Last night my good friend and I were having an interesting conversation about the way society reacts to people based on their weight.

We ended the conversation with a sort of open ended question that we didn't have a good answer to, so I thought I'd pose it here and see what your thoughts were.

Question:

Why is it that as a society, we have no problem commenting to slender girls about what and how much they eat or worrying that they have an eating disordering and are slowly killing themselves by not eating, BUT we wouldn't dare think to tell an overweight person that they are killing themselves by eating too much food and are putting themselves at risk for diabetes, heart disease, etc.?

I don't get the weird double standard.

I mean both people who don't eat enough and people who eat too much are putting their health at risk. Why is it that we worry more about the people who don't eat enough?

Is it because as a society we've become so used to seeing people eat too much and are overweight that we're desensitized to it?

Is it because it's extremely taboo to tell someone maybe they should cut back on the Big Macs and the cookies?

I don't have a good answer, but I'm really curious to hear what you think.

And a final question, would you tell an overweight friend not to eat so much because it's bad for their health?