Lemme tell you a little about a game we play in my house.
It’s called “are you saying I’m fat?”
And the more I have to stretch to make it work, the better.
Him: “Could you please pass me the ketchup?”
Me: “Why? OH I SEE. You’re calling me fat? Can you not get your arm past my enormous girth to get it yourself?”
The trick is for him to confirm, and then one-up it.
Him: “Yes. Your gelatinous mass is obscuring my reach to the ketchup bottle. I can barely see it around your lardosity. Now please pass it over, your ginormitude.”
We also play this game in reverse.
Why do we do this?
Because it is funny. As it should be. Because women supposedly (according to The Braindead Megaphone) live in constant fear that people will think or say they’re fat, and men/husbands supposedly live in constant fear that their wife will think they’ve called them fat.
And that is ridiculous.
Because THIS DOES NOT MATTER.
Your spouse is your partner. You are a team. And being fat or not is not the most important part of that. If your partner says “I’m not happy”, or “I’m having trouble at work”… that shit matters. But “those pants are a bit tight”? That belongs right down there with “we’re out of pickles”.*
Being called fat has been ludicrously awarded special status as “the worst thing ever that your partner can say about you”. Cartoonish over-the-top Chaplin-esque backpedalling of husbands desperately trying to be 100% clear they didn’t just call their wives fat.
And how many things are more important than this? All the things. ALL the things are more important than this.
All. The. Things.
They said (or *gasp* implied) that you are “fat”. What is the absolute worst case? That… you… are…. fat? Okay. So? So what?
OH MY GOD HE CALLED ME FAT.
So?
Empirically, it’s pretty close to a statement of fact (unless you’re married to one of those a-holes who tells super slender people that they’re overweight. In which case, you have bigger fish to fry.) You are fat or you are not. And saying or not saying it out loud would not make it any more or less true.
OH MY GOD HE SAID I HAVE GREEN EYES.
(Unless you don’t have green eyes, in which case, see above: re: the big fish fry-up).
If you are genuinely concerned that your partner isn’t physically healthy, that is a conversation you have because you care about them and you want them to stick around. You work on it together.
Weight comes and goes. Fatness comes and goes. It is a part of who you are, but it’s a changing part. My hair grows. My food and exercise changes. My body changes. It’s bigger, it’s smaller, it’s older, it’s doughier, it’s more muscular. One thing my body definitely is not is static. Because no one’s body is static.
It is fascinating and incredibly useful, but it is not the totality of things that make up me. It’s importance is in how it makes me feel (healthy, strong, capable, soggy, slothy), and what it enables me to do with the precious sliver of time that is my life.
I care a quintillion percent more about character. If you are the biggest ass in the world, it matters a helluva lot more than if you have the biggest ass in the world.
*What am I saying? Being out of pickles is a serious fucking deal. Wait… am I out of pickles right now? BRB.