What has someone wrongly assumed about you because you are fat? (Or because you are an in-betweenie, or on an occasion when you were deemed to be "too big" or "insufficiently thin" or some variation thereof.)
All those old chestnuts re: assumptions about how much/what you eat, your health, your intelligence, your physical abilities, your sex life, etc. are welcome contributions to this thread, but I'd also like to get at the less obvious or less discussed wrongful assumptions that are frequently made about fat people, the things that really stunned you.
I will never forget, for example, an episode of Oprah that I saw when I was in high school which featured a thin woman who hated fat people because she presumed them to have terrible hygiene, and one of the manifestations of her bigotry was refusing to use a public toilet stall after a fat person, because it was her fervent assumption, from which she could not be persuaded, that fat women are not able to wipe themselves.
(And though there are people whose size and/or disability does create that difficulty, she was making the assumption about any woman over about a US size 18, and further speaking of women with that difficulty as if they were diabolical harridans who remorselessly schemed to ruin the world with their dirty fat.)
I've also had someone assume I couldn't drive (!) because I'm fat.
[This thread is for both fat people and not-fat people; the latter are invited to participate by listening with the open-mindedness and open-heartedness that is key to dismantling unearned privilege.]
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