My husband Dave and I went to see a comedy show tonight. The seating consisted of chairs connected to each other in a very tight grouping. Dave and I are large people and we worried how this would work out when the others around us came to sit down. First two people sat next to Dave and he squished himself over towards me. Then a couple came towards me, upper class looking and well dressed--and thin, very thin. The woman sits down by me with her back turned away from me and studiously looks in that direction, not acknowledging me. I look at Dave and we roll our eyes. Whatever. We are squished together as tightly as we can be, and are imagining holding this position for the next hour and a half or so. The show starts and we try to ignore this couple and just enjoy ourselves, but I felt self conscious as usual in these situations.

Finally when no one sat on the other side of these people they moved over one seat. Then I felt ambivalent--relieved and yet even more self conscious that I'd just been shunned like Typhoid Mary or something.

Fortunately the show was wonderful and took my mind off them for long periods of time. It was just a pointed reminder of the loads of shit we fat people take in this society. A milder manifestation than some others I've faced, to be sure.

There was the Pink Floyd concert where my son informed me that the woman sitting next to me there was actually making faces behind my back whenever I turned away. We switched seats so I didn't have to sit by her any more. I had been so careful to not infringe on her space, too.

Once there was an elderly couple, they were pointing and making gestures towards my back at the mall; my daughter turned at just the right moment to see them. Weren't they old enough to know better? A carload of teenagers yelling "you're fat" out their window while driving by, a carload of men leaning out to ask my bra size, a man grabbing his dick and asking if I'm hungry, Jay Leno's constant anti-fat crusade ruining his show for me...what compels these people, I wonder? I just don't understand. Do they all think we totally lack feelings? We're just big, fuzzy punching bags to dump all their anxieties into?

Maybe they are trying to shame us thin. Well, if that worked there wouldn't be a fat person in all of America. We couldn't possibly have had any more shame heaped on us.

I just keep hoping that people America will get over their fat hatred and see us as human beings. Is that really too much to ask?