What’s In A Size?
What’s in a size? What is it that drives the media machinery that reflects our values and fears back to us reasonably accurately and has resulted in such fat-phobic and sizeist cultures?
What’s in a size has all to do with numbers that people manipulate to try to control what sells in this materialistic consumer-driven consumptive world.
A large part of the sizeist reality has a lot to do with the patriarchal control of women. Why do I say this? I say this based upon seeing countless magazines with women on their covers all advancing weight loss and an almost anorexic culture of what is now seen as healthy. I don’t see men’s magazines with this focus. When I tune into the entertainment news shows (and I will always find that an oxymoron – entertainment-news) I don’t hear them talking on about any famous man’s weight – nope – just women. And, often, the stars they focus on the most, aren’t even fat – or at least not by old reasonable standards anyway. But then what fat is, is another slippery slope these days. I mean, I’ve seen articles that say that women who are size 12, 14, or 16 are obese. What? That used to be very average and thought of as healthy. Women are actually now able to buy clothes in a size ZERO. Do men covet clothes that are a size ZERO? I don’t think so. In my world, size ZERO would mean NUDE – wearing nothing.
Sizeism is utter vanity. Vanity is an excessive pride in one’s appearance that really announces to the world that, if you are vain, you must not put much stock in the worth of character, honour, values, ethics, and personhood.
No one can argue that there is truth to the risks of being larger. However, there are all kinds of risks in life and most aren’t focused on which such malice and outright prejudice as this one’s size is.
People too often hide behind this, “Oh, you better do something about your weight, you know I only say that because I’m concerned about your health” stuff. Right. Well skinny people get hit by trucks you know? What should they have done differently? Should we chastize the injured skinny person for daring to cross a street or blame them for getting hit by the truck because they were just too skinny?
What matters most is how we treat each other. What matters most is that we have respect for the person inside of any size of body or human-earthly vehicle. Our bodies are vehicles that house our souls in this life. They are not dress-up dolls. Life is not a one-size-fits-all reality. Life is not as shallow as to be defined by how one looks.
I’ve been up and down the scale. Okay, mostly up and even when I get down, I’m still defined as obese because I never get down to the “hallowed” skin and bone sizes. I merely sit in the area of a few extra pounds – pretty average now – but, obese to the sizeist fat-phobic culture nonetheless. I have always been the same person inside, regardless of where my body has weighed in. In fact, the fatter I got the more I got to know myself.
Sizeism, by definition is discrimination against overweight people. It is rampant in our narcissistic culture. It is shallow. What’s in a size for you to see is a reflection of all you actually lack as a human being if you cannot accept that some people are much larger and do so without inflicting pain or prejudice upon them.
Not one of us has been appointed the judge and jury of humanity. Not one of us. Why do we have to pick on and abuse each other for our differences?
What’s in a size is more to the point how you react to the size of another. If you have to react at all you are not seeing the person for who they are. You are not fully aware of what matters most. What matters most is truly who each and every one of us is from the inside out.
I personally hope Kelly Clarkson, to name but one celebrity, for example, ignores all the focus on her weight and just goes what she does best – singing – and more to the point, I hope Clarkson doesn’t ever feel the need to cave to such ridiculous criticism. Clarkson is a prime example of what the media is fueling in constantly focusing on her weight saying she is getting too big or what is wrong with her instead of just focusing on her talent and her career.
The human reality is that no matter how big one’s body might be, or how skinny or small one’s body might be – the human soul weighs about the same. One’s personality and character cannot be measured by the size of one’s body – or the lack of size of one’s body.
What’s in a size, regardless of that size, be it small, medium, large, or extra large, is a human being who has worth and who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect – nothing more, nothing less.
© A.J. Mahari 2009
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