I’ve always admired Michelle Bridge because of what she’s done on Australia’s Biggest Loser, but watching a teaser for an article on 60 Minutes, something was said that affected me just now without me realising I could still be that sensitive.
I don’t know if it was taken out of context as there were a couple of cuts in between Q and A, so not quite sure where the comment actually came into it, but if it was directly after the question asked, I’m feeling really hurt.
Interviewer: Do you hate fat people?
Michelle: You’re not always gonna make friends!
Now that could have been taken out of context.. Michelle’s answer to the question could have been edited out till the show, and the comment left in the teaser could have been in response to another question, no one will know till the show airs…
But if that’s the actual response to the question, then that’s the wrong response, and it cuts into me deeply, to the point of making me want to cry.
Decades ago, I was going to the gym 6 days a week and a shit load of walking when I wasn’t at the gym. I’ve been known to happily walk an hour, possibly more to the station from where I lived, not counting the return trip, I’d walk around the city of Sydney 2 or 3 times when window shopping, I’d go bushwalking up in the Blue Mountains and disappear completely for 6 – 8 hours, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t lose weight, it always stayed at 130kgs because my bowels wouldn’t let me lose weight.
If I ate unhealthily, it’s because I was scared to use the kitchen when living with mum because her defacto would bully me, so the only way for me to have meals at home would be to smuggle them in through my bedroom window. If I was caught bringing food home, Keith [mum’s defacto] would have a go at me for that, if I was caught cooking in the kitchen, I’d get in trouble for wasting his food. I was expected to eat his food, but he cooked in so much grease that his food made me physically ill.
For the most part, wherever physically possible, I ate healthy meals, but in hindsight, I also know I self sabotaged when peers at work gave me a hard time, or if I was verbally abused on the street by yobbos in cars and even now, if someone upsets me greatly, or if I had an emotionally traumatic day, it’s easier to just go out for a burger and fries than to stay home and cook chicken and rice.
My emotions and my IBS are big contributing factors in why I’m a big person today, and having lymphoedema in both legs doesn’t help because I can’t be as active as I’d like to be. In every day of my life, I really feel like an over-energetic tiger which is my soul trapped in a tiny cage which is my body with no hope of ever escaping, so I’m frequently frustrated with myself.
To hear someone possibly saying they hate fat people is basically pigeon holing us in the same lifestyle and that’s seriously wrong.
With every friend I have who is not what society sees as a healthy weight, there are a lot of contributing factors. Physical disabilities that a person is born with, or illnesses that develop later in life. Things going wrong in surgeries that have badly disfigured the body and yes even food allergies.
I think there are only less than a handful of people I know who are obese due to laziness and poor diet. I agree too that modernity hasn’t helped, with fast food take-aways on every corner and often, also being cheaper than fresh produce, at times, eating the right food isn’t always possible. Not everyone knows how to shop wisely and perhaps real tv shows like Biggest Loser shouldn’t just show proper ways to eat, but also ways to make healthy meals on a budget. Not every viewer wants to know how to pull a plane, a truck or a train or the right junk food to buy, many want to know how they are expected to live in an extremely costly world on a limited budget.
But I digress.
If it hasn’t been taken out of context and if Michelle’s answer is that which we’ve seen in the teaser, I’m deeply hurt.
I’m sick to death of people judging me by my body shape and assuming they know me as a person because I’m twice their size. Assuming that eating the wrong foods is a daily habit that all I do is sit in front of the TV and aiming for a goal of seeing how long it takes for me to break the scales. Well that’s not me.
For starters, I’m still allergic to most junk foods, I have to think carefully what I eat and when I do eat junk food I have to cancel it out with home remedies to avoid throwing everything back up because my body disagrees with everything from oily foods to gluten based product to red meat and too much dairy.
When I’m at home, if I don’t weigh my food out to the milligram, I’ll end up regretting everything I eat because I know there’s only so much food I can eat IN a meal without being physically ill, I do check the scales more than once a week because I have to be sure I don’t gain weight. With my ever growing legs (the trials of lymphoedema), I have to balance it out with the rest of me and make sure I don’t go over a certain weight or my mobility scooter wouldn’t be able to get me out and about.
I get up and move even when I don’t want to because I have a bunch of furkids that don’t let me sit still.. they drag me out of bed in the morning, even on days where I don’t want to wake up, where the idea of never waking up again is a better option, my furkids drag me out of bed, they don’t let me slack off through the day because they’re as demanding as human kids. If they see me sitting still for more than 5 minutes, they assume I have nothing better to do so they demand my attention for whatever reason.
And that’s just part of what I go through daily, so judging people because they’re not the “ideal” weight or body shape is just wrong. To quote a long abused cliche, walk a mile in their shoes, experience what their body is putting them through, live the life they have to deal with before you decide to judge them, if you can’t do that (and seriously, who can), then you have no right to judge others just because they might appear bigger than you.
I’ll reserve my judgement until I see the episode of 60 Minutes, and if the comments have not been taken out of context, I’ll pretty much be losing any respect I had for Michelle Bridges.
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I would not be one bit surprised that she did say that in context. I have never really liked her at all. If I was assigned to her team on tbl it would be good television because I would probably scream at her non stop lol
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I don’t think I could survive her on tbl! But after hearing her comments on the teaser Ad, definitely like the guy on tbl heaps more
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I really like this article. It really stinks that people feel the way they do but I’m glad you wrote about it! It’s a fantastic way of getting that dirt off your shoulder! Have a great day!
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Thanks heaps!
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