Whenever we open a newspaper, magazine or flick onto a news or celebrity website you can almost guarantee one feature will be included; a feature about weight.
This can be an article or news piece that varies depending on what magazine, newspaper or webpage you're currently viewing; it may be discussing extreme celebrity weight gain or weight loss, how to get a beach body, how the nation is getting fat and it needs to be stopped or how the fashion world is creating a generation of anorexics. Yes no matter what size you are, you can guarantee that someone, somewhere will find fault with it.
It's the same when we turn on the television; I mean who hasn't sat and watched supersize vs. super skinny in both shock and awe? But despite the amount of ridicule bigger people get in the press and society as a whole, skinny people get it just as bad.
This may seem hard to believe, after all Jamie Oliver didn't go to war with dinner ladies over salads did he, but there are certain social practises, particular phrases to be precise, that are deemed acceptable to mention to skinny people that no one would dream to say to a fat person.
As someone who themselves is very thin, I have heard plenty of comments about my size and the fact that I 'surely can't eat.' If you knew me you'd know I love food, but I've heard phrases such as 'you've lost weight, you need to eat.' Now correct me if I'm wrong but no one would ever dream of approaching a friend who has clearly not stepped away from the doughnuts for six months and say to them 'You've put on some weight, have you considered a diet.' This would be considered offensive and wouldn't be said just in case the person who'd gained a few pounds had their feelings hurt.
But what about the thin person's feelings? I, like most people my size, probably don't think there is anything wrong with them; in fact I know there is nothing wrong with me, I eat just as much as the next person. But apparently I look like a walking skeleton, and apparently this is unacceptable and I should be told, regardless of my feelings.
But it's ok, I'm thin, therefore my feelings apparently don't get hurt in our image conscious society.
Someone will probably think I'm over reacting, but when you are constantly told day in and day out that you need to put weight on, and people look at you like you purposely starve yourself, it does get irritating; and I'm sure there are larger people out there who feel the same about people staring and talking about them.
But how do we stop this? Sadly it doesn't look like we can or will, one minute we're all too fat and the next we're all too thin. The world has become obsessed with weight and sadly it doesn't look like this obsession will end anytime soon; so it looks like whether we are fat, thin, curvy or average we might as well sit back, enjoy ourselves and continue doing what we're doing; because even if we change it'll be wrong.