Discrimination At Fat Jennifer Coleman Summary

Fat. The one word so equally hated by men and women all around the world. Most people are taught from a young age that being ‘fat’ is not good. It is unattractive, horrifying, and moreover, it is wrong. Society does not like it, so neither should I. An essay by Jennifer A. Coleman named “Discrimination at Large” explores and identifies the struggles of being a big woman in today’s society and how she is shamed for something as simple as her looks, including hateful slurs and horrible comments. The thing is, I can hide a drug addiction. An alcohol addiction. A pornography addiction. The one thing all three of these addictions have in common is that another person cannot tell that I am addicted, because they cannot see it. An addiction to food …show more content…
I did not ever before think that there was something wrong with the way I looked. I turned to look at my arms, and then down at my stomach, my thighs...now everything seemed wrong with me. When walking home all I saw were happy, skinny people. Oh how I wished I could look like them and be as happy and confident as they were. Only, if only someone told me that size is not the most important thing about a person, maybe I would have grown up to think otherwise. I knew that people would avoid me, call me lazy, and tell me that I was worthless and disgusting, but one thing they would never tell me is that I am beautiful, and somehow, they always had their justifications. This is exactly what Coleman faced as a child as she describes in her essay “Discrimination at Large”, where people were mostly cruel in dolling out judgement on fat people. “I would prove that I was not just a slob, a blimp, a pig. I would finally escape the unsolicited remarks of strangers ranging from the "polite"--"You would really be pretty if you lost weight"--to the hostile ("Lose weight, you fat slob").” (Coleman, 4). I have been the recipient of this type of judgement, as after that awful comment, I was …show more content…
Is it still considered a blessing if those who are meant to love you for who you are, backstab you? My cousins, aunts, great-aunts, even my own sister only ever saw the fat on my body. Who I was as a person did not matter, because as long as I did not look like a twig, I was not a human being worth anything. As my aunts and great-aunts are all nurses, it was assumed that I was overweight and convinced me that I was unhealthy. I was told to expect cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, strokes and even