‘bother’ to him if you just asked him for what you want instead of using me or anybody who walks past your web to ask him for you.”
She studied me for a long silence, measuring her options. Eventually she smiled. “But,” she said, pleased with herself, “you did it.”
When I was a kid she always tried to get me to call her “Gramma Lucille.” I never did, because for some reason I could never remember “Lucille” (I couldn’t remember the right word for “pickle” at the same age, and every time I asked for one someone would give me an olive). She told me that when she died she wasn’t going to go to heaven, she was going to go sit on her headstone and watch the rest of us. I would hope that heaven offers more challenging options than that, but whenever I drive past her headstone, I always wave and murmur, “Gramma Lucille.”
fatso
my friend annie and i were having lunch and we fell into a discussion of people of size. She told me she had gone to the fair with a friend of hers who is a young man of substance, and while he was standing in the midway, thinking about his elephant ear, someone walked past him, said, “You don’t need to eat that,” and kept on walking away. Gone before he could register what had been said, much less formulate a stunning retort.
And that person was probably right: he did not need to eat that elephant ear. Given what they are made of, the question then becomes: Who
does
need to eat an elephant ear? And to what benefit? Are elephant ears inherently better for thin people than for fat ones? Do we suppose that that one particular elephant ear will somehow alter the course of this man’s life in some way that all of the elephant ears before it, or all of the elephant ears to follow, might not? And last but not least, what qualifies any of us for the mission of telling other people what they should or should not eat?
I have probably spent most of my life listening to other people tell me that as a middle-class white person, I have no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. I have never experienced the look that tells me I am not welcome, I have never been treated rudely on a bus, I have never been reminded to keep my place, I have never been laughed at, ridiculed, threatened, snubbed, not waited on, or received well-meaning service I would just as soon have done without. I have never had to choose which streets I will walk down and which streets I will avoid. I have never been told that my needs cannot be met in this store. I have never experienced that lack of social status that can debilitate the soul.
My feelings were not hurt when I was twelve years old and the shoe salesman measured my feet and said he had no women’s shoes large enough for me, but perhaps I could wear the boxes.
I have never been called crude names, like “fatso” or “lardbucket” or “fatass.” My nickname on the school bus was never “Bismarck,” as in the famous battleship. No one ever assumed I was totally inept in all sports except those that involved hitting things because—and everyone knows—the more weight you can put behind it, the farther you can kick or bat or just bully the ball.
I have never picked up a magazine with the photograph of a naked woman of substance on the cover, to read, in the following issue, thirty letters to the editor addressing sizism, including the one that said, “She should be ashamed of herself. She should go on a diet immediately and demonstrate some self-control. She is going to develop diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and stroke, she will die an ugly death at an early age and she will take down the entire American health system with her.” And that would, of course, be the only letter I remember. I would not need some other calm voice to say, “You don’t know that—and you don’t know that the same fate would not befall a thin woman.”
No one has ever assumed I am lazy, undisciplined, prone to self-pity, and emotionally
She studied me for a long silence, measuring her options. Eventually she smiled. “But,” she said, pleased with herself, “you did it.”
When I was a kid she always tried to get me to call her “Gramma Lucille.” I never did, because for some reason I could never remember “Lucille” (I couldn’t remember the right word for “pickle” at the same age, and every time I asked for one someone would give me an olive). She told me that when she died she wasn’t going to go to heaven, she was going to go sit on her headstone and watch the rest of us. I would hope that heaven offers more challenging options than that, but whenever I drive past her headstone, I always wave and murmur, “Gramma Lucille.”
fatso
my friend annie and i were having lunch and we fell into a discussion of people of size. She told me she had gone to the fair with a friend of hers who is a young man of substance, and while he was standing in the midway, thinking about his elephant ear, someone walked past him, said, “You don’t need to eat that,” and kept on walking away. Gone before he could register what had been said, much less formulate a stunning retort.
And that person was probably right: he did not need to eat that elephant ear. Given what they are made of, the question then becomes: Who
does
need to eat an elephant ear? And to what benefit? Are elephant ears inherently better for thin people than for fat ones? Do we suppose that that one particular elephant ear will somehow alter the course of this man’s life in some way that all of the elephant ears before it, or all of the elephant ears to follow, might not? And last but not least, what qualifies any of us for the mission of telling other people what they should or should not eat?
I have probably spent most of my life listening to other people tell me that as a middle-class white person, I have no idea what it is like to be discriminated against. I have never experienced the look that tells me I am not welcome, I have never been treated rudely on a bus, I have never been reminded to keep my place, I have never been laughed at, ridiculed, threatened, snubbed, not waited on, or received well-meaning service I would just as soon have done without. I have never had to choose which streets I will walk down and which streets I will avoid. I have never been told that my needs cannot be met in this store. I have never experienced that lack of social status that can debilitate the soul.
My feelings were not hurt when I was twelve years old and the shoe salesman measured my feet and said he had no women’s shoes large enough for me, but perhaps I could wear the boxes.
I have never been called crude names, like “fatso” or “lardbucket” or “fatass.” My nickname on the school bus was never “Bismarck,” as in the famous battleship. No one ever assumed I was totally inept in all sports except those that involved hitting things because—and everyone knows—the more weight you can put behind it, the farther you can kick or bat or just bully the ball.
I have never picked up a magazine with the photograph of a naked woman of substance on the cover, to read, in the following issue, thirty letters to the editor addressing sizism, including the one that said, “She should be ashamed of herself. She should go on a diet immediately and demonstrate some self-control. She is going to develop diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and stroke, she will die an ugly death at an early age and she will take down the entire American health system with her.” And that would, of course, be the only letter I remember. I would not need some other calm voice to say, “You don’t know that—and you don’t know that the same fate would not befall a thin woman.”
No one has ever assumed I am lazy, undisciplined, prone to self-pity, and emotionally
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