JOIN USThose who are 'fat' must surely be lazy...
Don’t know who is the rounded personality in our family,” said a close relative recently, in reference to my recent weight gain.
From being stick thin to slightly plump — you can say I have seen it all. I know the jokes on both sides of the spectrum. Everyone had laughed at this crude joke and I laughed along as well, because jokes are not supposed to be taken seriously. World over, fat people are not treated kindly and are the target for many snide remarks. After all, are they not solely responsible for their physical structure due to their eating habits? So, why be nice to such people?
But why is fat ugly? There used to be a time, when being ‘rounded’ meant access to food. Buzzfeed, a popular website, has put up a video and called it, ‘Women’s ideal body types throughout history’. This video captures what is construed as a woman’s beauty. From ancient Egyptians who thought slender shoulders and pale skin as beautiful to the Italian renaissance that celebrated rounded ladies and to the 1980s, when athletic bodies with curves became a fad.
With varying perceptions of beauty, is fat really ugly? Well, there is no standard body shape or type that represents beauty. As humans, we have always followed a model or an actor who epitomises beauty. Take the famous Kate Moss, for example. She represented, what is popularly known as the ‘heroin chic look’ – with pale face and a thin body and many wanted to look like her. However, today, this has given way to our unreasonable body types: large breasts, flat stomach and a large butt. Anything that does not conform to this is often deemed to be ugly!
However, are fat people unhealthy?
Being fat does not have to always mean being unhealthy. The odds of having a healthy life is as good as a person whose weight is within the normal medically acceptable range. The fundamental idea that obese people are unhealthy is wrong. The idea of being healthy is to follow a healthy lifestyle. That said, a bit of belly fat never hurt anyone. Being unreasonably conscious of body shape has pushed well-built people who are healthy into diet fads and worse, under the knife. Being healthy is not about having a certain body weight or shape. As long as people are metabolically fit, it doesn’t really matter.
Are people fat because they cannot stop eating? Here’s the thing. In the recent past, there has been a surge in the number of food items on our shelves. We store more food than we can consume. This is augmented by our fast-paced lives which has brought in processed food that are high on saturated fat and sugar. While our change in lifestyle has been largely responsible for our weight gain, it need not be the only reason.
Empathise, not judge
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed an overweight boy from my son’s class. While the boy huffed his way towards the school bus, my friend concluded that it had to do with video games and junk food. However, on enquiring, I found out that the boy’s weight gain was due to medication.
It has been the same case for me as well. The medication that I was taking for breast cancer made me sluggish and also added to my weight. Contrary to what most may like to believe, my weight gain has nothing to do with overeating. There are many people who have trouble managing weight due to different health conditions. So, let us empathise and not judge when we see someone who is not as thin as we would like them to be.
Today, we have become a generation that is obsessed with looks. We are just not happy with what naturally belongs to us. There is no ideal weight that will make us both attractive and healthy. Until two years ago, everyone thought I should gain weight to be considered attractive. Now that I have put on some weight, suddenly I have become ‘fat and ugly’.
I guess it is safe to say that nobody knows how much of excess fat in a person’s body actually makes the person ‘fat’. The perfectly sculpted body just does not exist and the ones that you are staring at on the cover of the magazines have had a bit of help from a computer software.
In the end, what makes us beautiful is not the amount of fat. How about getting a bit of perspective and an unquenchable thirst to live healthy?