I had been planning to start this blog for awhile now. But nothing motivated me more than a careless comment I heard from an acquaintance earlier this week. She complained that her sports team played so badly that weekend, it lost to another team that had three fat girls.
I don't think the comment was particularly meant to attack fat people, or was an indication that she hates fat people. She added the comment as a bitter end to a story full of mishaps for comedic effect. (And the other listeners found the comment to be very funny.) But the meaning was there: if only everything had happened as planned, they wouldn't have lost to this obviously inferior other team.
This made me uncomfortable. This woman (who seems to be very accepting of others generally), like most people I know, groups fat people together in her mind. However, instead of treating them as a part of an oppressed and marginalized group, she lumps and stereotypes them in a continuum with the "less in shape" narrative associated with their size.
These women play in a competitive sports league, for goodness sake. But she doesn't look down on me for being equally horrible at all sports; she knows they're just not my thing. But no judgments because I'm thin so I must keep myself healthy in some way.
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