Plus-Size!

You and I have been told, and been made to believe, that we are what is commonly and rudely termed - “plus size”. What that means exactly no one has been able to satisfactorily explain to me in a rational and intelligent way - if you know, then please enlighten me.

Being “plus size” has meant, for me, that I have had to combat bad manners and inappropriate attitudes from other people, since my childhood. It remains so today. For to too many people "plus-size" means being out of control and fat. Look around you, you'll see plenty of plus-size women who are NOT fat. They are perfectly proportioned regardless of their size.

I’m told that discrimination is no longer legal or acceptable. however no one has told the legislators that discrimination based on size has not even been confronted let alone dispensed with. It may not be legal but it certainly is allowed.

And by whom? You name it. Manufacturers, designers and retailers of clothing. The media - and this includes newspapers, magazines, and publishers of books - how many novels have you read lately with a buxom plus size female as it’s heroine? Editors and features writers, television current affairs anchor people as well as journalists, television drams and sit-coms take delight in making fun or being objectionable to people who do not have the "ideal" figure or looks. If the "worm turned", and suddenly thin or skeletal was considered to be "unacceptable" you'd be deafened by the screams of those thinner women. Yet, we're expected to accept their inappropriate and bad behaviour without a murmur.

Then we come to health professionals. Many GPs are fast coming to the notion that patients are people, thank goodness, and that fat people are just as worthy of respect as smaller people with the same needs and wants. It hasn’t always been so. But when it comes to health sports clubs or fitness centres, then the only way they will look at you is if you are a potential client eager to lose weight. Try and tell them that all you want to do is get fit, not necessarily lose weight, and they’ll give you a horrified look. They really don’t want to know you. Yet you'd think they'd be eager for you to join their clubs in order to prove that being healthy and fit is desirous. But no, they "see" the size and looks of the plus-sizer, and make their own assumptions. The sooner health clubs have classes at which plus-sizers are not only welcomed but sought, the sooner we'll find opportunities to enjoy better fitness without having to go through embarrassing moments in the presence of smaller and more petite women.

As plus-sizers, we deserve the right to enjoy life and that includes fitness, without being harrassed into undergoing weight loss within that goal.