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Sexism you have personally experienced or have heard of? *READ POST 1*
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Well the sooner this myth that "big is beautiful" is dispelled the better. Anyone (male or frmale) who thinks they can carry around an extra 5/10 stone on them is a numpty. It's not beautiful, it's dangerous, and gob****es going around promoting it are not doing anyone any favours.
Entirely subjective JR. That "myth" isn't going away any time soon either as it's as old as time itself, and it's a prevalent phenomenon in many, many cultures, just not so much in Western culture where it's more of a fetishised sub-culture. Prosletysing from either perspective doesn't really do anyone any favours. Humiliation works for a minority, but only in the short term - Operation Transformation, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, etc, it's a massive, massive, and incredibly profitable industry making people feel shìtty about themselves and feeding off their insecurities (lol, no pun intended
), but hopefully you get the idea.
Work with people at an individual level is as best you can do, because preaching and criticism just doesn't work on a grand scale... (I need to stop :pac: ).Pawwed Rig wrote: »It is actually as we pay for the health system via taxation. The government i.e. the people i.e. us need to tackle the obesity crisis. Encouraging poor health is a very silly thing to do.
Fat people pay tax too PR, I know I do, and I smoke, and drink, and hell I just happen to enjoy the finer things in life. But this is the thing - y'know what kills more people than anything else? Stress.
Encouraging a healthy lifestyle from childhood is one thing, criticising people for their poor lifestyle choices is quite something else entirely. The first one works long term, the second one if any effect at all, only works in the short term. A holistic approach is required, examining all the factors involved, not just the physical appearance that many in the Western world find objectionable.0 -
One eyed Jack wrote: »Entirely subjective JR. That "myth" isn't going away any time soon either as it's as old as time itself, and it's a prevalent phenomenon in many, many cultures, just not so much in Western culture where it's more of a fetishised sub-culture. Prosletysing from either perspective doesn't really do anyone any favours. Humiliation works for a minority, but only in the short term - Operation Transformation, Weight Watchers, Slimming World, etc, it's a massive, massive, and incredibly profitable industry making people feel shìtty about themselves and feeding off their insecurities (lol, no pun intended), but hopefully you get the idea.
Work with people at an individual level is as best you can do, because preaching and criticism just doesn't work on a grand scale... (I need to stop :pac: ).
Fat people pay tax too PR, I know I do, and I smoke, and drink, and hell I just happen to enjoy the finer things in life. But this is the thing - y'know what kills more people than anything else? Stress.
Encouraging a healthy lifestyle from childhood is one thing, criticising people for their poor lifestyle choices is quite something else entirely. The first one works long term, the second one if any effect at all, only works in the short term. A holistic approach is required, examining all the factors involved, not just the physical appearance that many in the Western world find objectionable.
Fair point Jack, beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. It's a strange dichotomy whereby one industry is making a fortune promoting the larger person while another is telling them they are "massive fatties" (as one particular obnoxious program calls obese people) and creaming it as well. Neither are right in my mind.
How we deal with it though is a tough one but it really is a ticking time bomb coming down the line."Well, yeah, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man"
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IMO, people hide behind this a bit in criticising overweight and obese people. It's handy. I don't believe it's what concerning all the criticisers. I think for many, it's purely aesthetic. Obesity can be compared to smoking but they are different in that smoking effects people surrounding by it much more than obesity does.
Only in terms of affecting other peoples health, and Ireland's got plenty of regulations/laws in place to help that.
As a smoker, I'm very aware of my smell. the effect tobacco can have on my teeth or fingers. It's hardly something I can avoid, and many smokers (like myself) go to extreme lengths to avoid passing that smell on to others. Gum, Body spray, Throat spray etc. You get the picture.
Now... Overwight people quite often have a certain problem with sweating... leading to BO issues. Some go overboard with the flowerly scent to mask it, but IMO very few bother. Instead, they don't notice the sweat stained shirts or the sickly scent wafting behind them.
