Is it an insult to say a fat man is fat?

Anybody who thinks they are "helping" their "friend" by mentioning that they've put on weight, gained a belly, need to lose weight, ought to work out, or that they should not wear something unflattering, etc. -- please note that you are sadly fooling yourself if you think your "friend" wants to hear your assessment of their body shape. Even if you are a paid PT or weight-training specialist running a gym for the blubbery, you'd be wise to keep quiet when that running commentary about icky fat starts going through your brain.

However, IF YOU WANT to say something about how fat someone is... how they need to work out... how they'd look better if they didn't reveal so much flesh... for the simple reason that it MAKES YOU FEEL GOOD about yourself and your own personal shape... please go right ahead. Then we will all know what an ***-hole you are and we'll no longer have to wonder. Very Happy

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Agreeing with nimh and piffka...

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I feel fat ......

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/274644.jpg

It seems though that people do not have a problem telling you when you are too thin.

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Again, as Linket pointed out, it's ok to discriminate and poke fun of certain people and not others.

Fat people = not ok
Skinny people = ok
smokers = ok

Why is it ok for some and not others? That's the question I'd like to know. How did it get that way?

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You keep bringing making fun of smokers up, Bella, in relation to people making fun of the obese. I used to be a heavy smoker, and so would have been an obvious target. No one made fun of me in those twenty years, that I observed, and I haven't made fun of any smoker in the following twenty five years, nor heard anyone else do it. On the other hand, I don't watch tv, maybe I've missed a spike in the make fun of smokers graph.

I sure have heard people making fun of 'fat people', many, many times.

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Bella Dea wrote:

**sigh** The debate on the word "fat" will rage on.

The debate on smokers has been closed; people hate smokers and can publicly ridicule them and that's ok.

My problem is that we can't even discriminate fairly.

I absolutely hate smokers for smoking around me. It could have an impact on my health and it makes me angry.

I don't care if people are fat around me. It doesn't effect my health, only theirs.

~~~~

Not fair?

It's not fair that smokers can effect my health when I don't want them to. So I will continue to let them know what I think about their behaviour.

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Making fun of smokers isn't in it. Avoiding them is.

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I was just now going to post that getting someone to get that smoke away from you - however straightforwardly - is not the same thing as taunting them, making fun of them, for being a smoker.

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ossobuco wrote:

You keep bringing making fun of smokers up, Bella, in relation to people making fun of the obese. I used to be a heavy smoker, and so would have been an obvious target. No one made fun of me in those twenty years, that I observed, and I haven't made fun of any smoker in the following twenty five years, nor heard anyone else do it. On the other hand, I don't watch tv, maybe I've missed a spike in the make fun of smokers graph.

I sure have heard people making fun of 'fat people', many, many times.

I was told so many times I can't count when I smoked how bad it was for me and how I should quit and blah blah blah blah blah. Even if I wasn't actually smoking at the time, if someone knew I smoked, I'd get it.

I never smoked around non smokers without asking them if it was ok. I had a few say they'd rather I didn't so I didn't. But once even a complete stranger came up to me, walked right up and asked me if I knew how bad smoking was.

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ehBeth wrote:

Bella Dea wrote:
**sigh** The debate on the word "fat" will rage on.

The debate on smokers has been closed; people hate smokers and can publicly ridicule them and that's ok.

My problem is that we can't even discriminate fairly.

I absolutely hate smokers for smoking around me. It could have an impact on my health and it makes me angry.

I don't care if people are fat around me. It doesn't effect my health, only theirs.

~~~~

Not fair?

It's not fair that smokers can effect my health when I don't want them to. So I will continue to let them know what I think about their behaviour.

So you can make fun of someone with a contagious disease because they can effect your health? They'd better get off the street and into a bubble because they might breathe on you.

Is that the way it works? If I can rub off on you, you have free range to be as mean to me as you want?

And some smokers don't smoke around non smokers and still get berated for being smokers.

What about alcoholics? They don't affect your health but we can tell people they drink too much. Is it ok or not ok to tell an alcoholic they drink too much and that they are killing themselves? Because that seems to be an ok thing to do as well.

