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Originally Posted by davidjh7 You are certainly entitled to your preferences, and to your priorities in a friend. What you say about self respect, a sub or superset of self esteem, is often true. Food is as big of an addiction or a crutch as anything else, like drugs, or booze, or whatever. I have to say you are making a pretty sweeping generalization which may be preventing you from interacting with some otherwise increadible people who can enrich your life, but immediately categorizing a person solely by appearance, but that is your choice. You don't owe anybody your friendship, nor you theirs. Respect should be earned, certainly, but respect has to be given a reasonable chance to be earned as well. Just my two bits. |
AMAZINGLY LONG POST AHEAD THAT REALLY ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT
Like I said, I really didn't feel like sugar-coating it or getting into too many details of my personal life or anything, but I have a little more time now.
Some of my best friends are definitely larger people. A friend I hold as close as my brother was at one point upwards of 300 lbs. and just under 6' tall. I have another good friend that stands about 6'2" and was nearly 600 lbs. at one point. My step-brother (who was a good friend before our parents married) was at one point ~260 lbs. and a little less than 6' tall. My lady that babysat me while I was growing up was definitely large (no idea how much she weighed, though) and I always thought she was one of the nicest, most amazing people in my life.
I don't think fat people are bad people, and I don't write off any possibility of friendship with someone because of their weight. It takes a little time (or something noteworthy) for
anyone to gain my respect. Massively overweight people just start at a bit of a disadvantage for me because I'm so far at the other end of the spectrum. I'm about 40 lbs. underweight, and most of my family is incredibly skinny. I don't have to engage in any type of regular physical activity to stay exceptionally underweight and I eat more than almost anyone I know. I know I have an amazing metabolism and I know that my "set point" is very low, but because I don't have to do any work, eat a lot, and am
underweight, it's hard for me to get my head around how people get to be incredibly
overweight without extreme gluttony.
I'm a smart guy, I know that there are a myriad of factors that contribute to a person's weight, but on the surface of my thoughts it's hard to comprehend how someone could be 100 lbs. overweight or more when I can do nothing but eat for weeks on end and still be startlingly skinny.
Aside from all that, the "communities" that I'm a part of just happen to have very low numbers of overweight people (with a few exceptions).
I play ultimate frisbee. There are a handful of bigger folk that play, but mostly everyone is built like a soccer player or a track star. Skinny guys with muscular legs and shoulders/arms/chest built up from throwing discs for years on end.
I do a lot of climbing. Climbers are primarily skinny, but very cut. Well defined, lean muscles on their arms and legs. Flat stomachs.
I play Dance Dance Revolution/Pump it Up/In the Groove at a very high (and competitive) level. Dance game players might start overweight, but eventually they lose it. I didn't realize how incredibly muscular dance game players' legs were until I started talking to football players about how much they could leg press and realized most skinny looking DDR players could out leg press them without breaking a sweat.
I'm an Eagle Scout. People who do a lot of hiking generally take extra care to make sure there's as little weight in their pack as possible. Extra weight on the belly doesn't help here.
I'm a Computer Science major and I play a lot of video games. HUGE variety here. Some people are skinnier than me, some people are three times my size and squishy, some people are twice my size and in the Army/Marines/Air Force (and are decidedly not squishy).
I won't hate on someone for being a little chunky or having a bit of a gut, but people that have 100 lbs. of unneeded them on themselves don't come across as someone that's dedicated to much of anything I'm interested in other than eating. Maybe they share some geeky interests with me, maybe they're really funny, maybe they're the most reliable person in the world looking for a friend and just wants to help everyone they possibly can, but they don't immediately strike me as someone I'd have much interest in talking to.
Then again, to be perfectly honest, most people I see - even amazingly attractive or fit people - don't seem like people I'd have much interest in talking to unless I think they might fall into one of the aforementioned groups of people for whatever reason.
I'm all for expanding my horizons and opening up to people, but your body and your mind are the two important things any person has. If you can't take care of either of them, I'm going to take issue.
Hope my diatribe wasn't too long-winded.