My point though is drawing comparisons with smoking doesn't really work. We've been aware of the drawbacks of our habit since we tried hiding it from our parents.... Obesity is generally encouraged by parents (replection of themselves) or ignored by spouses. And obesity or heavily large people do affect those around them.0 -
[Deleted User] wrote: »Only in terms of affecting other peoples health, and Ireland's got plenty of regulations/laws in place to help that.
As a smoker, I'm very aware of my smell. the effect tobacco can have on my teeth or fingers. It's hardly something I can avoid, and many smokers (like myself) go to extreme lengths to avoid passing that smell on to others. Gum, Body spray, Throat spray etc. You get the picture.
Now... Overwight people quite often have a certain problem with sweating... leading to BO issues. Some go overboard with the flowerly scent to mask it, but IMO very few bother. Instead, they don't notice the sweat stained shirts or the sickly scent wafting behind them.
My point though is drawing comparisons with smoking doesn't really work. We've been aware of the drawbacks of our habit since we tried hiding it from our parents.... Obesity is generally encouraged by parents (replection of themselves) or ignored by spouses. And obesity or heavily large people do affect those around them.
How exactly does someone else's weight affect you. In comparison to someone smoking beside you.0 -
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Maybe your not to mention it to people because it's not your place to?
Overweight women are being celebrated because it's only them that are criticised so strongly. It's all about the looks. No one criticising really cares about the affects on the women's health. It's all vanity and self righteous behaviour. And the majority of time it's aimed at women who dare to be happy with who they are.
Hold on your horses, this is a big one. I agree on it all being based on looks, frankly there's no doubt about it, but it's not true at all that it's only women who get criticized about their weight; Men are just as much if not even more - for guys, it's not just the excess fat, the other side of the spectrum (being very skinny) is considered wildly undesirable as well.
It's just given no attention whatsoever, almost as if it's a normal and acceptable thing, but I don't really know where the notion that men don't get grief about the scale value comes from.
I'm not just "shooting air", I've experienced it on my own skin; In "another life" (well, 10 years ago really!) I was what is medically referred to as "morbidly obese" - nearly at the 150kg marker for my 1.85m of height.
I was called up on it, mocked, shamed and slagged constantly; Absolutely everyone and their dog felt like they could and should give me advice, tell me to lose weight, call me a "fatarse" and so on, often even people who were just a bit "less fat" than I was and who could hardly pretend to be an example or in any position to give advice.
Friends and even family would always greet me with "lost any weight recently?" or "you're getting even fatter!" comments; Even going for job interviews, you could detect the sniggering look on the interviewer's face as soon as I walked in the door. Sometimes, people would shout mockery and insults at me from passing cars. Basically a day wouldn't pass without someone or something telling me that I looked like sh1te and I must lose some weight. All the humiliation and insult quietly mounted in the corner; I didn't actually care, until the proverbial "straw broke the camel's back" (I asked a girl out and she went with the full "eeewww" reaction) and I decided that I didn't deserve to be treated that way and I wouldn't take it; Unless I wanted to be picking up daily fights with everybody, however, the only way to go was to "remove" myself as a target, and lost ~50kg in a year.
I was - and am - the very same person, same intelligence, same views and everything, yet people stopped slagging me. Suddenly, I was "respectable"; Suddenly, they had nothing to give me "advice" about.
So don't tell me "men don't get criticized about their weight", I can take a lot of bull****, but not that one.
One last thing about the wider "body image" issue - that's another one that is only talked about in terms of women, while men are exposed to the exact same level of pressure, maybe even more in the last 10 years or so...Oh and it's not a new thing - I'm a child of the 1980s, one of my favourite cartoons was "Masters of the Universe"; Even back then, there was backlash about there being "scantly clad women" in it, that promoted "unhealthy ideals about body and looks".
