Fat-us Symbol

According to the title, this article (sent in by Lori) is about increasing fat acceptance. But it goes on to almost immediately poke holes in that theory until it leaves me depressed at the end! That’s cheating!

"'I don't think we're going to go back to worshipping obese women, but it's interesting to see how attitudes change as more people become overweight,’ Cawley said. Others argue that people are merely becoming more politically correct and that bias against fat people is actually growing sharper.”

”... just standing next to a large woman can be bad for a guy's image. The study had young women look at one of two pictures: One of a trim young man standing next to a svelte woman, and the other showing the same man next to a heavy woman. When the man was shown standing by the large woman, he was rated 22 percent more negatively by the study volunteers than when he was next to the thin woman. When seen with the large woman, he was more likely to be described as miserable, depressed, weak and insecure.”

At my heaviest, I used to worry about this sometimes when I was out with my best friend. People always assumed we were a couple (and that included people who knew us and people who didn’t) and he never seemed to mind. Isn’t it sad that I considered this unusual?

Damn it, I need more dieting penguin pictures to cheer me up.