They aren't ugly just because they don't look like you!
I am getting really sick of people constantly telling us that skinny is beautiful! Everyone is entitled to their opinion and different people see different types as what they deem to be 'perfect' and that is fine but when someone turns around and says 'your fat' (translated to ' Your ugly because you don't look like me') and bullies you into an insecure state of mind in which you feel you need to lose weight to be part of our society i think people have gone too far!
Its more and more apparent in kids who hang out on the street or in school and bully other kids. i was bullied at age 11 for being overweight...for christ sake why would an 11 year old care about how she or he looks! But it took its toll and i lost all the weight and granted im happier in myself but im never happy enough because its stuck with me. no matter how skinny i become im never happy because in the back of my mind all i hear is the taunts from the school boys. Even now i have 12/13 year old girls and boy coming up to me saying im fat....im 18 and i have someone x amount of years younger then me telling me how i should look?
If you have any children that are being bullied for being fat, PLEASE dont encourage them to lose weight, if they want to do it on their own accord by all means but if you get pushed into losing weight you have no idea of the psychological damage it has to you in the long run. The damage you cause by being rude to people about how they look is unimaginable and to people who have never been in that position where someone has said something hurtful they couldn't even comprehend how it makes you feel.
Most children today are horrible creatures and even though everyone is their own person but alot of the times its the parents that influence a child at such a young age and then there friends. Is there really nothing we can do about this madness?
Yeah, I got the fat kid abuse when I was little, too. My mom always told me I was beautiful and somehow I believed her :)
I wasn't ever really fat, looking back on it. I was solid, and healthy. The doctors never worried....but I was never, ever even close to being the smallest girl in the class.
I got my feelings hurt when people called me fat, but I got lucky and it didn't really traumatize me. Although, even when I am at a low weight....I still feel like the fat girl. Oh well.
I agree with you, though. Kids can be mean, and parents should never encourage their children to lose weight. If they are overweight, it is better that the entire family take a healthier approach to eating....cut out the junk for EVERYONE! And get the entire family active walking, or swimming, or playing outside on a daily basis. Singling out one child will definitely have huge psychological repercussions somewhere down the line, if not immediately.
Forget the kids telling you that you are fat. They are jealous and insecure in themselves. Have you ever met someone who is truly happy with themselves and mean to other people? It doesn't work like that!
You are beautiful, and far from fat. Look at your cheek bones, and that well-defined jaw/chin! Now look at mine....lol. I don't know your stats, but from the looks of it, I can't wait until I am your size!
Kids can be really horrible.. but at the same time, I don't think that there's anything wrong with helping kids lose some weight. I don't mean telling them "um. little timmy let's just face it you need to diet" but doing something a little more tactful like helping them get more exercise by getting them involved with extra curricular activities and helping them make healthier decisions. I mean, if they don't learn to be healthy early on in life, that could lead to serious health problems down the road in life like diabetes and heart problems. All kids get insecure pretty much once they hit the preteen years.. so they're going to cut other kids down to make themselves feel better. Whether you're fat or not, they're always going to find something to pick on. I mean, I had a friend in high school who got picked on for having an eating disorder, which she didn't even have (just naturally skinny). That's gonna take it's toll on a kid just as much as being called fat. Anyway, that's my 2 cent
Ah, the fat kid abuse. That brings back memories...
I completely understand where you're coming from. I honestly feel like no matter how much weight I lose, I will always feel like a 'fat girl' because I was constantly teased. I fear that I'll never see myself as beautiful. Still, I hope that one day, I can shed my 'fat girl' mentality.
Also, I do agree about not forcing kids to lose weight. My parents forced me to join a gym when I was 11 years old. How ridiculous is that??? Every day (in the summer), my parents would drive me to the gym, leave me there for a few hours (where I would take aerobics classes and run on a treadmill) then pick me up. That was possibly the most traumatic experience I've ever had thus far. It's possible to help your child make healthier choices without having to force them.
Original Post by tini87:
Kids can be really horrible.. but at the same time, I don't think that there's anything wrong with helping kids lose some weight. I don't mean telling them "um. little timmy let's just face it you need to diet" but doing something a little more tactful...
