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Oppression: A Personal Narrative Of My Life

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I first met Mary when she came to my office for a job interview. I guess it’s true what they say: first impression can make it or break it, and for a moment or two I was speechless. In front of me there was this incredibly large woman who barely fit through the door, and who needed simultaneously 2 chairs to sit on. Let me clarify: the position was for a sales representative in a high tech company which exhibits a modern, young, and upbeat style. There was no way Mary was any of these things. Mary, however, did not seem to think so, “I know what you are thinking,” she began, “I am a 350 pound woman, what am I doing here? I am here to apply for a job, because I believe I can do what it takes as good as any high paid professional, if not better, …show more content…
Mary is a fighter; unfortunately, many people just give up and cave into the invisible, yet existing, oppression geared toward overweight and obese people in our society. She grew up in a low to medium income family household, with stay-at-home mom and struggling to provide a decent living working dad. Her mom was overweight and depressed, so she often stayed in her room, sometimes drinking, and rarely leaving the house. She resisted being engaged in any household activity, so essentially, every member of Mary’s household had led a separate, individual life; besides the working father, none of them had any other social relationship outside their nuclear family. For as long as Mary could remember, her grandmother took care of her, physically and emotionally. “If today,” she says, “you see fat people everywhere, back in my childhood, everybody was of normal weight, and I was always the big kid.” Being a big kid, she often found herself isolated and depressed. She could feel she was different, and her grandma was always there for her with her favorite ‘comfort’ foods. Her favorite was fried eggs with bacon and homemade fries. Her grandma, who also was a number of pounds overweight, while cooking, would sit Mary on the kitchen counter and Mary would eat crackers after crackers, until the food was ready. At the table, they would talk and laugh for hours, later moving to the couch to watch grandma’s favorite show while having ice cream to help the food go down. This had always made Mary forget about her life outside the house: the kids in her neighborhood who were ‘too busy’ to play with her, or if they did, she would always be the one to trail behind them, while in school, Mary was scapegoated by her classmates, began to fall behind in her classes, and hated sports as she tried to avoid locker room at all cost possible. There were

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