Fat Stereotypes: Alive and Well

I was watching "On the Money" last night and they had a whole feature on the WalMart thing. Apparently, it is indeed about keeping their healthcare costs down. They said that on average, WalMart only spends $1.53 annually per employee on healthcare (They try to keep as many people part-time as possible to avoid having to pay them benefits). They will now be doing the "physical activity" testing for all the applicants because they don't want to hire anyone that is too fat, too old, or too handicapped to work at their store. They figure by only hiring healthy people that they will be able to "roll back" their prices even more.

I don't see the physical activity test as being any sort of benchmark for job ability at WalMart though. Why not just ask the 16 year old stock workers to go grab carts? Let the old people be greeters if that's what they can handle. I wonder if their new policy will eliminate greeters entirely. It sounds to me like that's the road they want to go down.

To an extent, I think overweight people sort themselves out of jobs they might not be able to handle. I've been obese most of my life and I purposely never applied for a grocery clerk position because I knew I'd have to stand up all day. Instead, I've done office temp work and once a phone survey job. When I was doing phone surveys I noticed a lot of my coworkers were fat like me. I probably wasn't the only fat person who liked the idea of being able to sit down all day.

I hate to say this, but this is true. I have lost 32 lbs. in the last 2 months and I can see a clear difference in the way women act towards me and the way I'm treated in general shopping for clothes and going to clubs. I was 240, I'm now 208. Not too big of a change in number for a 5'11 guy, but a huge change in attitude from others.

Meanwhile I work with a woman who is one of the nicest, kindest people I've ever met. She is middle-aged, has a great personality, but she is huge. She's around 400 lbs., if not more. If I had not been forced to work at her, I'd be quick to pass judgements in my head that she is lazy, etc., but I know she's not. She works 2 jobs and has a family and grandkids, she's a good person. The only problem I have is that she has poor will power, and beyond that, she eats the worst foods possible (fried stuff, cakes, cookies, etc.) and far too much of them. It doesn't change the good person she is though.

Stereotypes are alive and well, and it is a sad thing in part, but it also can help people see the truth about their lifestyles as well, and then they can make changes for the positive.

I remember dealing with "fat girl" stereotypes too. I never got even so much as a glance from men. I asked a boy to homecoming in high school and he said "Maybe if you lose some weight first!" Going to stores with my friends always sucked because I could never find any clothes. Almost all of that changed when I lost weight...I had guys asking me out right and left and store clerks were very eager to help me shop. It's not right, that's for sure. I know a lot of heavier people that are very capable of doing their jobs and a lot of thin people that are lazier than a sloth.

Hey....has anyone ever heard of DISCRIMINATION??? Wal-Mart SELLS clothing for the overweight/obese people....in other words, they'll gladly except the 'fat people's" money...but they don't want to hire these same types to be employees!?!??? It's disgraceful & I for one will now boycott Wal-Mart based on their discriminatory & double-standard policies!!! As for being overweight, yes, I can say people do normally treat you differently...but I think it's more about self-esteem/image more so than anything. People who are overweight/obese tend to emit an attitude of substandardness. Pick your heads up, shoulders back, a smile on your face & go after what you seek to gain!!

Ah, the stereotype of the lazy fat person. What eludes so many people is that perhaps one is overweight because s/he works too much too many hours, has a family to take care of, and basically doesn't have much time/energy left in the evening to cook healthy meals and exercise? It's easy to fall in this trap, really. It's not even a lack of willpower in itself, from what I've seen. For instance, if my timetable demands me to choose between 1 hour of exercising and 1 hour of writing a chapter for my novel, which one would I choose? In all honesty, probably the writing part, and this is not out of laziness and lack of will to bust my ass, but simply because I want to finishe the darn book. So yeah, I'm not losing weight as fast as I could, and then? There are so many aspects of life we need to take care of, and only 24h in a day.

Oh Spectra, i'm sorry....i had similar experiences when i was fat. As soon as i lost weight, i was shocked at how much better complete strangers treated me, which made me so angry and sad, because it made me realise just how true my beliefs were that my "worth" as a person was judged on my appearence. The ironic thing is, now i'm thin, so i dont get steriotyped as a lazy binge eater like an overweight person would, but thats exactly what i am. A lazy couch potato anorexic who binge eats until i make myself sick. But yeah. i'm thin. lol.

You know, I just wrote about a similiar sentiment after watching The Biggest Loser and how all these "overweight" people were running and working out vs. America's Top Model bootcamp challenge where the "skinny" people were huffing and puffing.

Can't judge a book by it's cover. At all.

