"Nic is getting pretty fed up hearing how people are being 'shamed' into losing weight because they received insults from friends and/or strangers about their appearance to 'spur them on' to doing something about it, like the insults are a good thing.
Why is insulting someone, bullying someone, ridiculing someone now being lauded as the way forward to display (faux) concern for someone who is not considered to be (by them) desirably-bodied?
Masking hatred, ignorance and own-self-issues in false barbs of 'it's for your own good', really meaning 'it's for *their own* own good' is puerile, cowardly and dangerous.
If you genuinely care, let love be your maxim, let your outlook be positive, and your words be kind. Otherwise STFU and GTFO."
It can be said that I perhaps spend too much time on facebook, but to be honest, I've learned an awful lot more about the 'real world' on there recently than in the actual Real World. Being of the bigger persuasion, I've learned to surround myself in a layer of emotional bubble wrap when venturing outside - one barb from an outraged 'Citizen of Self-Proclaimed Normal' may occasionally get through and puncture my albeit rather paltry self-esteem, but on the whole there are usually more deflections than direct hits. So, being click-baited to stories of epic weight loss triggered by someone-or-other saying something disgusting to a larger person is quite the eye-opener. And doing only a tiny online search brings me tale after tale of how insults, name-calling, sometimes even physical aggression have been the alleged flame to light the touch paper of weight loss attempts.
This APPALS me.
The only people with ANY right to say anything about your body is you, your doctor, and if they are wonderful, your partner (and imo only if you ask them to).
What appals me even further is that there doesn't seem to be any backlash or comeuppance for those that insult, the aggressors, the bullies, au contraire, they seem to be more congratulated than condemned for doing what is being spun to sound like a public service. What on earth has happened to decency, decorum, and good old-fashioned mind-your-own-business?
For sure there is no one single catalyst that ignites the weight-loss spark in us. There can, and are, a myriad reasons to propel us towards change, many of which should indeed be lauded to the heavens and celebrated for the good that they do, but hatred should not be one of them. For no matter what the 'but I'm saying this because I care' lot say, insults in whatever form spring from a well of animosity and bitterness; the same tainted source from which the bullies, and out-and-out haters get theirs.
Sure, it may be fair to say that perhaps had it not been for those spirit-crushing insults, the insultee may not have been spurred on to change their lives at that point in time, but what happens when the route down which they feel they're being propelled leads to an altogether different, less favourable end?
This exaltation of contempt needs to stop.
