Went to a concert recently. Didn’t end up staying for quite the whole to-do because the planning was terrible and there were only enough bathrooms for a few hundred people. Around 3,000 were there. So the wait was around an hour. Not for me.
But we still had a good time.
Something I noticed is that there were no fat people there. I saw one fairly overweight woman. Just one. No obese men, and no even really chubby women except that one.
It was very odd, like being in another country. It was so noticeable that even my partner made mention of it even though she’s fairly oblivious to things like that most of the time.
This was an outdoor concert with plenty of room so it’s not that obese people were (potentially) worried about taking up too much space.
Part of it is that the crowd was young, mostly 18-25 years old. The rest I can’t explain.
A digression: I saw a girl wearing a Nirvana concert t-shirt and looked at her a little closer and realized she was about 18 years old.
She wasn’t even born when Kurt Cobain was still alive.
Dang.
That means I saw Nirvana live in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1993. When she was not even a glimmer in someone’s mind.
But back to the other topic. When I worked for another company a colleague and I had to travel to the UK for work. He was based in Bermuda where obesity is nearly as prevalent as it is in the US.
We were walking down the street one day in Guildford, outside of London. Like me, he tries to be respectful and not objectify women and not leer. He’s a decent guy.
But he said to me as we were walking, “I didn’t know what it was at first, but when I got here I said, ‘All the women are really beautiful, not like where I’m from!’ And then I figured it out. There’s no fat people! Well, maybe a few but it’s amazing how everyone looks better when they don’t weigh as much as a bus.”
I agreed and noted that I had had the same reaction when I’d traveled outside the US. In Israel for instance I could not believe how ridiculously beautiful the women were — and then I realized that I’d spent a week in country and hadn’t seen a single woman over 150 pounds. Not one, anywhere.
That’s when I realized that — male or female — you can really improve your looks by just not being obese.
The concert was odd because I’m used to being surrounded as is typical in America by people who sound like Puff the Magic Dragon on a rough day after walking up a flight of stairs.
As I said, it was like being overseas again.
Oh come on!
This was an outdoor concert with plenty of room so it’s not that obese people were (potentially) worried about taking up too much space.
An outdoor concert with a lot of room and few bathrooms means there’s a lot of walking and standing and it’s not air conditioned. If you weigh enough that this is a problem even with comfortable shoes, you’re not going to hang out at an outdoor concert and dance around. Also plus size clothing tends to be made of much more polyester, which stinks in the heat. You’re also not going to do things like voter protection or canvassing. If the fat people you know have trouble walking up one flight of stairs do you really think they’d show up at an outdoor concert?
That’s when I realized that — male or female — you can really improve your looks by just not being obese..
When were you actually fat and for how long? And why did it take you until being an adult to figure this out? Did you never see any before and after weight loss ads in your life before that point? You’ve never heard the lines, “She has such a pretty face” with a sad face or “you’d be so hot if you lost x lb” or “So and so lost weight. S/he looks so good”?
The concert was quite cool. It was in the low 60s, probably the 50s by the time it was over.
I’d never noticed or thought much about obesity or being fat. I was a fairly skinny kid. Didn’t really care or think about other people that much and since the problem didn’t effect me, not something I ever really consciously considered.
That is, until I got sent overseas and wondered why the women seemed 10x more beautiful (which seemed genetically unlikely, so there must have been some other explanation.). And then I got fat myself and looked into it more. My family, however, is predisposed to being heavy and nearly everyone I knew or am related to was obese.
I joined the army and was extremely in shape. Then I got out and slowly gained weight for 15 years until I had a BMI of around 32 — firmly in obesity territory.
But I was fat for probably about 12 years, maybe a little more.
I lost around 60 pounds five years ago and have kept it off. I have a quite small upper frame for a guy so that is LOT of weight for me. And I am not tall. Right now, my BMI is about 24. At the top of the normal scale.
I did lose even more weight but it didn’t look very good on me since I have very long (for my size) and thick muscular legs and those skew my BMI a good bit. (For instance, I am about two inches taller than my partner but when we sit down, she appears about 3 inches taller than me due to my legs being so much of my entire body length.)