This are the "Masters of the Universe" main characters:
Just make what you wish of it.0 -
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One eyed Jack wrote: »Genuinely, I think as far as sexism goes in terms of aesthetics and other peoples standards of what is aesthetically pleasant, women, young women, and girls are under far, far greater pressure to adhere to an expected social standard. That's exactly why Tess Holiday started the #effyourbeautystandards hashtag!
Hold on, we're talking about a specific, confined subset of the "aesthetics" expectations that deal exclusively with body size and shape; On the more generalist level, in terms of "how important X is", I would agree with you - in short, it's about looks for women and success for men.
But if we talk strictly about weight, there's been a bit more of acceptance of "fuller" ladies and even the promotion of some as role models in the last couple of decades, while the same isn't true at all for men, which are still fair game for "fat jokes".
Saying there's no pressure at all on men is utterly incorrect, just by looking around at adverts and posters for, say, slimming products, they're filled up with bulging biceps and sculpted sixpack as much as they are with toned feminine bottoms and narrow hourglass figures.One eyed Jack wrote: »It's also the reason why I'm not going to complain about sexism towards men who are carrying a little (or indeed a lot) more around their midriff than they should. I get young women wanting to cuddle me all the time because to them I'm just a cuddly teddy bear.
I guess there's no accounting for taste :pac:
Uh...honestly, I'm happy for you and "whatever floats your boat", but...you don't think there's something a bit "off" in that? I'm not sure I'd be happy with that happening to myself; Or better, I basically wouldn't mind as I'd, ehrm, getting "company", but come think of it it's not exactly flattering.
To each their own, absolutely, but I can't really escape thinking that were the roles reversed, with a guy saying he liked an overweight woman because she was a "motherly cow", things wouldn't go well at all 0 -
H3llR4iser wrote: »Hold on, we're talking about a specific, confined subset of the "aesthetics" expectations that deal exclusively with body size and shape; On the more generalist level, in terms of "how important X is", I would agree with you - in short, it's about looks for women and success for men.
But if we talk strictly about weight, there's been a bit more of acceptance of "fuller" ladies and even the promotion of some as role models in the last couple of decades, while the same isn't true at all for men, which are still fair game for "fat jokes".
Saying there's no pressure at all on men is utterly incorrect, just by looking around at adverts and posters for, say, slimming products, they're filled up with bulging biceps and sculpted sixpack as much as they are with toned feminine bottoms and narrow hourglass figures.
Uh...honestly, I'm happy for you and "whatever floats your boat", but...you don't think there's something a bit "off" in that? I'm not sure I'd be happy with that happening to myself; Or better, I basically wouldn't mind as I'd, ehrm, getting "company", but come think of it it's not exactly flattering.
To each their own, absolutely, but I can't really escape thinking that were the roles reversed, with a guy saying he liked an overweight woman because she was a "motherly cow", things wouldn't go well at all
A cuddly teddy bear is not an insult but calling someone a cow is.0 -
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H3llR4iser wrote: »Hold on, we're talking about a specific, confined subset of the "aesthetics" expectations that deal exclusively with body size and shape; On the more generalist level, in terms of "how important X is", I would agree with you - in short, it's about looks for women and success for men.
But if we talk strictly about weight, there's been a bit more of acceptance of "fuller" ladies and even the promotion of some as role models in the last couple of decades, while the same isn't true at all for men, which are still fair game for "fat jokes".
OK, if we were to restrict ourselves simply to talking about weight, then your argument still doesn't hold up to scrutiny, not when you realise that you're basically arguing against yourself. You're acknowledging that it's only in the last few decades that there has been a bit more of an acceptance of fuller ladies and even the promotion of some as role models, which isn't at all true for men, but, here's the kicker - there was always an acceptance of men were overweight, and it's only in the last few decades that the health and beauty industry has begun to capitalise on the market for making men feel just as shítty and insecure about themselves as they've made women feel for centuries, millennia even.
