Emotional Abuse! - 2

At a recent self-esteem talk among a group of women, someone asked me just what forms of "emotional abuse" am I talking about, as it relates to being plus-size. That got me thinking because emotional abuse based on size impacts upon every single aspect of a plus-sizer's life. It effects how that person feels and deals with situations and attitudes within the home, the school, the workplace and the community.

It effects the whole emotional being of a person. It permeates the mind and a person can be faced with constant negative self-talk all day and every day. It manifests itself in guilt - each bite of food brings with it feelings of immense guilt and embarrassment. Such feelings build up until such time as the person loses all sense of proportion and perspective and binges. Then the diets begin. And guilt resurfaces from another angle - more negative self talk - and the spiral downwards into a feeling of utter despair and inadequacy becomes a living nightmare. A monotonous and dangerous life-style of dieting and binging and more dieting can become a habit. Causing havoc all the way.

Emotional abuse can be scathing; can be cruel; can be subtle; can be not-subtle; can be insidious; can be soul destroying. It can become physically destroying as well. Some plus-sizers live on the edge; relying on medication to get them through a day; they live scared and frightened lives, all due to the fact that other people (and sometimes this includes family and/or friends) can upset the balance by saying and inferring and eluding to a person's size in conversation, or through looks and suggestive hand-movements. Plus-sizers can be treated like naughty children; they can be totally ignored; they can be made feel unacceptable in many effective but totally inappropriate ways.

And let me say something so simple that quite often it can be unseen. While there are occasions when family and/or friends are trying to be helpful, the majority of times they are not. They want the plus-sizer to "do what they're told" and doing what they're told means, "lose weight!" The irony of this is that if the person does lose weight, they are still treated as if they were larger or heavier. Then a really weird thing happens. Quite often the women in the family or some within a group of friends turn nasty against the person who has lost the weight; and caustic remarks about other facets of her looks or her life become part of the new vocabulary between them. It doesn't make sense, but it happens. Women sometimes can be our worst enemy!

But I'm not talking about those trying to help, I'm talking about those who take pleasure in making fun or a plus-sizer within a family or among friends. I have often told so-called friends that they are anything but. Friends don't pull each other to pieces verbally; they don't harp on what a plus-sizer wears or looks like - they do give constructive advice especially when asked, and they do offer to go shopping with their plus-size friends and give advice on simple things like colours that suit; designs that look better than others; hemlines and things like that. That gives the plus-sizer guidelines that she can follow because she starts seeing herself through the eyes of her friend.

Emotional abuse can start as young as kindergarten age and even younger. It can continue right throughout a person's life. What a terrible shame, that plus-sizers have to confront this sort of hostility from people who should care but who don't.