The Fat Lady That Nobody Loves

By Anne M. Rensberger, LICSW

When you walk into a room, do you check to see if you are the largest person there? Sure, because you know many people “size” one another up at a glance and you can be dismissed or labeled just because you are overweight. That kind of prejudice is nothing new.

This poem, written by Frances Cornford, made me angry when I read it. While looking out a train window, the poet spots a woman walking in a field and labels her “fat” and then assumes that “nobody loves” her and that she is missing “so much.”

To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train

O why do you walk through

the fields in gloves,

Missing so much and so much?

O fat white woman

whom nobody loves,

Why do you walk through

the fields in gloves,

When the grass is soft as

the breast of doves

And shivering sweet to the touch?

O why do you walk through

the fields in gloves,

Missing so much and so much?

Disparaging conclusions are frequently drawn about people that are overweight, especially by the “metabolically gifted” that have never had to struggle with weight gain. Much has been written about the evidence that indicates that being overweight is multifactorial in origin.

Physiologic, biochemical, hormonal, and genetic evidence suggests that being overweight is not a simple problem of will power, as is often implied, but a complex disorder of appetite regulation and energy metabolism. It is just that complexity that makes the majority of persons who have lost weight gain it back.

Strategies do exist that can help people lose and maintain their weight and each person has to find their own prescription. It is usually a combination of food plans, exercise, garnering support from family and friends, medication, gaining insight, and nonjudgmental professional help that can help frame the process in such a way that it feels like fun, not drudgery.

Nevertheless, whether you want to lose weight or not, we should not let people get by with castigating others for being overweight. Let's all give up using the term “fat” as a pejorative.