Day 10: What I learned the hard way

What I learned the hard way


We often hear the idiom: "Don't judge a book by its cover". In fact, many of us would like to think that we are tolerant and open minded. At least I definitely thought I was. But I came to realise that we all carry some form of prejudice or judgement in our minds. I myself used to think that people who were fat just didn't eat properly and were lazy. Though I never made fun of anyone for being overweight, it never crossed my mind that it could be due to something serious. I held the same assumption as others that only those who are lazy and over indulgent are fat. This is because I never had any problems with my weight growing up and if I ever though I was a bit fat I would just go on a diet and lose weight fairly quickly.

So when I started gaining weight and I couldn't understand why, it was a very upsetting and confusing time. But what made it worse was how others were treating me. Apart from one period in high school when some bullies taunted me, I had never really experienced discrimination. But now I was being openly mocked in public, being stared out and having people avoid me. It hurt so much to experience first hand how cruel and inconsiderate people can be. I mean, what gives people the right to shout things like: "Who ate all the pies?". Being the (fat) butt of people's jokes is not a nice experience. Actually, I can relate it to when people have discriminated against me because of my race. I am mixed race, French and Chinese but look more Chinese and have experienced some racist remarks.

I learned the hard way that no matter how "evolved" we get, and all the safeguards that are being placed against sexism, racism, etc, fatism is still alive and kicking! Fatism is my word to descibe discriminating against people for being fat. It used to be that being fat was a sign of opulence and was even beautiful. Now, it's associated with greed and laziness.

Well sorry but my book cover is tattered and fat but if you bothered looking beyond the outside you would see that the content is beautiful.