Both genders were always fair game for fat jokes btw, I can think of plenty of "Yo momma so fat" jokes, can't think of a single "Yo daddy so fat" joke, and to take that little thought experiment further - two icons of the 20th century, one male and one female, how were they perceived? Who comes to your mind straight away?
For me, it's Marilyn Monroe, and Santa Claus.H3llR4iser wrote: »Saying there's no pressure at all on men is utterly incorrect, just by looking around at adverts and posters for, say, slimming products, they're filled up with bulging biceps and sculpted sixpack as much as they are with toned feminine bottoms and narrow hourglass figures.
I didn't say there was no pressure on men at all, I said women, young women, and girls, are under far, far greater pressure to adhere to an expected social standard. I think with regard to what you're seeing in terms of adverts and posters for slimming products, you're seeing what you want to see. There are by far and away more slimming products and imagery in the media directed at women than men. I can't walk by a news-stand without reading what female celebrity has been yo-yo dieting this week, what female celebrity has a new diet or exercise plan out this week, Hell, while her sister was "breaking the internet" with her gluteus ginormous, Khloe Kardashian now has a series on E! called "Revenge Body", and their sister Kylie, well, you can't go near social media without seeing pictures of her pouting puss and photoshopped posturing.
You won't see anywhere near the same degree of pressure or exposure directed at men.H3llR4iser wrote: »Uh...honestly, I'm happy for you and "whatever floats your boat", but...you don't think there's something a bit "off" in that? I'm not sure I'd be happy with that happening to myself; Or better, I basically wouldn't mind as I'd, ehrm, getting "company", but come think of it it's not exactly flattering.
Seems you can't make up your mind, but that wasn't really my point. My point was merely demonstrating that not only is it acceptable for a man to carry more weight than is healthy for him, it's actually what makes them MORE attractive to some women, quite a few women as it happens. How I feel about them being attracted to me as I said, well, there's no accounting for taste.H3llR4iser wrote: »To each their own, absolutely, but I can't really escape thinking that were the roles reversed, with a guy saying he liked an overweight woman because she was a "motherly cow", things wouldn't go well at all
No, they wouldn't because as PucaMama explained, that's not really a like for like comparison. I think you really need to stop with the "if the roles were reversed" stuff and just deal with reality. There's a hell of a lot more to people than just whether they're fat or not, and I read your earlier account of the difference in how you were treated when you lost weight, and I would say that was more down to the shift other people could see in your attitude and how you carried yourself with confidence after you lost the weight, than before, when you'd fcukall. Is it any wonder more women didn't say "Ew!", because it wasn't your weight was unattractive, it was your lack of self-confidence. People can smell that kinda thing a mile off, they aren't stupid.H3llR4iser wrote: »Realized that afterwards, couldn't really think of any "Teddy bear equivalent" analogy; Anyway replace "cow" with any cutesy, massive animal, stuffed or real, you like - it'd still be frowned upon, and rightly so.
Ohh I don't know, I get away with some fair eyebrow raisers myself, which I couldn't possibly repeat on a family friendly website :pac: Yes it would be frowned upon here, because it would be completely out of context, but depending upon your audience, being brutally honest with people can have the most bizarre consequences! :pac:H3llR4iser wrote: »The "Teddy bear" analogy was one that a few people used on me as well when I was obese; At the time, I didn't mind it - I almost cherished it, to be honest.
It's just been recently, when I witnessed somebody talking in similar terms about a third person that it became apparent to me how even if there was no ill intent in it, the individual using such analogy was still subconsciously devaluing the guy in question as a man due to his appearance. Can be spun many ways and times, but the substance remains.
Ehh, no. The substance that you want to remain, remains. I understand the intent of it, most people actually do, and they don't see it as a devaluation of men at all. I just don't care to take it as a compliment because I don't take compliments very well anyway, I'm an awful cynic! 0 -
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