When I was a senior in high school, I was voted Best Personality in our class poll. I was thrilled! My classmates agreed that I had a great personality – and, even better, the guy who was chosen in the same category was a good friend of mine. What’s not to love?
Check out my amazing personality! And my amazing hair.
The reason I bring this up is because a friend of mine mentioned to me that they’d seen a post on Facebook that said (and I quote): fat girls have amazing personalities
I went to the page of the guy who wrote that, and lo and behold, he doesn’t know enough to make his page private. So I was able to read the entire comment thread that accompanied this post. He thought he was being both funny and kind – really! Giving a little love to the fat girls, don’tcha know. A lot of his friends believed him and agreed with him. One person did not, and was pretty upset. After some back and forth, the guy finally replied:
i’m just never gonna talk again cuz the LAST thing I thought when i typed this is that ANYONE could possibly get mad… all i’m saying is people don’t give overweight people a chance..but if you climb past the social stereotypes and give them a chance there beautiful people, and a lot of times even MORE beautiful than they even need to be because they feel they need to compensate for the lack of good looks if that makes any sense.. next person to tell me to delete it and i will
There’s so much to dissect here, but my favorite part is “because they feel they need to compensate for the lack of good looks.” I know that this dude is saying that there are some beautiful fat people in the world, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that being fat doesn’t mean you have a lack of good looks. There are some really gorgeous people in the world who are fat. Sadly, there are many people who equate beauty with body size, so if your size is above the socially accepted “norm,” then you are ugly. And, to take it further, ugly/fat exists on a spectrum, where the fatter you are, the uglier you are.
So, back to being voted Best Personality. As I mentioned, I was totally honored by this. Except that I think, even then, something gnawed at the back of my head. I don’t think I doubted that my classmates liked me, but I thought… isn’t that a stereotype, the fat girl with the good personality? It often goes hand in hand with, “She has such a pretty face, if she would just lose weight…”
I mentioned awhile ago that I’m continually amazed by the variety of body shapes and sizes in the world. There are short people, tall people, fat people, thin people. There are billions of different faces, different attitudes, and different personalities. Some of those people you find beautiful, and some you don’t. Some have amazing personalities, and some don’t.
A really shallow and sad way to look at this incredible and diverse world is to lump a group of people with a shared characteristic together, and make assumptions about them – even seemingly positive ones. Think about how ridiculous it sounds to say, “All tall people have amazing personalities.” You wouldn’t say that, because it’s not true. Tall is just a physical characteristic, nothing more. You can’t tell anything about a tall person’s personality by looking at their height, so why would you be able to tell anything about a fat person’s personality by looking at their weight? Fat is just a physical characteristic, too. Nothing more.
The fact is, I do have an amazing personality, and I’m glad the PYA Class of ’92 realized and acknowledged that. Ha! Seriously, though, I’m glad for the superlative… but I fight against the generalization. I am many things, but I am not a stereotype. And neither are you.