I agree you can help a child lose weight by all means what i was getting at was if you get bullied at school for whatever reason (i know its not just for being fat though that is just one of the top five things) then your parents shouldn't then push you into weight loss and even if they do they should change their lifestyle not just yours. Like you said teach kids to be healthy when they are young but by pushing your kid to lose weight but not changing the families lifestyle as a whole it just confuses and can make the child feel outcasted from his/her own family. Because your treating them differently. Let them make their own decisions and then just offer help or advice if they ask or its deemed neccesary.
my little step brother is a chunky kid, and he gets teased. The worse is from his own sisters, who frankly are chunky themselves and don't have room to speak. Now don't think I have anything against people that are heavier or anything like that it just makes me mad when the put him down like that, cause they're his older sisters and should protect him, we've had some pretty big fights about it. I think they do it to encourage him to loose weight but that's not the way to do it. It really bothers me, he tries to act like it doesn't bother him, but I know it does cause he worries about what he eats and always wants to work out w/me. I try to be supportive of him wanting to exercise, I invite him to come w/me when I play tennis (alterior motive there to so I have someone to play w/) and ride my bike and stuff like that. I don't encourage him to lift weights though cause at his age over doing it can do a lot more damage than good. And we try out new fruits and veggies together. But I tell him not to worry too much about his weight, he's practically a clone of his dad who was chunky at his age but thinned out as he grew and was a skinny teenager/20 something.
have you ever asked you step brother how he feels about his sisters putting him down? Sometimes the answers are really suprising, the same sort of thing happened with my nephew and his older brother and cousins and i always tried to help him as i was losing weight to and when i finally asked him how it made him feel he said he didnt feel like he belonged to the family. he was only 7! I didn't even realise a seven year old would think like that. Its so dangerous tampering with kids minds at such a young age! All the best for your step brother :-).
There are many more seriously overweight children in society today and the cry goes up.... 'why don't the parents do something about it?' Without expert support from the medical profession parents are largely left to their own devices. Damned if they do and damned if they don't
yeh that is more or less what my mum said to me when i was younger and upset about my appearance, it another lesson to learn and unless you've dealt with the situation where a young child has said something of the sort to you you can't say how you would deal with it. The government should do more to support parents and children with obesity issues or just in general to be honest! But before any one as a parent looks at their child and panics because they arent happy then take a second and before you do any drastic dieting which your child probably wont fully understand, ask them what THEY want to do. Believe me not alot of people do it.
yeah we've talked about it some he's one of those kids that doesn't like to talk about his feelings a lot but we actually talk a lot, I think cause we're a blended family and there's a lot of issues there not just weight ones. I think he sees me as someone older who's already been through a lot of what he's going through and who understands, and kind of a neutral party so he talks to me a lot. I guess I'm not really shocked by some of those feelings coming from someone his age cause I went through them too (again not the weight stuff but the family stuff). But your right people don't give kids enough credit they're a lot more aware of what's going on than most people think.
"Most children today are horrible creatures"
Well that's a bit of a judgmental statement. :/
I agree about the fact that some kids can be very rude about another person's weight. I wasn't fat in elementary school, but I wasn't skinny like a few others, so I occasionally felt bad. But you know what, you just gotta learn to ignore people like that. They'll always exist - there's no point mulling over it. As far as I'm concerned, "fat" people have always been bullied, and although it may be very emotionally upsetting (which admittedly isn't good at all), it should serve as some sort of clue that maybe they do need to lose weight. Facing bullying and today's images of "beauty" is difficult and painful but in the end it's not a matter of looks - there are many health risks that come with being overweight, so I wouldn't be upset about the bullies as much as about health.
Whatever the reason though, some kids do become concerned about their weight too soon. There're 13 year olds on this site counting calories for god's sakes. It's ridiculous.
Sadly the media and society seems to dictate that skinny is good looking. Celebrities are the main people that propogate that message. If you see adverts you see skinny models. The sad reality is that in the developed countries we have an increasing obesity problem. This is down to great many factors.
