I’m not a fan of bandwagons.

I love a good online debate: I’m not a chap known to shy away from stating an opinion and I respect people who form an opinion based on their genuine beliefs. I’ve probably got a thicker skin than most, being a big and tall man, but I have a limit.

I try not to use my blog as an opportunity to rant but one thing that really gets my goat and seems to be popular every January is the ‘fat-bashing’ that goes on in the media. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite happy with the odd joke about being big. I’m fine with a bit of banter. I just hate being labelled a certain way, simply because I’m a big guy.

Every. Bloody. January.

It seems like the whole ‘New Year! New Me!’ trend comes around every January and fires up the media to push for ‘change’ and ‘improvement’ – and that is fine. If you want to change your lifestyle and exercise more then please do, but it irritates me no end to see the negative attitudes towards bigger folks.

Take this fine example (link at the end of the blog) from the Daily Fail:

… If you are over a certain age you are 80% more likely to be the following:

Overweight
Lazy
Inactive
Drink too much
Have “poor lifestyle habits”
Stressed

A third of us (apparently) do less than 30 mins of exercise a week

. Allegedly the article was based on an analysis by Public Health England and Oxford University Academics. It goes on to say that almost a third of middle aged people were obese and “if the middle-aged generation do not address their lifestyles soon, many will shortly fall victim to heart disease, type 2 diabetes or cancer”.

Does Rage Count As Exercise?

If it does, then reading the Daily Mail article was a full workout for me!

This is one example, but it does seem like there is a perception that bigger people are lazy, greedy and a health risk. Like we take out more from the UK system than we put back. It’s another case of pointing a finger at a group of people and playing the blame game.

I set up Big Tee Shirt back in the ‘90s after seeing first-hand how hard it was to find big and tall men’s clothes because I was a bigger man! I’ve always been big and with that comes certain difficulties in a world that was built for smaller people. But it drives me mad when the media paints bigger people as lazy and hogging resources.

How many times have you seen reports that being overweight was the reason that the NHS was under strain? But also you’ll see articles saying that obesity is the highest cause of premature death. Don’t the two seem to be at odds? We live in a time when we’re living longer as a species – To highlight that, back in the 17th century the average life expectancy was 35 years, and a study in 2012 says that now we’re at 81.5 years.

Well… If big people die younger, then how are they blocking up hospital beds?

“Overweight, Lazy Or Drink Too Much” – A Long Way From The Truth

Here’s what really annoys me: The perception that the kind of people we have as customers (the kind of people we ourselves are) and anyone who requires plus sized clothes are lazy and do not contribute; That is what I see when I read articles like those in the tabloids.

There is always a story doing the rounds based on some study than paints bigger folk as a drain on the economy. From my point of view it could not be further from the truth. For starters, many of our customers are quite simply, big people. They’ve always been big. Some are gym enthusiasts, others may look overweight but they are remarkably healthy. The bottom line is that people come in all sizes.

It seems crazy to generalise that people over a certain size are lazy alcoholics. In the same way the fashion industry seem to favour the waifs over normal-sized models… Though thankfully that is changing. The media seems to revel in trying to make people feel guilty for being the way they are and this is never more true than when it comes to a person’s weight.

Improve If YOU Want To:

Our view is this: If you want to make changes then do it for you, not because of garbage that you’ve read in the press. If you want to get more exercise then grab some of our big and tall jogging bottoms and get cracking. If you want to change your diet, do it because you want to. If you want to lose weight, just make sure you are doing it for the right reasons: Your happiness. Your family. Your overall wellbeing.

As you’ll know from our usual blogging style, we do have a sense of humour. But this time we wanted to point out how the media is too keen to blame bigger people and make them feel guilty for their size. We say you should be proud of who you are and if you want to change then do it for the right reasons.

 

If you want to read the full Daily Mail article you can do that here.