I used to work with a brilliant software engineer who weighed at least 400lbs when we worked together. Incredibly smart, kind, and thoughtful, and funny. But there was this one puzzling thing about her.
She was vocally critical of the mere concept of "fat" and would find any excuse to pick fights about it. During a company-wide meeting of about 1200 people it was announced that we'd be inviting employees and their families to a theme park for the day, all to ourselves. She stood up during the Q&A portion and asked if the company would be, in her words "giving people who didn't fit on the rides a sum of money equal to the cost of admission, travel expenses, and meals." The HR rep asked for clarification, to which she said "those of us who were born too big to go on rides shouldn't be denied benefits other people get because they fit. That's discriminatory."
She would also frequently and passionately argue about how the idea of "overweight" or "underweight" is an invention of capitalism - a tool to get people to spend money on books, gyms, diet programs. No amount of rational debate would alter her stance. She'd cite supposed medical journals from memory disputing the concept of obesity if anyone asked "aren't there health risks?"
Denial is a crazy, sometimes heart breaking, thing. There are people who don't believe that being fat is unhealthy.
She was one of them. I say "was" because she died of cardiac arrest at the age of 27 while at work, 20 feet away from where I was sitting. Even now, I still have a hard to reconciling who she was (smart, rational, kind) with what she believed and how she died. Utterly tragic.
She was vocally critical of the mere concept of "fat" and would find any excuse to pick fights about it. During a company-wide meeting of about 1200 people it was announced that we'd be inviting employees and their families to a theme park for the day, all to ourselves. She stood up during the Q&A portion and asked if the company would be, in her words "giving people who didn't fit on the rides a sum of money equal to the cost of admission, travel expenses, and meals." The HR rep asked for clarification, to which she said "those of us who were born too big to go on rides shouldn't be denied benefits other people get because they fit. That's discriminatory."
She would also frequently and passionately argue about how the idea of "overweight" or "underweight" is an invention of capitalism - a tool to get people to spend money on books, gyms, diet programs. No amount of rational debate would alter her stance. She'd cite supposed medical journals from memory disputing the concept of obesity if anyone asked "aren't there health risks?"
Denial is a crazy, sometimes heart breaking, thing. There are people who don't believe that being fat is unhealthy.
She was one of them. I say "was" because she died of cardiac arrest at the age of 27 while at work, 20 feet away from where I was sitting. Even now, I still have a hard to reconciling who she was (smart, rational, kind) with what she believed and how she died. Utterly tragic.