/woman doing such and such." I actually look at that in a similar way to the 'fat' comments. You don't hear people saying "Hey, look at that WHITE man..." etc, so I don't see why the fact that pointing out that they are black can be anything other than an insult, or the need for an 'educating' answer as the one I have mentioned below.

Of course, there are the innocent questions from young children, but I still believe that these should be responded to with an 'educating' answer. E.g. "Mum, why is that lady/man so fat?" "Well, Sweetheart, you have probably noticed that there are many different sizes of people and some of them are bigger or smaller for many different reasons. We don't usually know why, but it isn't good manners to ask people either." Something along those lines. I spend a LOT of time in my classroom teaching young (6 to 9 years) children that no matter WHAT people look like, we should teach them with respect. I believe that this wouldn't be as necessary if they were taught this lesson at a MUCH earlier age.

OK... I'll get off my soapbox now.

Take care,

Zelma

Well, technically I shouldn't be in this thread but I just wanted to pop in with a story of my own:

I was shopping with my auntie and youngest cousin Jai and me and Jai were goffing off. She was climbing all over my like I was a junglegym when she came up through my legs, patted my stomach, and said 'You have a baby in your stomach!'

I laughed. I was like 15 and she was only about two or three years old at the time. I think if she was someone else, I would have been hurt but this time I was amused. My auntie says no she doesn't and I told her 'Naw, that's just jelly. non dairy jelly.' and we laughed.

Kids ask questions. They are curious about everything and 99% of the time, it's not malicious or anything.

I agree that fat is often used obscenely, but I would like to see the word used correctly and without malice more often. I use the word regarding myself, and would prefer the term to "full-figured," "plus-sized"
and especially the sacharine "fluffy".

The thing with allowing it to become an obscenity and taboo subject is that it does make "being fat" the obsenity. It sometimes becomes ridiculous. I refered to myself as fat once to a friend (not at all critically, something like how hard it was to find attractive affordable clothing when you're fat) - and she responded "you're not fat!"

My mouth dropped open, and I stared at her like she was from Mars, and broke out laughing. - On what planet is a 380 lb woman not fat?! I really think that in her mind, fat = disgusting, horrible person. If I was not a disgusting, horrible person, I must not be fat - or at least I and everyone else should pretend it isn't so.

I have to say that I have had teens (and unfortunately adults) who have tossed the "fat" word at me as an insult, and my favoritel response has been to look them in the eye and say in mock awe "You noticed that I am fat, WOW did you figure that out all by yourself, or did you have help?" My husband has a t-shirt that says "I'm big, you're small have a nice day."

I drive a school bus for middle school kids (ages 11-14) and one day one of the kids started talking about Big Momma's House and stuff like that. I decided to ignore him figuring it would shut him up because it wasn't having any effect. Well he kept doing it and finally one day I had had enough. I told him, "If you think your comments about Big Mommas House are going over my head then you'd be wrong. I actually look really good compared to what I used to look like." He then started asking me if I'd ever heard of Lean Cuisine and Jenny Craig. This kid was a SNOT! Anyway--I then told him, "T----, you don't know why I am overweight or what has happened to make me that way, but I used to weigh 357 lbs. I've lost over 130 lbs. on my own through diet and exercise so rude comments by an obnoxious little boy aren't going to bother me. I can and will lose more weight--what are you going to do about your attitude?"

Now maybe I shouldn't have said stuff like that to him about his attitude but it worked and he shut up after that. Did it hurt my feelings? Yes and no. I knew that my weight might become an issue with some of the kids so I had basically planned what to say in case of a situation like that.

I had this one first day in a new job on a till at a shop in the airport and this kid turned around and said to there mum “Why is that lady so fat”… I tried not to get embarrassed but of course wanted to ground to open up and swallow me!

