Can one compare being very thin to being Fat when it comes to suffering?

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. I understand I might not be thinking clearly.

A Friend who loves re-enactment posted something that sparked something deep. It all went wrong though.

She posted a rant about someone else and it went like this:

FRIEND —  ” Someone else posted:  …does not necessarily want/need anyone who would qualify to pass as Twiggy. She loves to dress people who look like people! I think we all appreciate when we see someone whose body is not perfect, and whose face shows a bit of life experience, who dresses, walks & looks comfortable, elegant and self possessed.”

I had no idea that being thin made me less of a real person, not elegant, and unsure of myself. I also didn’t know that being thin automatically made me perfect, because that is breaking news to me.

Some of us are thin, yes, but we also struggle to put on weight. We eat until it hurts, hoping that our hip bones and ribs won’t be so visible, and we’ll look a bit more healthy, but nothing changes. We can’t help that. It’s how we’re naturally built.

It took me a LONG time to come to terms with my bony self, so I really don’t need you telling me (and every other thin person in this hobby), that we’re less of a person because we don’t have more meat on us.

We’re ALL beautiful. We’re ALL real women. We ALL have a place in this hobby.

My Reply — I don’t find it helpful to compare suffering. I can say though that as a teen who was very thin and now as a woman who can’t lose weight to save her life (maybe literally) It was a lot easier to live life looking like the ideal for me than it is to look as I do now. I can’t compare to others lives but until you look this far from the ideal I don’t think one can say it is the same. The TV is full of those “real” people on TV, very few over weight characters with any real depth. Reality TV specially sucks. You would fit in with this years Big Brother cast, of course I though wouldn’t. While I know those who are thin fell the they get the short end of the stick, I have to say those who are over weight are not even offered a stick to begin with!

FRIEND SAYS — I would smash my face into a brick wall before whoring myself out for any type of “reality” fame. You either love yourself, or you don’t. No one else can take that away from you. No one.

If you’re basing your comment on how ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ life is based on weight, you’re obviously not looking at the real world around you. Reality TV makes the whole world look like an idiot, regardless of weight. Whose ideal of beauty should I adhere to: the media, or my own? There is no “plus” sized, there are just women living their lives, and doing what makes them happy.

My Reply —  I guess some things are easy to say when your not walking in certain shoes. A dear friend is dying because of weight issues right now.  You can love yourself without loving the body your in and without loving your health issues. Even if you don’t want to see the reality, we are effected by how people treat us and when you look different than the current expected normal it can just add another layer of hell to your sick situation. While I understand your rant to an extent, that seller who is making cloths for people for larger sizes is the exception not the rule. Try going to the mall and finding most stores do not have cloths over a size 12. When 90% of the stores carry your small size but not mine that says something so yes, I think that special store that is trying to make the plus sizes feel normal has the right to advertise reminding us we are people to. She isn’t saying your anything, she is saying that she dresses people who might feel they are not perfect. Unless you feel perfect she isn’t talking about you and if you feel perfect then I doubt this would bother you. Ironic. Your saying no one can make anyone feel badly about themselves and yet you felt slighted by who ever wrote the quote. People are dying to be healthy and thin and trying to look normal, there is huge social pressure. Some people just don’t see it I guess or maybe because they fall it they are not used to the hell on this side of things.

FRIEND SAYS: Kimberly, I may not have dealt with “fat shaming” growing up, but I was made fun of the same way for being too thin. My mother and I share the same self-confidence issues, and we are total body type opposites. I have seen/read/heard the horrible things people say about her, and she has been there for me when I came home crying my eyes out day after day because people called me anorexic, and told me I had a drug problem.

How would you like to be asked EVERYDAY if you’re eating enough, if you have a substance abuse problem, if you’re bulimic/anorexic, how any one can find a bony girl like me attractive..because you can see my ribs? So perhaps you should try to take your pity part elsewhere, because I’ve dealt with both sides of the coin my whole life.

My Reply — I am not saying you didn’t suffer but clearly your not seeing the differences. You can’t compare the two, it would be like a white person trying to write a book on what it is like to be a black person during slavery with the goal of showing how hard it was then to be white back then…. One just can not compare the two. Yes both are skin color and people but the situation is 100% different. Some people though will just never get it though. The fact that I shared something so dear to my heart, the fact that someone I love is dying…. and you call it a pity party…… I was being honest and trying to be brave in sharing what it is like on this side. A pity party…. that was just so hurtful.

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In the end, I know internet communication is difficult at the best of times never mind when people are emotional and sharing suffering. At the core though I just find it very hard when thin people try and compare how hard it is for them to people who are over weight. Body issues suck no matter what kind they are though. Being very thin though is nothing like being over weight, yes it is a weight issue but they are vastly different. I have near a dozen friends and family who have risked their lives with surgery to get thin, though it does not always equal better health and in some cases it proves deadly.

I would hope, that if you have a friend trying to tell you about the heart break of losing a loved one to weight issues that you don’t tell them to take their pity party some place else.

I am trying very hard right now to remember something I read long ago so that I can forgive this friend.

“Let your loyalty to another human being come about in this way:
there will be moments-quickly passing by- when he will seem to you
filled and illumined by the true, primal image of his spirit.

Then can come,yes,will come,long stretches of time when your
fellow-being seems clouded, even darkened. But learn at these times to
say to yourself: The spirit will streghten me; I will remember the
true, unchanging image that I once saw. Nothing at all -neither
deception nor disguise- can take it away from me.

Struggle again and again for the true picture that you saw. The
struggle itself is your faithfulness.

And in those efforts to be faithful and to trust, a human being will
come close to another as if with an angel’s power of protection.

Rudolf Steiner”