Greetings, readers!  My name is Molly, and I have been well-rounded for the entirety of my conscious life.  Why "well-rounded," you ask?  Having been married for nearly 6 years, it was imperative early on in the relationship that my husband find a complimentary way to allude to my body-size.  This was for his personal safety.  Being the brilliant man I married, he chose "well-rounded" to describe both my character and my rear-end (his words, not mine).  As a child, my father was fixated on my weight, which was the only thing about his young daughter he could not "fix."  Because both of my parents were home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, his attention to my body-size was a special sort of torment I was unable to avoid due to my unusual home environment.  My mother, may she rest in peace, offered me my first Slim-Fast at the age of 12.  I declined, and she allowed it.  Despite the shelter my mother provided, I lived my life in fear of what the scale would say when my dad made me get on it every single morning of my childhood.  He kept a food diary of my personal caloric intake, and even went so far as to send a list of foods I was not allowed to eat with me when I went to a friend's home to spend the night, to ensure that their parents would not ruin all of his hard work.  Are you sensing a bit of bitterness here?  As well you should.  The point of this emotional rant is this:  I have never experienced life as a thin person.  The skinniest I ever got was right before I became pregnant with my first son, and even then I was a size 14.  Since I am barely 5'1" in stature, this hardly counted as slim.  Living my life as a fat person in a country that caters to the slender, I have experienced my fair share of discrimination and humiliation, and I would be willing to bet that many of you reading this have as well.

     So tell me about it.  Fat or thin, big or small, what challenges have you faced regarding body image in America?  Has your weight ever affected your employment?  Salary?  Who you ask out on a date?  The way others treat you?  This can extend to friends and family as well.  Many times family can be the harshest critics, and this is your venue in which to vent.  Why is it still OK to ridicule people who have weight issues?  Why are overweight/obese Americans the only demographic that remains unprotected in professional and educational environments?  We make up over 60% of America's population.  WE are the majority, and deserve to be treated with respect.