I Never Want To See This Word Again…
OVERWEIGHT
Over what weight, exactly?! Anyone? Bueller? EXACTAMUNDO! I’m fucking done with that word. I’ve seen it enough in the last three days to never need to ever again! It’s a meaningless piece of nothing. Yet it’s touted so much you’d think it was something terribly clever to drop into conversations. Well, it ain’t!
I am the weight that I am meant to be. Don’t believe me? I don’t give a shit! My body is my business. Period! There’s no wiggle room in this, it’s mine, not yours, and you need to leave it alone, obviously physically, but especially in conversation!
When I hear this word I cringe. Every fiber of my being becomes fire and I want to shoot it at whomever spouted the nonsense. It may sound a bit dramatic, but it’s offensive and ridiculous at once. It’s used as a proper thing and as though they are being polite by using it instead of the dreaded…FAT!!!
Fuck that! Use the damned word FAT! Please!!! It is far more true a term than any other. If you’re talking about someone’s body? Yeah, declaring it even in a hushed tone as “overweight” you’re only making yourself look ignorant. Because, “Ya are, Blanch! Ya are!”
So…Just…Stop it!
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End Rant.
Amen. This is exactly the way I feel. I am not overweight, I cannot be over my own weight. Obese is a disgusting made-up word used to shame us & to pathologize the normal, natural, mostly genetic difference in body size. There is nothing wrong with fat, it is an honest, direct, simple descriptive adjective.
My chain gets seriously pulled also when I read or hear that word. I was watching an episode of ‘Bones’ yesterday, & a guy Booth & Brennan were interviewing described a guy as ‘not that fat.’ Brennan, in her geeky, precise way ‘corrected’ him by saying, “You don’t mean fat, you mean overweight. Fat is the adipose tissue under the skin, overweight is when you weigh more than you should,” as if there were an absolute, inarguable truth. No, Temperance, a person is fat. A package or some luggage may be ‘overweight’ when determining its cost, but people are fat.
Patsy: Yes! Thank you for saying exactly what I’m thinking. I wrote this ranty post and didn’t quite feel that the right words were coming out. But yes, what the Bones lady said is somehow what people actually think! Yuck! Also, it goes right back to other people trying to remove our identities. So many layers to this one, I think. 🙂
I never actually thought about this before! But what a conundrum. Being overweight – if X is what one weighs, then how is one ‘over’ weight? We are not the allotted poundage in a fishing derby; we are people, and we are what we are.
Oh, yes, unless we’re being compared to the arbitrary notion of what weight we ‘could’ be in a parallel reality of not-happeningness.
You used a Dorothy Zbornac quote, I think. Bless.
Danielle: Yes, conundrum indeed! 🙂
Where is that awesome graphic from?
AcceptanceWoman: Gosh! You know, I don’t know. I just grabbed it from google images. * Embarrassed*