Over What Weight, Exactly?!
I have been fortunate enough to meet a lot of new people and to expose myself to new ways of thinking and perspectives. No matter the setting or how I met these people, one thing still seems to exist no matter how much I wish it wouldn’t. The term “overweight.” I’m not sure when this term originated or if it was always applied to humans, but it seems to have a life of its own and I am sick of it!
Even self-accepting fatties use this term. Grannies and Aunties use this term. It seems like almost everyone uses it and it pisses me off. The moment I hear it I cringe and brace myself, what else will they say? Will they now begin to tell me to lose weight or diet or some other bullshit? I cringe and I wait, but I can’t always steel myself against it for long. Many times, though I’m not proud of this, I have immediately interrupted the person with, “Over What Weight, Exactly?!”
The look of shock on their face always haunts me later, but I can’t help it. To me, saying someone is “overweight” is hateful at worst and misguided at best. I know it’s just in our cultural vernacular, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be examining it. There are a lot of words commonly accepted that are actually quite racist. Friends give me a hard time and call me “sensitive” or I’m told to “lighten up” (which, ugh! Don’t even get me started on that shit!), but I refuse. Hate is hate is hate is hate. And all I want in my life, with my obsessive passion for words, is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is loveis love is love is love!
Of course, when you challenge such popular concepts as “overweight” you will eventually get the, “Well, certainly there is a point where it’s unhealthy!” I have been asked this in many ways and I always say, “Why? Why does that matter to you?” because I feel it all boils down to body autonomy. My health and my body are my business, your health and your body are your business, so let’s just drink our coffee and live great lives! *Slurp*
I have been watching a lot of old X-Files re-runs. There is so much good shit in that show, I can’t even begin to tell you! Some of the messaging in the show hits home for me though. “Trust No One” is a classic, but I don’t buy into that anymore. I think you have to find people in this world to trust, even if you know that you will only be hurt in the end. That’s totally okay. I see “Trust No One” more as Question Everything!
My favorite line from the show would have to be “The Truth Is Out There” and it is if you’re willing to see it. And to see it you have to start thinking for yourself. You have to get away from the group-think bullshit and stop exposing yourself to the hate-fueled mainstream media. I know you can’t avoid all of it, it’s everywhere, but you can limit your exposure. Because these things are just as toxic as man made chemicals.
The Truth Is Out There and all you have to do is Follow The Money! You will find all of your answers, all answers I believe, when you do. Everything in our modern world is driven by the money train. When you follow the trail of money long enough you find out some interesting and surprising things. We all know now that dieting is actually bad for you, right? Did you know that much like deodorant and shaving, the market for dieting and weight loss is fairly new? Much of what we see as normal or commonly accepted today was created by someone selling a product. That is all. Money.
There’s no diet-fairy-godmother doing her best to save us all from harm, quite the contrary! All that’s out there is cold boardrooms with meetings about profit margins and how to invent the next big fad. It’s all driven by greed. All of it! And while society opinions do change over time it is never without it’s casualties. How many of us know someone amazing and wonderful who is a victim of the dieting lifestyle (I do see it as a lifestyle now)? People who struggle their entire lives, at war with their own body and genetics, who never fully live. It’s sad.
There is hope. There is this incredible community full of resources, information, facts, the truth and the most loving and supportive people in the world!
It may not be the most polite thing in the world to interrupt people, but I do think asking them to define their terms whilst lecturing you about something that isn’t their business in the first place is the far greater etiquette breach, and I firmly believe that Miss Manners would agree with me.
In fact, I believe her only quibble with it would be to ask you to do your best to wait until the other person has indicated they are no longer talking… and she might not even ask that.
After all, this is the woman whose recommended response to impertinent questions is to draw oneself up to one’s greatest possible height, raise one eyebrow (or give the closest expression one is capable of managing) and asking: Why do you want to know that? in an extremely frosty voice.
But the fact remains that responding to a standard cultural script with an unexpected form of reply is a great way of stopping people short and making them re-examine their assumptions. I know there have been several times when I said something commonly believed yet utterly fatuous and incorrect and someone else responded with a non-standard reply, and it’s done me a world of good. At the time I usually stuttered and sputtered and generally made sounds like a wheezing refrigerator, so it probably didn’t sound like it was doing much good to those who brought me up short.
Afterwards, though, when I sat down and replayed the scene in my mind, I would realize the reason it so flummoxed me was because I was making unwarranted assumptions. I’d sit down and try to learn more and figure out what I really believed.
Guess what? There were a couple cases where I decided I’d been right all along, but now I had better ammunition to get my point across. In other cases, I found I’d been flat wrong and was able to move forward with a better idea of what the situation really was. In yet others, I decided the truth lay somewhere between the two points of view expressed and modified my thoughts without entirely changing them.
In every case, I’m glad someone made me sit down and re-examine my assumptions. No matter how it turned out, I think I became a better person for it.
My point – long winded though it is – is that you should definitely keep on questioning people about that assumption, and any other assumptions about weight, race, religion, etc.
Even if not everyone takes a good, long look at their beliefs and modifies them to fit reality better, at least you’ll shut up a few buttheads.
That is also worth the trouble.
I do the “Over which weight?” thing too (FINALLY an FA phrase that translates to Norwegian), but I do it more as an interjection. Usually I get some seconds of baffled silence while they (seemingly) search through their heads trying to connect what I’ve just said with an entire life’s accumulated “weight knowledge,” and when they come up with nothing I usually get a small smile, like; “Heh, yeah, that’s a point”. I love these moments, because I usually have to work so hard to get the smallest concessions, but this phrase just seems to do all the work on its own.
Veronica: YES! I love it! This works as does that whole “you wouldn’t let someone talk to your best friend the way you talk about your body” thing. 🙂
See, I don’t find that people are stumped by that reply. If I say, “over what weight?”, they usually respond with “over what the weight charts say”, or some variation of that, and look at me as if my IQ had just dropped 40 points and how could I not have known that.
How do you respond to that?
Mulberry: I suppose I have been lucky thus far to not get that response. If I did get that response, I would ask if they knew who and why that chart was created. I suppose this could go on forever, depending on to whom you were talking. Thank you for shining a light on the truth, the fact that this hate and misinformation runs so very deep.