When I was a kid the fat kid was a rarity and sadly they got picked on but these kids were usually quite a bit overweight. We also did a lot more sports at school back then (in the UK since school league tables are published schools focus on core subjects and sports and other areas have suffered). The thing is children can be blunt and cruel at times. It is the duty of the parents and adults to correct this behaviour when they come across.
My daughters best friend is a little chubby and her first name happened to contain the word fat at the end and she was teased about that. She was only 5 years old and was asking everyone to call her by her middle name because of this. Now she only uses her middle name.
She is a gorgeous little girl and it made me angry to think that kids could be so cruel. What also shocked me was that kids so young were concerned about their weight! Even my daughter worries about it and we tell her off for it because she is actually skinny anyway - the last thing we want is her to suffer the other problems that happen due to skinny size 0 celebs - Anorexia.
btw the reason my daughter and her best friend are friends is probably because at that time my daughter had really bad eczema and the other kids would not go near her. My wife even overheard one parent telling her child not to go near my daughter in case she catches it (Eczema is not contagious).
But I've noticed that amongst my nephews and nieces they are getting more concerned about their body image at such young ages. This should not be the case at all.
Children often take the lead from other children when it comes to teasing or bullying the kid who is different. Sometimes adults are not so different. As a parent I have to take on the responsibility to teach my child right from wrong. This should also be upheld by teachers and other adults. Sadly this isn't the case and we are failing as a society now.
"The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty."
~"Sophia" - The Cruxshadows~
I was ridiculed from first grade right through my senior year of high school. Fat, they called me. Ugly.
I wasn't skinny, but I carried my weight in such a way that I had curves. Healthy ones. At 17, I was 5'2" and 180 pounds, active in Winter Guard/Marching Band Colorguard (for those of you who've never done this and think it's not hard work, I hauled/toss/spun 2-pound flags, 5-pound rifles, and a 3-pound sabre), was well toned, and while my stomach has always been pudgy, I wasn't really "fat".
I have always seen myself as fat however - and I became it due to depression. I'm working on losing it now, but even still I don't know if I'm going to be happy. I'm always going to be "fat". I chat online. I send my picture URL to people who request it. I usually get "holy **** ur fat" or "damn ur a cow", or other such degrading remarks.
It takes its toll even though I'm 29 now. I have no self esteem, just enough of a desire to return to my weight of 180 to see if I can't wear that gorgeous dress I wore to my senior prom again - or better yet, those jeans that went with the sweater that made my eyes leap out, and my face bright, all in pristine condition in space bags, waiting for me to fit into them once more.
And children ARE horrible creatures - and NO I don't think that's judgemental. They were horrible when I was growing up, they're horrible now, and they're going to continue to be horrible until parents begin teaching them to be more tactful, as /I/ was taught when I was young. What was it that Thumper learned in Disney's Bambi?
"If you can't say sumthin' nice, don't say nuthin' at all."
A little tact goes a long way. When I sent my picture to a 17-year-old who I play World of Warcraft with, and warned him I was "ugly", he shot back "... no you're not. I won't lie; you could stand to lose some weight, but I still say you're pretty."
Those words meant much more than any of the superficial stupidity I got through the years. I didn't know he was 17 until he told me he was. From the way that young man spoke, typed, acted, I thought he was my age. It is possible to bring a child up and have them learn manners and tact. I don't care that he's now 18, he's one of the closest online friends I have, one of the ones backing me with full support for my quest to change my eating habits, lifestyle, and to lose weight here.
It's hard for those of us who have dealt with all of that crap for so long to change how we think. Once someone loves us for who we are inside, it's easier for us to love ourselves, because we start to see ourselves through their eyes, the good things, not just the bad ones.
It's hard, but.. remember the compliments you receive, ignore the insults.
I don't think it's judgmental to say that kids are are horrible; PEOPLE are pretty horrible, especially in groups. Not all people or kids, of course, but I've had adults be just as rude/mean to me as any of my peers when I was a child.
