Big Medicine Discussion: Do women suffer more for being obese? This is long!!

Yes, oh yes is my answer to the original question. Before I respond at length, I’d like to first preface my answer with a few comments to qualify my statements and provide some perspective to those reading my answer.

Many times, when I say that weight affects women psychologically and socially I am met with the counter comment that I have low self esteem, don’t value myself, or let my weight limit me and people’s reactions are merely a response to my own self perception. I would like to say that my self esteem is quite fine. I am an accomplished, college educated professional. I am a fiscally responsible home owner. I’ve got a good sense of humor, plenty of friends, and a strong, outgoing personality. I’m involved in my church and the community. I’m quite beautiful too. When my BMI is closer to 30 or less, let me say I’m down right gorgeous! I’m 5ft 11.5 “ and I dress nicely. Been told I’m quite stylish before. I hold my shoulders back, my head high. I think I’m quite a well rounded, good catch myself. Things are a bit more difficult because I have a 14 year old daughter. But in a nut shell, I think I present a nice package. My highest BMI was 43.6. The pictures I used on most of my online personals were at a BMI of 37-38.

Please forgive me for providing only my first hand experiences as my supporting evidence. I’ll let Mjo cite the research.

Yahoo and MSN: Several male respondents took the time to send me a personal message. Some more gentle than others. One man said “I sounded great. Would I consider losing weight?”. Another “lose some weight fata**”. Yet another “ Drop the fat and get laid” One man I initiated contact with copy and pasted his reponse to me from the list of his preferences whi*****luded “average or slim” for body figure.  Christian Singles: Unsolicited offers of prayer to help me overcome my fleshly bondage to gluttony. Cute. Curvy Dates and BBW: Better luck here. However, it’s still a problem as many of the men are still typifying a woman based on her body. One man who was 5’4” wanted to see if we could meet and “wrestle”. Sorry but I don’t want a man who wants me only because I’m fat so I can fulfill his weird S&M/smuffocation fantasies.

1. I was dumped by a hemi-paretic, christian man I had dated for three months. He “loved me in every way but couldn’t get past my weight no matter how he tried”. I was talking/crying to a father figure deacon in my church about this. I said “can you believe he dumped me because of my weight”, to which the deacon shrugged his shoulders and gave me a sheepish grin. The non verbal message I received was “well, can you blame him?”. So, I followed with, “if he knew he felt that way, he never should have dated me in the first place.”. This was met with a very emphatic , “You are absolutely right there!”.  2. Our Sunday school class has chairs that are smaller, with no space between the chairs. There is no way to space them as the class is filled to capacity. I used to sit with my arm literally crossed over for an hour. Legs tucked as tight as I could, sitting straight up and leaning forward . Still, my hips spilled over the chair and often were touching the men sitting next to me. It was embarrassing. I knew there were larger classrooms available so I went to ask one of our pastors about switching classrooms and explained my intense discomfort. The response? Counseling about being a good steward of the body I was given. Scripture references about our body being a temple of the Holy Spirit, and freedom in Christ Jesus. I have stopped going to Sunday school until I can sit in a class where my a** doesn’t hang over onto the thigh of the men next to me. 3. Our worship center holds over one thousand people. A kindly man in his fifties singled me out and approached me because I “looked so happy, serene, and in love with God”. In addition, I was about his daughter’s age, in the mid twenties. Great! I am really in my thirties. Keep talking! LOL. Well, he couldn’t get her to come to church and wanted to introduce her to me since “we had something in common” because she’s so big like me. No joke!!! He meant no harm, but it killed. As if we’d have more in common because we’re both big. Mind you, I wasn’t ginormous. A BMI of about 42 at the time.

I just can’t imagine a man being dealt with similarly in any of those scenarios.

1. I am a core charge nurse. I have heard behind my back that my nickname is “large and in charge”. 2. I bring a thermal box lunch bag. It’s bigger., but not like an igloo cooler. I have had more than one person comment on “all that food” and “do you need to eat all that?!”, heard as I was walking in “like she needs all that food.” and one beratingly told me that “I needed to stop bringing so much so others could fit their dinner in the fridge“ Told this in the middle of shift report in front of everyone. . Never mind what I had in there…unadorned spinach and shrimp salad. Cottage cheese. Carrots. Broccoli. S/F pudding. Nope. What matters is I’m a woman. I’m fat. I’m fodder for the jokes. People at work know what I eat. We eat in front of each other. Doesn’t matter. 3. During different resuscitative efforts on patients who needed CPR I overheard the following comments while performing the chest compressions. “With her doing compressions, that patient is going to have every rib broken” and “I’ll be she can get their blood pressure higher than anyone” alluding to my weight forcing stronger compressions. Just what a stressed nurse needs to hear while a patient is actively trying to die. Who cares about that! Look at the fat woman! Holy S**t!!! 4. Was taking care of a bariatric surgery patient with a BMI of 45 when the junior resident came around to see how his patient did overnight. His inquiry went like this , “How is fatty doing?” . Um Hmmm.  5. Doctors in my presence discussing the bodies of female nurses and doctors. I think they feel comfortable doing that in my presence because in their minds I’m not “dateable”. I’ve heard them talking about how cool it is to have a petite woman and how “thick” a woman was whom I know was only a size 10-12. They all decided she might be too big to date.

