Fat, thin, short, tall. These words are everywhere. Television, social media and most frightening, our everyday lives. An entire generation has based their self-esteem and self-worth off of these tiny little words. We have people suffering from eating disorders because someone told them they were “too fat.” We profit off TV shows where people who are struggling with their weight are broadcast for people all over the nation can see. We walk around telling people who are thin that they must be anorexic or bulimic and we create an entire persona for the person based off that one assumption.
It needs to stop, because it’s no one else’s business. In a society with so much hate, so much violence putting each other down is only contributing to the problem. I’m not going to pretend there isn’t an obesity problem in the United States. We’ve all heard about it. However, walking around shaming one another for not looking the way society tells us we have to, is only adding to the problem. To fix the problem, the conversation needs to change. It needs to be about getting healthy, not about losing or gaining weight. Exercise needs to be prioritized instead of video games, healthy food options need to be made available and praised, people need to receive accolades for their progress, not insults for a lack of it.
I could break it down further for you. Go into the detail of the cost of feeding a family a healthy diet vs. an affordable diet on the current cost of living. I could talk about the struggles of living a healthy lifestyle in America, but I’m not going to do that. Because it doesn’t matter.
Because guess what, you can’t know a person’s health just by looking at them. You can’t know anything about anyone just by looking at them. Yes, you can see that they are overweight, or underweight. But, you have no idea if they have a medical condition that caused it, or if they are working out twice a day and eating less than 1000 calories to lose it, maybe they’re fighting an eating disorder, maybe they have already lost 100 pounds. Or maybe they’re eating 2000 calories a day to combat their disease, or maybe they’ve gained 25 pounds. Or maybe, as crazy as it may seem, they are perfectly healthy and content with their lives. You don’t know. And you don’t have a right to judge simply because it was put out as form of entertainment.
Fat and thin aren’t bad words, they don’t define somebody’s character or their abilities. It’s like hair color. It’s been given a negative connotation by the mainstream media. People see fat or thin and they assume the person has a flaw. But we’re all humans, and we all have flaws.
So whether you’re eating a cheeseburger or a Caesar salad, don’t be afraid to love your body and be yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
