I was reading a popular magazine this week, which contains an interview with a notable celebrity talking about the weight gain she experienced over the course of time, and which apparently left her 60 pounds heavier than she used to be. What struck me about her comments and her experience is that she called her weight gain “humiliating”.

Humiliating. It seemed like a word steeped in shame and guilt. And to me, it sounds so undeservedly moralistic. It reminded me of all of the men and women that I have spoken with in my office over the years who feel like such “bad people” for having gained weight. In fact, I have heard countless folks describe their weight gain with moralistic words, not just with a sense of personal failure or self-regret, but of moral failure and humiliation.

Some definitions of humiliating:

Humiliation – the abasement of pride, which creates mortification or leads to a state of being humbled or reduced to lowliness or submission

broken: subdued or brought low in condition or status; “brought low”; “a broken man”; “his broken spirit”

state of disgrace

depriving one of self-esteem

Certainly there are bad decisions we make in life that justifiably cause humiliation as defined here…but gaining weight should not be one of them.

When are we, as a society and culture, going to stop moralizing weight gain? When are we going to stop seeing overweight others, and ourselves, as morally weak, or lacking strength of character, or “bad”, or deserving of humiliation?

The celebrity’s comments got me thinking…

What do you think?