While the overweight may wear their pain on the outside, today's "I am better than you are" narcissists hide theirs in their shallow cores. While the overweight may wear their pain on the outside, today's "I am better than you are" narcissists hide theirs in their shallow cores. Photo: iStockphoto
                               
Just imagine the humiliation. You are on a train, minding your own business, and a passenger approaches and hands you a business card.
At first, you think you're being asked out – or at least being given the opportunity to make a new acquaintance. Instead, you are punched in the gut with words that don't so much wound but eviscerate.
"It's really not glandular, it's your gluttony….
"Our organisation hates and resents fat people. We object to the enormous amount of food resources you consume while half the world starves. We disapprove of your wasting NHS [National Health System] money to treat your selfish greed. And we do not understand why you fail to grasp that by eating less you will be better off, slimmer, happier and find a partner who is not a perverted chubby-lover – or even find a partner at all. We also object that beautiful pig is used as an insult. You are not a pig, you are a fat, ugly human."
 
I don't know about you, but if I was to receive a card such as this –  which riders of London's tube have done lately from a group calling themselves Overweight Haters Ltd –  no matter how healthy my self-esteem, I would be rocking in a corner in the fetal position wailing, Elephant Man-like, "I am not an animal". For if there's a nastier, more soul-destroying insult than that insidious card, I am yet to find it.
The same week that I read about Overweight Haters Ltd's fat-shaming campaign, I also caught up on the story of Queenslander Maddi Turnbull. The 24-year-old graphic design student was doing her usual five-kilometre exercise route around her Parkwood neighbourhood this month when a group of men in a car started mocking and insulting her.

Maddi's problem? She is larger than the size 10 that seems the only acceptable body shape for a young woman today. Or so the hoons told her in cruder terms before driving off. But not happy with merely verbally assaulting this innocent young woman, the men returned. I'll let Maddi describe what came next.
"Next thing I saw these headlights and, as I said to the police, I just had this gut feeling. I was alone and I just knew it was them again," Ms Turnbull said
"I didn't see the can of paint until he [a passenger in the car] lifted it to throw at me. I turned to avoid it and it still got me across my face and my hair, across my shirt."
Yes, this woman had paint thrown on her not just for being overweight but for actually trying to do something about it.

I'll try to restrain myself from describing, in crude terms relating to their own "size" (if you get my meaning), just how I feel about the men who abused Maddi, and refer to what I believe their act reveals about their own "size" if you get my meaning, but I will try to restrain myself as the horror reading wasn't over yet.
On another news site, I came across the story of 17 year-old Canadian Lynelle Cantwell, who recently discovered she had been voted the ugliest girl at her school, on a social media poll where all the voters remained anonymous. How charming of her school mates! How brave!
Reading about Maddi linked me to a Dear Fat People video by so-called Canadian comedian and "motivator" Nicole Arbour, where she compared them to "Frankenstein" and argued that they should be shamed in order to make them happier. Dear Nicole Arbour, I can think of a way you can make everyone happier – like shutting your conceited, ignorant, smug trap.
Multiple research studies the world over have shown that fat-shaming or being treated poorly because of your weight is not conducive to weight loss. Instead, it exacerbates obesity and is in fact associated with weight gain.

Don't kid yourself you are trying to help the overweight, Nicole. All you are doing is trying to portray yourself as someone better because of your size. And you most definitely are not.
Arbour is just another example of the rampant narcissism that is creating generations devoid of decency, dignity, humility and humanity. Bloggers extolling their shiny, happy, thin and far more fashionable lives than ours; Instagram posers in bikinis with hashtags #gratitude and #carpediem; the Kardashian Kurse  – they are the ugly ones.
Because while the overweight may wear their pain on the outside, today's "I am better than you are" narcissists hide theirs in their shallow cores.
Like Lynelle, I've had enough. It's time these bullies were shamed –  not for how they look but for who they are.

I want to stand up for those of us who may not be genetically blessed, who may not look good in a string bikini, who may not have the inclination, money or vanity to surgically encompass some stereotypical standard of acceptable beauty.
In a post now shared by more than 8000 people, "ugly" Lynelle showed she is far more humble, authentic, intelligent and likable than those who anonymously voted in that vile poll.
"I'm sorry that your life is so miserable that you have to try to bring others down," she wrote on her Facebook page. "I know that I'm not the prettiest thing to look at. I know I have a double chin and I fit in XL clothes. I know I don't have the perfect smile or the perfect face. But I'm sorry for you. Not myself.
"I'm sorry that you get amusement out of making people feel like sh--. I'm sorry that you'll never get the chance to know the kind of person I am – funny, nice, kind, down-to-earth, non-judgmental, accepting, helpful, and I'm super easy to talk to. Just because we don't look perfect on the outside does not mean we are ugly. If that's your idea of ugly, then I feel sorry for you. Like, seriously? Get a life."

Hear hear, Lynelle! You are a true beauty. And don't let any inner ugly type tell you otherwise.