I am going out to an outlet mall with an American friend today. She's VERY overweight and I feel bad for her because I know she'll not be able to find anything for herself. I am a US size 8-10, UK 12-14 and I'm considered FAT here. I have been told to go to the "large size" clothing stores before. How nice.
I've been asked to my face "How do you like being so fat?"
When I weighed 140lbs (something like 64kg) I mentioned that I had gained over 50lbs with my first preganacy (which had been 9 years prior) and the woman at the spa looked at me and shook her head saying "Yes, I can tell." WTF? I can tell WHAT? If she thought I was carrying around 50+ pounds at the time then in her mind I should have weighed less than 90lbs!!!! And I'm 5'7"....(169cm).
I have noticed that people here are getting bigger. A lot bigger. They blame it on the arrival of McDonald's and a few Burger Kings in their country. I blame it on the fact that they can't just keep driving past these McDs and BKs. No one is forcing them to eat there. But Italians LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to blame others for their problems, and if the US is involved in any way, well, it's a perfect scenario.
The Italians have a love/hate relationship with the US. They all want to live in America, but they also blame Americans for every wrong in this world. They wear Nike and eat McDs while rioting in the streets against capitalism. They accuse Americans of being fat and lazy, yet, while there is an over-abundance of overweight (and obese) people in the US, there are also more gyms and people who are fit.
For an Italian, skinny = fit. No muscle tone (OMG especially not for a woman!) and it's difficult to find a man with good definition. They are all so anorexic (they GUYS!) and most young people try to live off of cigarettes and coffee to stay slim. There is nothing less appealing than a skinny (emaciated) Italian guy in painted on pink jeans and a deep V-neck t-shirt with a smoke in his hand, which looks to heavy for him to lift to his mouth.
I do not propose people get fat. I propose fitness. I've recently lost a lot of weight (and put on a couple of pounds over the winter, but I'll work it off). People ask me (men AND women) how I did it. "Do you eat?" "Did you take a pill?" "Did you go to a diet doctor?"
And they look almost appalled when I say I quit drinking, I quit smoking, I cut calories and I started working out. "WHAT??? What does that even mean? That must not be healthy. You need to swallow fiber pills that inflate in your stomach so you feel full !" (I saw these in the pharmacy for sale, and I thought they were boob implants.)
"You need to get a balloon inserted into your stomach with a tube sticking out of your nose so you can give yourself doses of small quantities of food (liquids pumped into your stomach through your nose to keep you feeling full...it's called NEC in Italia, which is an artificial nutrition sent through the nose, Ketogenic Enteric Nutrition, in English), while you still smoke. Don't you know that exercise will HARM you? Do you want to look like a man???"
I am not shitting you. This is Italian mentality.