I’ve had three long term relationships. One ended as I told you above. The man was paralyzed on one side, and spoke like he had cerebral palsy. He was bright and cognitively intact and shared my faith. I dated him after much soul searching . He was not ever one my patients, btw. It was devastating to be dumped after three months because “even though I was perfect in every other way, he couldn’t get past my weight”. It’s not like it was the skeleton in my closet.

Another man, after 18 months (!!!) dumped me because of my weight. Now in his case, I had gone from a weight of 190 to 225. However, he did let me know before he left me that I was now “boner kill”. Can you imagine being told that as a woman!! He wished things could have been different as I was *again* “perfect in every way and no one had ever made him feel more loved, but my weight was too much”.

Had a co-worker who had been flirting pretty heavily with me. He brought one of his friends by to check me out. I overheard his friend say “she’s cute and pretty cool, but her body”. I then heard the coworker “sssshhh” his friend. He never did go out with me. I stopped waiting for him and asked. He declined, while blushing, fidgetting and avoiding eye contact. I think he was ashamed of himself.

The two guys who dumped me because of my weight both shielded me from their friends. I think they were embarrassed of me.

Another female co-worker of mine had been MO for her whole life until the past two years. She lost the weight and looks great. She’s now in her late twenties, but had never had a b/f and was a virgin. After she lost the weight she was set up on a date by her friends and is now engaged to that man. Thing is, she was born and raised and lives in the same small town. Same friends , same people. Was she not worth dating before hand?!

I’ve overheard friends trying to set up someone else with a guy who sounded like he could be great for me. I would inquire and they’d say something to the effect of “I’m not sure he’d be interested in you”. Knowing all other criteria matched well, I couldn’t help but wonder if they didn’t want to set up their guy friends with a fat chick.

Some of us were joking about the “Stud ranch” that Heidi Fleiss is going to start. We actually looked online for male prostitutes for women thinking we likely wouldn’t find any. Well, we did. The sad thing…..the vast majority of the “studs for hire” had a conditional clause: No obese women or No fat chicks. Wow, too fat to even pay someone to have sex with you!

I was close to matching the school record for the 400. The school paper wrote a small piece about how impressive it was, but not before qualifying that accomplishment as being especially impressive because of my “mammoth size”. Nice. I’m still surprised that the teacher/editor didn’t edit that out. I was called Mammoth Marney forever after.

I ran the 800 next to one of the guys, whom I was keeping pace with. His congratulations afterwords were as follows, “Wow!!! You can really run for a fat chick”. Um hmm. I can really run for anybody! I matched you, didn’t I? He was silent.

I usually was a starter for our VB team. Couldn’t understand why I wasn’t starting during a match against a really hard team even though my stats (vertical leap, aces, kills, digs) were at least as good as the girl who was replacing me. I inquired of the coach who said he wanted to intimidate the other team and they would see me and assume I wasn’t as fast. Nice. A male player would have been taken on skill only, not how big or small he looked.

When going for my walks in public, I’ve been mooed at. Had mud thrown at me. When going to the gym to weight lift, I have been looked up and down and sneered at or laughed at.

Please forgive the length of this post. If you are still reading, I’d like to summarize with the following conclusions. It might be easy to say the people I’ve encountered were all shallow or mean. Perhaps. However, one can’t put all the blame on them, nor can you discount such a vast quantity of experiences . They are a product of society and I am the common recipient denominator. No matter what social and psychological etiologies you attribute the attitudes towards, the facts remain that the attitudes are pre judgments are existant. It is what it is and it must be lived through for all of us women currently alive.

I would love to be proven wrong. Really. However, when I can’t get a date in over a decade no matter how many church singles groups, online dating, or coworkers social events I attend, it makes me wonder. I very recently came to the crushing conclusion that I likely would not have a man show interest in me while being MO, which means chances are I’ll never find someone who will love me for me apart from what my body can offer them. I know it sounds harsh, but you talk to any single woman with a BMI above 40 and ask what her dating life is like. It was deeply upsetting to accept that a true, spiritual, unconditional love was not going to happen. I still pray it does, but experience has taught me different. I am not cynical. Nor am I hopeless. I am merely being a realist.

I know many will disagree with me, but I think we do our children and others a great disservice when we say “you’re beautiful no matter what size”. What about, “you are worthwhile no matter what”? You are worth respect, or you are an excellent human being”. I think a person is worth what is on the inside, however society doesn’t work that way and are we not trying to teach our kids not only how to survive but thrive in the world that they are coming in to ?? I wi**** wasn’t so, and I really believed it wasn’t so for 30 years. I can’t deny the truth anymore though. Our world (sadly) doesn’t work that way. I’ve been told to say “to hell with them!” or “Who wants them if they can’t accept me the way I am?” Really though, how honest is that when 99% of the population feels that way? Or it might be fine if one intends to live alone and asexual. That is not satisfactory for me. Therefore, I sadly admit, that my weight matters. A man won’t love me apart from my body.

Things might be different after someone has fallen in love with you. Most men won’t allow that to happen because they see the weight first and the mental block and heart guard goes up. Men like what is beautiful. THEN they learn to love what at first they merely liked.

Man looks at the outside, while God looks at the heart. I would like to end this with saying I truly believe the following and I only wish our world was utopian enough that everyone felt this way: You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.