Once, about a year ago, I was in Old Navy shopping in the plus size section because there were very few places I could find reasonably priced clothes in my size. As a big girl, clothes shopping is kind of torture anyway: things never fit quite right, and are never really flattering even if they fit. In any case, as I'm browsing a tiny, older woman and her daughter come wandering through the section. The mom stops, picks up a random shirt by the hem and giggles, "Whoa, how huge is this! It's like a sheet!". She proceeds to inflate her cheeks as though to demonstrate the kind of person who'd wear such a thing. Mind you, I was standing like three feet away from them shopping. She and her daughter just continued on their way to the "skinny" clothes laughing together.
Horrible, snotty, bullying kids often come from horrible, snotty bullying parents. And although I agree with the OP that parents in general should try to stop these things, I also think because there are parents like that hag in Old Navy, there will always be kids that live everyday to torture some other poor kid. It sucks, but I don't think there's much that can be done about it.
I'd rather be called fat than..... "ugly" :*(.
people's called me ugly directly, indirectly, secretly, and i hear it all.....
i even tricked myself into being called ugly.. .i felt mean/ grumpy one day and thought "ew that girls ugly"... then B A M soemoone comes up and says "hey, that girl looks like you"
urggg :*( :*( :*(.
I have to agree... but it's hardly a new problem - I got the 'you're ugly because you don't look exactly like us' message loud and clear when I was a kid, and that was close to thirty years ago! Sadly, I don't think anything's changed since then...
Kids definitely can be little monsters. As a mother, it broke my heart to have my son come home in tears because someone was teasing him. He was on the heavy side all through grade school and into Jr. High. He was very sensitive about it but wouldn't talk much about it. He was always very tall, like all the other kids came up to his shoulders so I think he got a lot less teasing than many other poor kids.
As for me, I'm still scarred for life from high school. I went to this evil "Pretty in Pink" high school where everyone was wealthy and those who weren't might as well have been lepers. I mean really, I couldn't buy my parents house right now but I grew up feeling like dirt because I didn't have 15 different Coach bags. Hell, I still don't have one.
OK I have to brag. After another growth spurt tons of weight fell off my son and now he's 6'1", going on 16 and I have a parade of teenage girls chasing after him. Take that you awful kids.
side note: apparently he's still very sensitive about his small ears. One day I mentioned them in front of family saying how cute they were. He turned bright red and came down on me like a ton of bricks. I guess we all have something.
Oh, people are cruel alright, but it's not just children. I've suffered because of being fat at the hands of adults as well. A grown man I know used to "moo" at me and refer to my hands/feet as "hooves". I had gotten it from people ever since I hit puberty and my metabolism fell through the floor, and I gained a ton of weight. I didn't like to admit it, but it hurt. It may have not been the answer, but I got fed up and beat the crap out of a few kids I knew growing up because they were mean to me about my weight. My highest weight was 325 lbs. I'm not 185lbs (which is out of the obese category for 5'9" but still "overweight"). Though I'm technically "chubby" now, I still feel like the fat girl, and perhaps I always will because I spent so long morbidly obese it's hard to think of myself any other way. I admire the people who have gone through the hell that is obesity and still have faith in humanity.
What a pity party!!! People used to try to mess with me over my weight, and I talked about them right back. I don't know what universe people are from really, where they just let people step all over them. Seriously, those little snot nosed loser kids who wanted to start something, got something when they messed with me, and I dare a skinny man or woman to come up to me and disrespect me. I DARE THEM...
I think a lot of people need to grow a pair, so to speak, stop letting people friggin traumatize you, especially ridiculous, retarded, underweight, undernourished, freaks who have 0 social skills. HAHA
I serioulsy don't understand how people can be alright with being stepped on all of their lives.
Fight for your honour.
Unfortunately, from what I see in my high school, many people have fallen prey to media. The freshman class looks insanely starved... the counselor actually pulled the girls out of class once to lecture them on proper eating habits (eating disorders are rampant). What doesn't help at all is that most of the guys at my school encourage this behavior: going out with or commenting that only skinny girls are hot.
Perhaps it's just the freshman/sophomore class along with a couple pervy junior/senior boys, but that's the outlook for the school. Fortunately I found a guy who thinks ribs are gross. =D
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