Less fat

Raises again the issue of difference in experience between those who are less fat and those who are more so than others. To me this is understandable. In the past, everyone thought of a fat person as someone who was like the notorious 'headless fatties' presented on TV and in the media. Then along came post-war plumping up of industrialised nations, then obesity, which focused on the usual crowd for taking doctors advice to heart like a religion, the so-called worried well, that is , the middle classes.

With the subsequent creation of the obesity crisis, it was decided people who weren't particularly fat, but merely chubby counted as health beggaringly overweight; apparently, obesity related problems kick in at a BMI of 30 according to scientists.

The propaganda has been widely and consistently disseminated that obesity is a killer. The point is the remnants of what a fat person is thought to be remains. So on the one hand you've got less fatties, myself included, who count as obese, but aren't all that fat except compared to slim people. So though we have been and are being damaged by the crisis, we may have more in common with slim people a lot of the time than we do with those above what is described crudely as morbidly and super morbidly obese, or whatever they are calling the latter this week.

Everyone is being damaged by this crisis, I've absolutely no doubt about that. And whilst nobody finds very fat entitled moaners telling lesser models that they have no business in FA, tiresome, the counter argument that fattish women or inbetweenies as they called themselves (include me out of that one) are subject to the terrible and special pressure of people saying if you just try a little, you'll be thin, you're so close, is somehow worse is to me, unconvincing.

No doubt that you cannot tell someone's pain or attitude by weight neither converse nor inverse, there simply is no way I can pretend that being 400 lbs is ever not more of a challenge from the point of view of  being looked at by others than say being 200 lbs, and I'm really not sure why this cannot be stated outright.

My test for all this kind of thing is, would you swap? I wouldn't swap places with 400 lbs, no offence, funnily enough, I wouldn't swap with 120 lbs of anxious constant weight watching, and fat hating. I wouldn't swap with 140 lbs that was convinced they were fat and that was making them lose the will to live.

IOW, yes, we all have our battles, but it would be a mistake to underestimate what fatter people have to overcome to get where they are. They are more likely to be attacked, more viciously and openly in the streets I think, certainly I was when I blended in less.

The less fat should cease taking so much offence when bigger fatties feel we could be taking the mick, yet at the same time stand our ground if we feel we are being misjudged.