Sometimes when I write this blog, I just have no clue what to write — so I resort to Google Roulette, and the wheel spun to the comment on the website noted, above. My search terms: ask a fat woman. And I found this statement.

Yesterday I saw an obese woman using a cane to waddle her way through the supermarket because she couldn’t carry her own weight. With her tree trunk calves and her tiny feet in her tiny shoes, she looked like a 747 sporting Volkswagen tires.

Now, Lucinda, I know what you would say about her. You’d say she’s not responsible for her slovenly, self-destructive eating habits. She can’t and need not control how much she eats. She should be able to look however she wants and not be judged on her appearance. And everyone knows that it wouldn’t be politically correct to criticize her.

Well, I don’t care how much the various “full figured” gals may glorify their excess poundage. Fat is not beautiful to everyone and, more importantly, it’s not healthy. Overweight people are at risk for diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, and wearing out the living room carpet before its time. Food is meant to be used for fuel, not as a way to escape life’s problems.

(Source: “Should You Marry An Overweight Woman?”, Page 2, Ask Men)

I admit I cringed, reading the description above — not because it’s abhorrent, although it is.

No, it’s because it could have described me at some point in the recent past. I, too, walked with a cane, because of severe arthritis in my knees, so I suppose the person who wrote this would be somewhat accurate in saying that I wouldn’t be able to support my body weight. As for the rest of an incredibly unkind description, well — it’s opinion.

Granted, this appears in a men’s magazine, written by an anonymous persona who likely gets attention for brazen descriptions of people that he obviously dismisses as unworthy of attention. Later in the same article, he states:

“Most importantly, I want men to pick women who are not overweight for partners, so they will raise their kids to be healthy and not have eating disorders. Statistics show that if the parents are overweight, 90% of the time the kids also end up with weight problems.”

Now… am I angry? Surprisingly — no, despite the obvious error that genetics require both parents, and yet he doesn’t promote to overweight men that they shouldn’t marry or have children.

It’s not anger. I shake my head at such casual dismissal of the supposedly unfit, but what I feel is more like disappointment that such attitudes not only prevail, but seem to have made a resurgence. Shouldn’t we be beyond such shallow ways of assessing each other?

Unfortunately, this attitude is a lot more common than many people are willing to admit. It’s the quantifying of a person’s entire value based on the judgment of one physical characteristic, good or bad. Because the woman in the grocery store is obese, the writer has gone on to assume that she’s slovenly, self-destructive, has an eating disorder, and apparently, will kill her carpet in no time flat. Maybe he’s right — and maybe he’s totally off-base, but characterizations such as this one are why obese women, particularly middle-aged women like myself, tend to become invisible.

While the writer of the above comments basically declares overweight women unworthy of marrying and suggests they shouldn’t breed, my contention is that both men and women often have a tendency to dismiss people of all ages, weights, races, disabilities — based on one aspect that they can visually see, and not just as potential spouses. And once someone is mentally dismissed, they fall into the background and become unimportant.

Dismissing someone outright for a physical characteristic out of their control (whether immediately out of control — such as weight loss, or permanently — such as race) denies that person their right to humanity. It also infers that there’s a desirable height/weight/race/physical form when such preferences are highly personal.

I admit that when I lost 140 pounds, years ago, I fell into that trap; I developed the attitude that as a formerly obese woman, I had the right to judge others for not having committed themselves to losing weight. How unutterably thoughtless I was to do so — who am I to say what someone else’s journey should be? How am I to know, just by looking at someone, what aspects of their life might have caused their current state, or for that matter, that they aren’t doing their best to better their health?

How many people silently judge me, still — thinking look how fat she is! She ought to DO something about it, the lazy slob! — not knowing that I’ve already lost 128 pounds?

And worse — who are any of us to dilute any human being down to one physical characteristic and judge them by it — whether it’s race, ethnicity, ability, looks — good, or bad? There will always be someone who typifies a stereotype; and someone who breaks the mold. We should be judging by actions, by intentions, by a person’s propensity to do good or evil. To do otherwise is arrogant and dismissive.

Am I still invisible, because I continue to be a middle-aged obese woman for a bit longer? Perhaps — but as I step out into the light, I hope that I’m judged by my abilities rather than my waist size.