People get all bent out of shape the moment weight is mentioned but take 55 other things people do that are damaging to their health and you'll find certain ones are more acceptable to talk about than others.

At what point do you draw the line at who you can and cannot be mean to?

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ossobuco wrote:

I was just now going to post that getting someone to get that smoke away from you - however straightforwardly - is not the same thing as taunting them, making fun of them, for being a smoker.

If you asked me to smoke elsewhere (when I still smoked) I'd have done it without question. That indeed is a different situation than being told at random times how bad smoking is for me...it's a waste of money....it stinks.....how can I stand the smell.....why don't I quit.....

Osso, you were lucky to never have been bothered.

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Marlboro - bad
Twinkie - good

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Well, that's 45 years of experience, Bella.

Perhaps we've had different associates - I tend to hang around or have worked with people who don't advise others on their choices unless asked, or unless they impinge on one personally. I guess I am lucky to have generally avoided busybodies. Maybe society is more 'busybody' recently.

Still, what you describe is not making jokes to one's face, or taunting personally about being a smoking addict, as happens to obese people re their avoirdupois - it sounds more on the level of unsolicited advice in what can be viewed as a condescending manner.

As to comedy acts, or, say, threads in the humor forum, I might not like a comedy act or humor post but I'm slow and growing slower to want to censor on any subject; though I might whine about midget jokes, have done that on a2k early on, that's different than censoring, and I've stopped that whining, I hope.

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Bella Dea wrote:

So you can make fun of someone with a contagious disease because they can effect your health?

where do you get this from? I don't make fun of smokers or people with contagious diseases - but I don't want to be around them.

If someone comes to work with a cold - and they don't need to - I'll ask them to stay away from my desk - tell to stay away if they hack on me.

If I choose to visit someone in hospital, where there's heaps of contagious stuff, that's my choice.

~~~~~~

I'm not dreadfully interested in other people's health, unless they're family or great friends, so I'm not going to tell strangers that smoking is bad for them. It's not my business what they're doing to their own bodies.

If I love 'em (waves at Set and Bernie), they'll hear or see my disappointment.

It crosses the line when it might effect me/my family/my close friends/my dogs.

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I don't know where it's anyone's damn business what a person does or is - if they're fat or if they smoke or if they're skinny or if they're addicted to Star Trek. What difference does it make?

Weight is such a very personal issue, it has no business being addressed by anyone but your doctor.

I think every comment, unless specifically asked for, is out of line.

And there IS a lot of negativity about smokers these days. It's not that they're made fun of; they're frowned upon. I agree with Bella about this - no one has the right to come up and comment on your smoking.

But people do this kind of stuff all the time. They ask my daughter really personal questions about her pregnancy and even pat her tummy. She finds that really invasive, as she has the right to.

Anyway, back to the fat issue - I think everyone knows what they weigh and what they look like, and it's completely their business and not necessary to comment on.

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Heavy men may be less apt to commit suicide

Quote:

Reuters Health

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - As body weight increases in men, the risk of death from suicide falls markedly, new research hints.

Given that previous studies have linked obesity with depression, obesity might be expected to raise the risk of suicide, but the few studies that have addressed this topic have largely found just the opposite, Dr. Kenneth J. Mukamal, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues note.

Quote:

They looked at data for 46,755 men who participated in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Height, weight, and physical activity levels were recorded starting in 1986 and repeated several times until 2002 or death. Mental health-related quality of life was determined with a standard survey in a subset of 1,829 men in 1998.

During follow-up, 131 men died from suicide, the report indicates. The suicide death rate was markedly lower among men who were overweight or obese compared with men who were of normal weight.

According to the team, the suicide risk was lowered by 11 percent for each 1.0 unit increase in body mass index or BMI, a standard measure used to calculate how fat or thin a person is.

Mukamal's team also found that mental health-related quality of life improved as BMI increased.

"Further research into the mechanisms of lower risk among overweight and obese men may provide insights into effective methods of suicide prevention," the researchers conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, March 12, 2007.

Is it an insult to say a fat man is fat?

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