A note to my facebook friends: If you are the type of person who enjoys sharing and liking the WalMart People posts, we probably wont be friends much longer. You know what Im talking about: cell phone pictures of individuals who are varying combinations of fat, poor, disabled, and dressed in unflattering/inappropriate clothing, usually with some witty caption like Just another day at WalMart! LOL. Likewise, the countless memes designed purely to mock the fat and/or disabled. (I saw one today that said something along the lines of: Fat people shouldnt be allowed to have disability placards. They should be forced to park in the back of the lot and do jumping jacks on the way to the door. Even worse were the comments *defending* the meme. I had to leave before I gave myself a rage aneurism. Yes, it inspired this post.) Before someone starts crying about their frozen peaches, I am *not* telling you what you can or cannot share and like on Facebook. Im simply letting you know that I will unfriend the person whose actions lead to my viewing one those pics while scrolling through my feed, in order to prevent such a thing from happening again. For my own health and well-being, you understand. Because there have been several times in my life--when I was so deeply, suicidally depressed that I couldnt care about *anything*, much less my appearance; when I was first out of the hospital and barely able to move, but after the months of isolation and loneliness in the hospital, I wanted to be OUT, to be with PEOPLE (especially my family), so I used a mobility scooter at the store; when the combination of illness and medication had left me so heavy that the only thing in my size were clothes from specialty stores and catalogs I couldnt afford, so most of what I wore was a hodgepodge of donated clothing (unflattering, in various sizes, none of them mine) and what *did* fit was worn to a thread--during those times, it *easily* could have been ME in one of those pictures. Who knows? Maybe there is a picture of me out there, and it hasnt gone viral, yet...or just isnt viral *enough* for me to see it. So the next time youre laughing at the picture of a fat person on an overturned mobility scooter, go ahead and superimpose my face over his in your mind. Better yet, take a second to really think about the *humanity* behind the person in the image: that disheveled woman in ill-fitting clothes is almost certainly facing challenges you cant see--challenges so arduous, you couldnt *begin* to fathom how to deal with them yourself. And if you can still have a big laugh? If you still want to share the image of that human being with all your friends and family, so they can mock and laugh at her, too? Well, we probably wont be friends any longer. In any sense of the word.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 22:08:04 +0000
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