I am a japanese news-wrighter. In Japan the trend is
"Men Getting Fatter, Women Getting Thinner"

During the 19 years since the previous Survey in 1979, there had been an obvious increase in the numbers in both the categories of "overweight" young men and "thin" young women...

Stereotype or not - loose weight and you will be treated better by strangers, make more money, enjoy better health and a longer life, and cost your employer less to provide health insurance.

http://www.antiagingatlanta.com

Maybe it's because of the visual aspect.. Refute me if u feel otherwise but I think Slim is much more visually appealing than Fat (at least in this age and culture), no matter how some make self-deceiving, consoling remarks such as "Big is Beautiful". I'm not saying this coz I'm thin.. I was never thin.. But there are more limitations for a fat person than a slim person.

Darwin's "Survival of the fittest"- maybe our cognition is programmed to think that a slim (not anorexic) person is a healthy, fit person and subconsciously, we search for such partners to have offsprings with, so that our next generation will survive.. Come to think of it.. if u marry a person with poor diet.. then the diet is passed on to your children.. or the "fat gene" is passed to ur children..

And Christy pointed out rightfully so..

Fat people tend to have lower self-esteem than slim people.. Sure, they smile at everyone's jokes... they are friendly to everyone.. But they're dying inside...

Frankly, they don't have to take this crap.. they don't have to be nice to everyone.. if only they were slim... but I digress..

All things being equal, would u rather want a slim person or fat person?

Anyway, I totally agree with Adam that personality cannot be determined from one's size.

I am not sure that it is a matter of judging them as being lazy...I think it may be more of knowing that as the employer you may be faced with at some point paying for what may be some very, very significant health care costs that have come from a lifetime of poor eating habits and lack of activity. Yes, there are MANY healthy overweight persons but imagine the health care costs of one SEVERLY obese person with diabetes, back problems, knee problems, foot problem...just to mention a few....very sadly this translates into mega bucks. Now..imagine that you are an employeer...while your heart may be moved to want to help these persons...if you have the choice of hiring a fit person or the person as described above, what do you owe to your stock holders? While it is sad it seems like it is just good business thinking and planning to think about hiring healthy people...ALSO (and we don't even know that this memo really exists!) I think they are not referring to simply obese people but rather the morbidly obese who are already in severe health trouble.

Oh..one more note on sterotypes...in high school I was 25 pounds overweight...the other kids made my life an absolute horror. There were times I would go and hide in the broom closet because I could not handle being picked on. Those kids made my life a living hell...after having my children I had gained quite a bit more weight to lose on top of that 25...and I DID IT...and I have kept it off all of these years..and I have excercised, walking and lifting weights...and taken wonderful care of myself...so I just went to my 30th high school class reunion built like Barbie looking closer to 38 than 48. Guess what happened...I was accused of plastic surgery...I was told that no 48 year old woman could look like THAT naturally. So you see HATEFUL people can be? If they cant be unkind for you for one reason they will find something else...it is something I will never understand. There is just a sort of individual that needs to be critical to make themselves feel better about themselves. What we look like on the outside has much to do with the luck of the gene pool. Do the best you can with your outside appearance but put everything into your heart and your soul...that is where it's at and that is what you really have to be proud of.

When I was obese, I developed an intense fear of eating or drinking anything other than water in public. If I ate a salad or had a diet soda, I'd see people roll their eyes and make comments - cause fat people are supposed to live on water until they become acceptable or die, whatever happens first, apparently.

I also remember being in a supermarket and trying to buy some canned tomatoes. My cart was already filled with my usual groceries: vegetables, staples, and some junk my husband eats (he is one of those thin people who eat crap). A guy was standing in front of the tomatoes and I said "excuse me", he looked at me, looked at my cart and said "Do you really think you need to buy or eat any more food?" I left the store and all my groceries and didn't shop again until I'd lost weight.

At a family dinner, I took my food in a tupperware to stick to my diet. I heated my "huge" tupperware with 3oz chicken, 3oz yam, and spinach and set it on a dessert plate (yeah that is how big my meal was - it fit on a tiny plate) and took it to the table. A friend of my aunt's looked at my plate and said "I thought you were on a diet". I said "I am". She said "What kind of diet is that then? Cause if I ate ALL THAT FOOD, I'd gain weight!". I didn't touch my food and went home to cry as soon as I could leave, and I still avoid contact with my family.

If these people do this under the guise of "helping" overweight people, they aren't. All they're helping is their own low self-esteem, cause they feel superior to someone now cause they are thinner.

Jan, those stories are so sad -- but so typical. In many ways I tend to think that family can say some of the most cutting remarks (and be the most obsessed). In a strange way they think they're being helpful - but their comments are really about making themselves feel better.