Yesterday I was sitting in the break room at work eating my lunch when a commercial for “My 600 Pound Life” came on the TV. Two of my coworkers were also in the break room at the time and melodramatically recoiled and groaned as the man in the commercial, a very large man of color, did such things as use a walker to get around his house, show his chest and belly to the camera, and talk to the camera crew in interviews.
The commercial alluded to some sort of surgery he underwent, during which his heart temporarily stopped. As I sat there for about 20 seconds seething at my coworkers reactions, the commercial wrapped up, and they were still talking about it immediately after.
As they groaned and chuckled, I spoke up: “Can we talk about something else now? Instead of talking about how horrible fat people are?”
Coworker A responded: “No, that’s not fat, that’s something else.” With a shake of his head.
I said, “No, that’s fat, just like me, and I really don’t appreciate it." Coworker kind of shrugged and went back to doing something with his phone. Coworker B didn’t say anything.
I know I’m starting to be a Big Girl Activist now, because I’m actually starting to speak up! This is pretty damn huge for me, formerly known as Avoid Confrontation If At All Possible Girl. The silver lining to this story is that Coworker B later came to me and apologized for her comments. She and I are fairly close coworker-friends, and I had recently shut down a bit of body-shaming that occurred on her Facebook wall on the topic of one of those "Women’s Ideal Size/Men’s Ideal Size/National Average Size” images that’s been going around. So she thankfully was already aware of my feelings on the issue and likes me enough as a friend to step up and apologize.
This second story happened earlier just this evening, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to speak out.
I met a group of friends at a coffee shop, and while we were sitting there, I overheard a conversation between two women who were sitting behind me. The first woman was telling her friend about the company she worked for, which had recently interviewed a job candidate. Supposedly her managers or whoever were just gushing about his credentials, being overqualified for the job, but since he was “morbidly obese” (her words, not mine) they decided he would cost the company too much for healthcare because he probably had a lot of health conditions being so fat. She said they were also making jokes about his breathing.
Luckily, the woman telling the story seemed reproachful/surprised/shocked that her coworkers were gushing about his qualifications, yet also laughing about him in private. Her tone, at least, wasn’t that her employers were totally justified. The hiring people didn’t tell him that he wasn’t getting the job because he’d cost too much for healthcare, they just said something like, “We’re not looking for anyone right now, but we’ll keep your resume on file.”
Like I said, I didn’t have the opportunity to speak up here, since it was kind of bridge under the water at that point for the fat man. But it’s helpful to get it out into the aether so it doesn’t stew up in my brain.
