http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/magazine/12wwln_diagnosis.html

Now get this, I’m not even accepted by others who have had the surgery because I never have reached a chart goal weight, and have no intention of having a revision surgery (a more extream bypass) so that I can lose more weight. I’m already dealing with deficency issues despite taking lots of vitamins and protein suppliments. Constapation is a daily battle and I had a proximal (short) bypass.

I now weigh a little less than when I got married, but I have no sex drive anymore and we do not socialize like we used to. I used to love to cook and give parties now cooking is no fun and I’m too tired to entertain. Anyone out there that is thinking of a gastric bypass to fit in to societys ideas of beauty and does not have health issues due to your weight, talk to someone like me, before you have surgery. Would I do it again? yes, but as I said, I really had no other choice. I chose surgery over a very short life.

“The guy I was with said something like, ‘Do I make you feel beautiful?’ ”

“Not unless ‘beautiful’ is a new synonym for nauseous.”

Honestly, I think with this guy it came from a kind of insecurity. Annoying nonetheless, and I’m not sure it’s worth pursuing anything to the point where I would wind up correcting him.

The most I want to do when I’m with a woman is to communicate how beautiful I think she is and for her to recognize this as a genuine sentiment. Not a situation of “I think you’re beautiful because I’m supposed to think that,” or “I think you are beautiful in spite of yourself.”

I’d hope she felt that I thought she was beautiful, but I know enough to know that men don’t have some natural ability to inspire self-confidence and self-acceptance in a woman. I guess it’d be a nice superpower, but it doesn’t work like that. I’d want her to know how I felt, and I’d hope she could agree.

By the same token, though, a lot of women do place a lot of their feelings of self-worth into how others feel about them. Just a couple days ago, 2 female friends of mine (both lesbian, actually) were commenting on how special it was that their current girlfriend made them feel beautiful while they were unable to do so on their own. Still, their feelings were entirely isolated to the instances where the other person was with them. It didn’t translate to any feeling of genuine self-acceptance so in my mind, I’m not sure it really meant anything at all.

WAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Zuzu: how did you avoid punching his teeth out? Or at least banging his head repeatedly against the nearest hard object?

I can’t even fathom that sort of arrogance.

I am, according to the charts, obese. I am also very pretty and have an hourglass figure. People tell me that I’m pretty all the time, without qualifications, such as “you have a pretty face” which I used to get when I was younger and far, far less confident in myself.

So it brings me up short when I encounter someone, usually a date, who makes comments, the subtext of which is a) that I am pretty despite being overweight; and b) I should be grateful for him pointing that out because, presumably, nobody else recognizes this and fat girls should be grateful for any positive attention at all.

In fact, it happened to me last night. The guy I was with said something like, “Do I make you feel beautiful?” I sort of let that slide until he said something similar and I responded (not in a snarky voice), “I don’t need you to make me feel beautiful, because I know I am.” I don’t think he was expecting that.

If a woman who is exceptionally thin is being told she’s overweight, things are even crazier than I thought.

Oh yes, Brian, things are indeed crazy. Just a couple of examples from my own life… I’m currently 5′5″ and weigh about 119 lbs. When I was around 125 (not that you could really tell the difference between then and now just by looking at me) my mother would make pointed comments about how I should consider losing a few pounds. I have a picture of myself and a college friend posing before our senior formal a couple of years back. I look very, very skinny. In fact, I look skinnier than usual because my friend (who is lovely and looked beautiful that night) is overweight. My mother wanted to see pictures from the formal, so I showed her that one, and she immediately asked why I looked so fat in it. (”Almost as fat as [friend]!”) And it’s not like Mom’s as trim as she used to be, either, after 3 kids and quitting smoking. I also had a boyfriend once tell me that my legs were too big and I should go on a diet. I think maybe he was just jealous because mine had more muscle than his.

This sort of thing happens all the time. It gives me a lot of sympathy for all the heavier people I know who struggle with body image issues. After all, if I get that kind of crap while wearing a size 4/6, what the hell do they have to deal with every day?

The Metlife tables seem to assume much lower weights for men, and much, much lower weights for women than the BMI, and it’s already been discussed that the BMI recommends excessively low weights as ideal.

It was, indeed, the MetLife Height/Weight table. For a medium frame at 5′9″, 153 was the upper limit. At 5′10″, 150 would be normal except for someone with a small frame. Specifically, I’d think this would include women. If I had a large frame at 5′9″, I’d be on the low end of normal, so I recall being quite intent on getting people to tell me that I had a large frame.

Its amazing that gaining weight is what got me to really confront my own personal issues with weight with the same vigor I tried to encourage others to use, but I’m very glad I broke out of that nonsense.

If a woman who is exceptionally thin is being told she’s overweight, things are even crazier than I thought.

Unless they really want to tell a woman she’s fat and then they might reinterpret it.

I also get lots of friendly inquiries from strangers about whether I’ve been ill, or how I’d look better (and sometimes they say, more masculine) if I gained some weight. I’m not going to claim that this is anywhere near as bad as the way people who are larger than average are treated — just that it’s the flip side of the same problem. People vary — deal with it.