Gotta love how people put being fat down to laziness and how we can't possibly be happy or heaven forbid actually LIKE the way we look!

Its amazing how in society skinny = attractive, successful, worthy. Really? When are people going to finally realise there is more to life than a size 8.

His response: If someone doesn't want to go out with me because I'm short, why would I want to go out with them?

At nine years old, he had more self-respect and insight than some. Perhaps because he had lived literally a third of his life in hospitals, and because he'd grown up around the GLBTQA community, and because disability rights advocacy was already part of his way of making his way in the world, and because he is a second-generation Science Fiction fan/creator, but it was a pretty impressive and incisive comment.

Off topic, about fatphobia in medicine, an anecdote:

On the blindness even the best and kindest docs have: when his transplanted kidney was failing (after 17 years, which was a great run for a transplant he got when he was a tiny 5 year old), his MD did not believe he ate as little as he and we claimed. He was fat and getting fatter, after all. She even, at one point, brought up WLS, which astonished me speechless (then pissed me off). His loss of appetite, his inability to eat without feeling sick, (all common with a rising BUN level, part of kidney failure) and our description of his dietary habits were not credible in the face of the evidence of the scale. He MUST be overeating.

Nothing like being called a liar. Call my kid a liar, too?!

When his kidney failed and he began dialysis he lost 65# in 17 days. It was water, of course. All extra fluid that was held by his crazy electrolytes: interstitial, compartmentalized, hiding all over his body. Amazing it did not give him congestive heart failure.

Not fat, not a liar, and he made sure the doctor who had implied he was a liar knew about the dramatic weight loss. On dialysis he ate more, had an appetite, yet lost that astonishing amount of bulk. Really not such a surprise when you think about the physiology, although more fluid than most folks in renal failure can “hide” this way.

The renal specialist had years of experience and science on her side and her reasonable assumption was based upon that, but she too handily discounted our reports and written records of his diet, not even entertaining alternative explanations. I am glad she learned from his dialysis dry-out, and hope she examined her fatphobia in the process.

I've been fat all my life. When I was growing up, I imagined that when it was time for my 'first time', I would have to at least keep my skirt on because the guy I was with would be totally turned off by my belly. During high school, when all my skinny friends were having their first, second and third boyfriends, I was conversely starving myself to make myself skinny so that 'that guy' would like me, and then bingeing when I realised he would 'never see me that way'. Even as I entered adulthood, I watched my friends around me fall in love and was in love with my best friend, who I figured would never feel that way about me because I was fat, so I did nothing about it.

Through all of this time my friends would tell me all those things that Janey has said above – that everyone is beautiful, we don't have to measure up to some societal yardstick. That anyone who didn't find me beautiful wasn't worthy of my love anyway. That I was pretty and cute and sexy.

But I didn't believe it, because I figured that they were just doing it to make me feel better. And because I didn't believe them myself.

I think what turned things around for me was having someone in my life who totally and wholeheartedly believed in me and communicated it to me at every opportunity. She made me actually sit down and listen to the compliments people were giving me and analyse whether or not they were true. I started with 'You have the most beautiful eyes'. I looked in the mirror at my eyes and realised 'Yes! I do have beautiful eyes'. Then it was my hair. Then it was my singing. Then it was my songwriting. Then it was my intellect. Then it was my breasts (which are, of course, phenomenal). And then it was 'you're beautiful', and suddenly I believed it.

Of course, I didn't immediately become attractive to the opposite sex … it took time and conscious effort. But once I was comfortable with myself, it was much easier for people to be comfortable with me.

I totally and wholeheartedly agree with you in this post Janey, but I know from experience that when someone is in the headspace that your friend appears to be, 'you're beautiful just the way you are' is a broad statement and is very difficult to believe. It comes down to challenging beliefs – why he believes he is unattractive and why he won't believe that he is.

I really hope that your friend can start to believe that he is attractive and worthy of love just the way he is. Because even though I haven't met him, I know he is. I know it, because he and I are the same.

I am fat – sure, but that doesn't mean I am also adorable and articulate, brilliant and bubbly – and utterly desirable – (I do question the last one, but, I assure you the men who think me so, remind me.)

There are women out there who will love you – for you. No matter the fat, short, thin, squat, slender or outside of you. There is so much more than just the outside.

Michelle

I think the old, tired advice is really true: To get a great partner, you need to be a great partner.

When I was younger, I did what a lot of insecure women do — made myself sexually available. Got me lots of attention from men, but it wasn't the kind of attention that makes you happy for very long. What worked for me in the end was setting a firm goal for myself — three years, no men, focus only on loving myself. Lots of self-examination, time spent having fun with friends, plenty of self indulgence and a determination to push my mind away from any thoughts about partnership until I could enter into a relationship from a position of self respect.

And it really did work. When I stopped focussing on getting a guy, I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, I figured out how to stand up for myself, I figured out how to laugh at myself. There was so much loveable stuff about me that I ignored when I was busy trying to become the person I thought would get me loved. Be yourself and be for yourself. Find what's awesome in you and show it to the world. It is in there, and there are people that will be thrilled to meet it.