Sizing Up Our Society
I was in the bathroom today going through my usual random thought process when something occurred to me. When I mention this you might think, “Well ya, so what?” Or you may say, “Yeah, we are all hypocrites”.
We are living in a world of such political correctness it’s hard to know whether we’re coming or going. We have to be careful of when and how we say what we say and to who.
I am a plus size woman. That is the term I choose to describe myself physically (It is by no means who I am). Others may choose: fat, obese, cow, voluptuous… the list is really endless.
Now getting back to the bathroom monologue, I was thinking about how so many “things” in our lives are described in terms of size. We are constantly bombarded with sizing. Here are a couple of examples.
- Clothing: S, M, L, XL, XXL, XXXL
- Cars: compact, mid-size, full-size
- Living space: bachelor, single, spacious
- Partnership: single, double
- People: skinny, average, full-figured
- Men: big feet=______
- Serving size: kid’s serving, half serving, hungry man, super-size
- Candles: tapered
- Salary: minimum wage
Now by this point you could be thinking. “How else could we describe these things?” What would we call a Big Mac after all. Well getting to my point and there is one. To me it seems most strange that we spend most of our developmental growth period learning how to describe things as they are. Only to grow up and have to relearn it all so we can be politically correct. I am not saying you should go out and tell your neighbor how fat, short or bald they are. That’s just cruel.
We live in a society that is constantly judging everything around us according to size. Yet it is not acceptable to judge people according to their size. So we make up other analogies for them.
- Snob
- Bitch
- Prick
- Jerk
Which all seem to be perfectly acceptable reasons other then saying. “I don’t like her because she 90, 122 1/2, 250 lbs. I think politically correctness is just another excuse for avoiding the truth.
All this in the span of five minutes curling my thin hair with my big curling iron in front of my slimming mirror while I sip on a mega-size glass of water and admire my big ass.
Originally published 1/26/2004 at Large & Lovely, BellaOnline.