It's hard to hear those things. I've heard them too, but one thing you need to know is that your young child isn't going to really understand the negative aspect of "fat" for a few years. All of my children made comments around age 8 that showed me they suddenly realized I was fat and it wasn't good. Before that they didn't care because they just didn't understand it was not healthy or right or beautiful or whatever. They saw other fat people and probably knew I was bigger than most, but it was in their normal scale and not a big deal.

So you have at least a year and probably a little longer before "fat" becomes a word that makes your child blush. We are the same height and I've noticed in the past that once I get below 250 people stop looking at me like I'm fat. You'll be there in no time.

Go to her class. If a child says anything to you, say "You don't need to worry about that." or just change the subject. If he says it loud enough, the teacher will say something and divert attention. I love the response about not eating veggies and fruit like mom said. I also think a lot of the kids probably have overweight parents and there are probably only a handful of kids bold enough to talk about how people look. It probably won't happen again. Also, have you talked to your daughter about it? I told my children that everyone struggles with something and I struggle with eating healthy. It's wrong to make fun of people based on their looks and everyone has something that's different about how they look.

still not going to they gym
 

I know exactly what everyone here has gone through.. I had a kid SCREAM at the gym pool "look mommy at that fat lady, she's fat!" the mom did nothing to shut this kid up. I was moritfied.

More so because my son was there, yeah, he's grown up with me fat and he was 19 at the time, but it made me embarrassed for both of us. Everyone in that pool looked.

I kept going for a while after that, but everytime I thought of it, I didn't want to go. Then I had a break for about a year from going and now I don't want to go back just for that reason.

The senior citizens are no better. THey have water aerobics in the morning, I try to get in and out before them too. I was talking to one man, who I thought was really nice, and then my son came in, who is very fit and athletic and he looked at me and said, wow your son is normal.

I said, normal, what do you mean? He said, well your weight is very abnormal and your huge. OH MY GOSH. I said, thanks for the thoughtless comment.

I was mortified. Why do people need to say stuff? I don't know.

I am not new here, I had another sign on name for over two years, but someone has been reading my stuff at home, if you get the drift and it bothered me horribly. I want to come here and feel like I can share without being analyzed by a thin person, who thinks they are supportive, but aren't.

Not to be cryptic, but I just signed back on today after wanting to post so bad.

I saw two things here I can relate to (well, all of them, but two specifically).

I don't know why, but I've always avoided gyms. Probably because I don't want to be the 'fat girl' there. A previous coworker (a gym rat) tells me I'm wrong, but he's pretty buff. At my previous job I used the work gym. I tended to use it in the morning, and didn't run into many people. Depending who was on shift I did sometimes see some of the guys. They were always very nice, helpful, and friendly. However, I didn't start using the gym until I was about 100 lbs down. I always felt that since they had already seen the difference it affected their attitude.

I know, I'm probably just paranoid, but that's how I feel. Eventually I will need to join a gym, since I don't do enough strength training. I'll have to face my irrational fears when the time comes.

I'm not a member of a gym right now, though I do go to a warm water therapy pool in town, however since you need to have health issues and a doctor's referral to use the pool, the "buff" bodies are the exception. I'm often the fattest person in the pool, but nearly everyone is fat, or wrinkled, or scarred to the point that I don't feel like anyone is going to be shocked by the sight of me in a swimming suit.

However, I have joined gyms in the past even at my highest weight. I was always pretty comfortable, and had mostly good experiences with other gym members of all ages and levels of fitness. With the very notable exception of a Gold's Gym. I got a free trial membership at work, and was really excited because it was an amazing facility (according to the pamphlet). But what wasn't obvious in the pamphlet was the fact that the pool was in the middle of the facility, with glass walls, and all of the exercise equiptment was also carefully placed so that virtually everyone in the facility could watch everyone else. Even the classrooms placed so that you could see in. I think only the locker rooms had solid, opaque walls. To make it worse, I didn't see anyone working out that even approached average, they were all buff hardbodies. I didn't use a single day of my 30 day free membership. Being seen as a little odd doesn't bother me, but being the mutant freak is another thing.

