FAT WOMEN ARE INVISIBLE

I have learned this lesson before on my other journeys into lower weight land. The smaller you become, the more VISIBLE you are.
When you are heavy, you are virtually invisible. People don't normally just 'talk' to you and that is especially true of men when the women are heavy. They aren't very friendly. Now, I am experiencing more 'friendliness' and I don't mean in the form of come-ons. I mean, I look much better but am approaching 50, another invisibility factor, but men, like bus drivers or men at the bus stop or yoga class are just nicer to me. I think, for men, they are fearful of being nice or friendly to a heavier woman, because they fear that it may be mistaken for attraction and they may be somewhat right. I did, many times, read more into what it really meant when a man was at all nice to me and mistook it for interest and it never was. Never ever. Don't ever kid yourself about shy men. When men know what they want, they go after it.
But being invisible is hard. It is like you don't 'count'. Society is very mean to heavy people. There were some people talking about fat women and laughing at them before yoga class last week. I was appalled and if I were still heavy, I doubt that conversation would have even taken place. This is probably normal conversation though, that I missed out on for years!
I was invisible among family and friends. When I was younger and REALLY heavy no one ever asked me if I were dating someone. They knew I wasn't! My sisters used my fatdom and single momedness to exclude me from family activities. I knew why they did it, even if they didn't admit it because they also did it to my other really heavy sister. Did it hurt? Hell yeah. I felt so bad and angry that I was already isolated and then to even have your own family isolate you even further? I am over it now and one of the sisters who engaged in this is dead. Which is also sad. And hurtful.
I can only imagine what my friends thought about me. The token fat girl friend. They were nice, but I bet they were vicious behind my back. I am sure they were. One of them, even though I have changed, still treats me like FAT DUMPY JOAN FROM HIGH SCHOOL.
Do people ever know the pain and harm they do other people? I probably do this on some level. Last week I was sitting in the weight watcher meeting thinking man are there ever a lot of FAT women here! Hardy har har. I am one of the normal looking people there. I am a thin one there.
A lot of these women look very sad and unhappy and I know they are in a lot of pain. Because I have been there. And even though they are invisible to our society in a lot of ways and are ignored and talked about when they can't here, they also are a very visible presence of what thinner people don't want to be. Thinner people, me included, look at them and think I NEVER WANT TO BE LIKE THAT. And they know people think that way.
When I went to Jamaica recently I thought that about a lot of women. There were a lot of heavy women in bikinis at the resort on the beach. There were more women I DIDN'T want to look like than I DID want to look like. There were a lot of thin out of shape women I don't want to look like either. The yoga teachers were goddesses. Real goddesses. They had curves and muscle and were healthy and glowing.
What point am I getting to? Mostly that we should all approach weight loss and health from just that perspective. What do we want our visibility to show? I have a goal weight but I also have a goal body image that I think about even more. When I look in the Bikram mirror, where you can not hide from yourself, I criticque my body and notice the changes. Like last night I noticed that my waist is really whittled down, but that my arms could use more toning. Time to get out the weights again! I don't know what I will look like when I get to goal, but I do know I will keep changing and improving on what I have at that point.
I don't want to be invisible like that ever again. I count. We all count. Heavy women count too. I can't do anything about the scorn and hatred that heavy women have to live with. But I do recognize it. And I can choose to not act in that way towards anyone, including myself.