How Grocery Shopping Can Be Exciting

[noamnety]

21. "Obese men can be subject to criticism and ridicule just as anyone else."

They CAN be, hypothetically, but in reality, as a group they aren't.

Think about newstands in the register line, with the weekly rags that have cover stories - "Who has the worst beach body?" I don't recall ever seeing a zoomed in photo of a celebrity male on the beach with giant red arrows pointing to cellulite on their thighs like it was earth shattering and worthy of front page news that they dared to show themselves in public that way. Maybe there have been a couple of exceptions, but 90% of the time, maybe more, it's about critiquing and rating women. That's the reality of our culture.

Now if the OP happened to be at the store and quietly admired to himself how some women looked (without leering), nobody here would have known or had an issue. It was the transition from "hmmm, she's pretty" to "now I will do some male bonding by publishing how awesome it is to leer at hot women who are just trying to go about their own business and get chores done" that brought it to a level of offense.

As for the language choice in calling them girls vs. women, in the first post he made, I could chalk that up to ignorance of how the language can come across as infantilizing to women. But after it was pointed out that it can be considered offensive and why, the insistence on continuing to use that language you now know is offensive becomes deliberate and therefore problematic.

I've had to deal with my own language ignorance at times. I got called out on a Katrina essay I wrote for using the term "refugee" because refugee implied (to some) not just that they were seeking refuge but also something about nationality, that the storm victims weren't "real" americans - and because of the race issues also involved, it was offensive. My first reaction was inwardly defensive and pissed off because I knew I personally meant nothing about that. But when I'm talking about a group of nonprivileged people that I'm not part of, their view of the language outranks mine. So I sucked it up and adjusted my language accordingly from that point on, and eventually internalized what they were saying.