I had that once when I was last at the gym, only it was not a kid it was a girl of 14 who I just happened to know and who was just the most ignorant kid in the world, look at the parents you know why the kid turned out the way it did….

Actually said kid is now going on 17 and in a Young Offenders Institution! (says it all really…)

Intellectually I agree with Colleen that "fat" shouldn't be considered an insult and we should all consider it a non-issue, but emotionally I was never able to do that. I've been called fat by strangers and students and all sorts of people, but I remember a specific incident that bothered me a lot two years ago, when I'd just started teaching. I teach kids who are 14-18, by the way, so they really SHOULD know better by now, and it's not just an innocent comment when they say it. It's bad enough to stand in front of a group of teenagers and know you're being judged, but usually I didn't think about it because I just wanted them to learn something and didn't care about how I looked to them. I would brush some of their comments off with no problem and just ignore the rest.

I gave this particularly spoiled, annoying kid a bad grade on a project (he deserved it, because it was a group project and he did absolutely no work on it). A few days later another student was showing me a myspace page and there was a comment on it from the spoiled kid -- he said something about my giving him the bad grade and called me "that fat walrus ho." Later I looked at his page out of curiosity and saw that someone else commented him and called me "the walrus." It was stupid, but yes -- I was hurt. I thought about it every time I taught those kids.

And you know what? It may be petty, but I can't help feeling good about the fact that they can't call me a walrus anymore! Their stupid insults didn't give me the impetus to lose the weight, and I'm sure they have no idea that I even know about what they said, but it's quite natural for me to feel hurt by it, I think, and for me to feel a bit "ha ha! so THERE!" about losing the weight. I know it's petty, but there it is.

I was reading through this thread and thought I would post up a couple experiences I have had. I don't know if being a man makes a difference or not but My cousin has a daughter and she was I would say 10 or so, and every time I would go to their house she would come over and give me a big hug, and basically follow me around while I was there, one time we were on the couch and everyone was in the living room we were just chit chatting and my aunt, her grandmother asked her why she hung on me all the time and her response was "Because he feels like love" a big Awe! came from just about everyone in the room lol.

Another time some of my sons friends were over my son is 9 and his friends are 9-10 years old from his class (this was about a month ago) and it was this one friends first time over so he had not met me and my wife yet. they were playing up in my sons room and me and the wife were down stairs with our 2 year old playing, and unknown to the kids, we have a baby monitor in my daughters room right next to my sons room so we could hear everything the boys were saying/doing through the monitor that was left on. the new boy was saying smart remarks and sounds like hes "that loud mouth 10 year old" we hear this new boy say "hey your Dad is really fat" and my sons reply was "I don't think he is" so the boy replies with "well he is ha ha ha" then it was quiet for a few seconds and my son says "hey you only get to see your skinny dad sometimes right?" me and my wife just looked at each other as if to say "ut oh" but the boys kept playing after a few seconds of quiet, but we didn't hear another rude remark out of the new friends mouth all day, I did have a talk with my son and told him that its not ok to say rude things to people and just because that kid did it doesn't make it right that he does. but the whole time I was thinking "Thats my boy!" lol

As Ever
Me

So??? How did it go on Friday?

I just wanted to comment - my situation is a little different but along the same line.

My family and myself recentley took a trip to Australia (Bad place to go if your self concious, overweight people are very rare over there) anyways we were walking past a bar that had an open window facing the street when I hear a man yell out "Everybody take cover, wide load coming through) I was SOO embarrased I stopped walking, my family encouraged me to kep walking and ignore him.

I couldn't do that, I walked towards the man and Thanked him, he looked puzzled, I told him that thanks to his ignorance I had just remembered that even at 300 + pounds that I am still a great person and that even th people that I envy have self confidence issues as well, I then wished him good luck in working on his self esteem and walked away. I was so proud of myself.

Im glad it happened, I will remember that for a very long time and it gives me the courage to continue to accomlish not only my weight loss goals but any goal that I set for myself.