Buh?
After church, we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things we're going to need before we bring home our new puppy next week. At the checkout, we ended up in the line of a lady we've gotten to "know" throughout the years. She was working at Wal-Mart when I worked there back in the early 90's, but we're really only one of those "Hi, how are you doing?" types of friendships. Surface only, but she does know about my surgery and is always asking me how things are going and congratulating me on my loss.
We greet each other like normal, and then the gentle lecture begins. "I don't want you losing too much weight now, you need to not lose too much! You don't want to get so skinny! We like you the way you are because it's your heart that matters."
People, I've only lost 55 pounds. I am still at LEAST 100 pounds overweight. I am in no way in danger of blowing away with the wind. Yet.
Now I know that she meant well and I'm not really upset at her. But come ON! Where have we as a society gone wrong where it has become OK to tell people how much they should or should not lose? And would she have made these comments to me if I was doing this the "hard" way just by dieting?
I guess that this is one of the things that I just don't "get" and probably never will. Unless I'm asked, I would NEVER presume to tell someone how much weight they should lose. I manage to hold my tongue pretty well in these sort of situations.
My real question is probably not about how we have gone wrong as a society blah, blah, blah. It's more something along these lines: By having a surgery, have we all of a sudden become public property? Property that is to be judged? Property that is to be scrutinized and examined and criticized? Where did this attitude come from?
It's an attitude that is akin to the one you receive when having a child, I suppose. Once you begin to show that baby bump, the whole WORLD thinks that they have a right to tell you things - most of them unsolicited and probably completely unwarranted and unwanted. And the irony is that most of the comments come from people who haven't the first clue about having a baby.
But unlike having a baby, this whole thing is going to last much longer than 9 months - this is going to be for the rest of my life. I just hope that people forget about the whole thing a whole lot sooner than that.
Fat chance, right?
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2 comments:
She probably does mean well -- but she may also feel threatened somehow by surgical weight loss.
Just a thought ... all your points are well-taken.
When the change is fairly dramatic people are going to start commenting and calling you "skinny" and such, even when you're far from that. I assume they're just trying to process the change and don't know what else to say.
Deluzy is exactly right about being threatened. It's not about you; it's about them. You are accomplishing something so many other people try and fail. They're sure to judge you by their own failings. The huge amount of hate mail I get wishing failure and misery upon me is testament to that.
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