*What does the word "fat" mean to you?*

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Fat is yellow adipose tissue topic

To call someone fat is inaccurate. The correct terms are overweight or obese.

Most undesirable, unwanted, fleshy, obese.

Why is the word "fat", applied to a person, so widely understood in the West/industrialised society as a negative value judgement?
Because obesity is a lifestyle disease, and has other negative connotations.

What is it about the meaning of the word "fat" which is so abhorrent, repellent, loathsome, such that "fat person" is a judgement which sets someone up to be despised, rejected, mocked, or pitied, looked down on, etc?
"fat" commonly refers to obesity or morbid obesity. Finding malnourished people less pleasing to the eye is hardwired, be they largely under or overweight, or in any other way different for that matter. In a society free to eat as much or little as we like, obesity is no longer a symbol of wealth through excess, and remains only as a sign that one's discipline of body is lacking. Social pressure, both positive and negative, exists to pull people to conform, and to have similar fitness to your peers is no exception. Because of this, obese people will be mocked, rejected, and resultantly pitied or looked down upon.

Why is "fatness" seen like this?
Because obesity is a lifestyle disease, it is in the vast majority of cases both preventable and treatable. Socially it is commonly considered physically unattractive, see above.

What does the word mean to you?
Fat can mean the file system mentioned, and a kind of carbon string in organic chemistry, but more commonly refers to the topic mentioned, I don't have a strong meaning attached to the word in my mind.

Obese women pushing carts three times their size around WalMart & Sam's Club.

And fat b*****s who hate and treat me badly.

Well, Meadow, care for a little fat-loathing with your misogyny?

"Fat" to me is above thin and normal. Not fat doesn't mean you have to look like Barbie (let's disregard that being Barbie's measurements is physically impossible), because people disregard there is a line of 'normal'. A lot of people don't know that at 5'4", on average, a woman can weigh up to 140 pounds and still be in the 'desirable' range (depending on her body fat percentage, she could also range in the slightly overweight, but nothing too alarming). Anything above that is not just unappealing for other people to look at, but it's unhealthy. There's no reason for anybody to weigh as much as some people do, such as ranging over 500 to 1000 pounds. Even bed-ridden people can avoid weighing that much. People with hypothyroidism can avoid weighing that much with medicine and a diet. The problem with 'fatness' or 'obesity' comes down to this: lethargy combined with a serious addiction to food. A look inside any obesity clinic can show this.

A thinner nation is a healthier nation. People who rage that fat people should be left alone are usually overweight and uncomfortable with their bodies by my experience, and those same people who end up losing a hundred or two pounds quickly change their tune and experience uplifting confidence and a sense of self worth they never experienced before. Humans biologically are constantly competing for alpha status (one of those things that does not occur within the Autistic community; we are blind to both the 'need' to be Alpha and the way to achieve it, as a rule of thumb--- but we are talking about neurotypicals), and part of that is looking the part of a strong and fit (healthy, with good genes) person worth mating with. Obese people by default don't fit this criteria and are everything *the opposite* of what the average person wants to procreate with, so it tends to lead to an omega status in society (lower than beta). To me, there is no excuse for ranging into the BMI of obese unless it's muscle content and not fat content (or worse, morbidly obese).

Don't get me wrong, I have several friends who range in the obese to morbidly obese BMI ranges, it doesn't affect my ability to interact with them by any means, but they know well where I stand on the issue and they freely admit that they are the way they are because of food (one is starting a rigorous diet in November). Ideally, we would want people to be able to be that way if they wished because it is their bodies. However, in our system of things, the cost of health care is skyrocketing partly because of health issues connected to obesity, not to mention the public assistance they receive for disabilities frequently related to being so obese they are handicapped, where the government pays for their numerous hospital visits a year which helps drive up the cost of me getting my daughter to the doctor on the grand scale of things (malpractice lawsuits also help this out substantially).

That all being said, being 'fatness' is something that SHOULD be pulled in somehow by the government. The method needs to be minimally controversial, however. I can tell you that sending kids home with a note to their parents that they are overweight is NOT the way to do it, because although this could be used as a positive shocker for parents, it can lead to plummeting self esteem for young girls who already deal with their image on a daily basis (and the suicide rates of girls because of that is pretty saddening).

There was little obesity in my school because my mine was quite tough with physical exercise. PA requires four years of physical education to be taken and passed, and in our school I used to run on a tread-mill during gym class for the entire 45 minutes and clock my burnt calories at around 600 a day in that class alone. I was never overweight while I was in high school, consequently. Our school did cater to ability level. Severely obese people (the two or three in the entire school that there were) did not do AS MUCH in class as everyone else, they did as much as they could handle. We did have a very small grade of about 156 students (I think between 7th and 12th grade there were around a thousand kids total), but I'm sure that system could be adapted for larger schools as well. That being said, another thing that can be done to help combat obesity is lower-calorie food choices in school instead of the greasy messes that are served now.

Like I said, it extends beyond image and the person being a 'good person' and darts right into health. They don't have to be super skinny, but there's no excuse for morbid obesity.