While bullying and harassment cloaked as “fat shaming” fall pretty clearly on the wrong side of an ethical line, the issue gets far more clouded and controversial when it comes to accommodations made for overweight individuals. Nowhere is that more apparent when space and comfort are in limited supply for everyone, as is the case in air travel.
Animator Stacy Bias has built a significant part of her career around creating positive support for overweight individuals such as herself, and knew that tackling the issue would likely ruffle feathers, but ultimately decided it was a cause worth pursuing with Flying While Fat, an animated short film inspired by her move from the US to London and all the unpleasant air travel it would require.
She said to Buzzfeed that she quickly realized she hadn’t taken into account just how taxing and difficult regular long-haul travel would be for a person of her size, revealing, “Moving across the pond would mean at least two planes and a 24-hour travel day, multiple times every year. I’m a size 28/30, so I’m right on the edge of ‘fitting’ in a single plane seat. To combat my anxieties, I began documenting my flights — which airline and plane model? Did I need a seatbelt extender? Were the staff rude?”
Travelers may not it say it to their neighbor’s face, but they’re nonetheless quick to espouse the hardship of being seated next to an overweight individual on a plane, train, or bus. Those public complaints make Bias and other overweight individuals self-conscious to the point that they’ll often avoid travel for that sole reason.
Her video tackles the practical realities of the plight:
As well as the less tangible issues she faces, such as struggling to accommodate her neighbor to the point of intense discomfort:
“Trust that when you’re next to a fat person on a plane, they are significantly less comfortable than you are and are likely doing everything in their power to minimize their impact on you. For instance, 25% of my participants intentionally dehydrated themselves prior to flying to avoid the need to navigate the aisles and attempt to use the on-board toilet.”
In the video and this comprehensive blog post, Bias doesn’t strive for sympathy or an opportunity to vent, but rather just an understanding that for every “regular” passenger on a plane who feels put-upon by an overweight neighbor, there’s a self-conscious person who’s likely doing all they can, even if it means discomfort and pain, to avoid burdening anyone else.
As she and many others would expect, the reaction to her work has been mixed, with most empathy and support coming from overweight individuals, with others split on the issue. She frames it, “The reaction from other fat folks has been powerful and positive. Outside the fat-positive community, many folks have found their empathy, and many more have not.”
It would seem her primary goal in creating awareness of the issue she faces is the humanization of people who are treated like little more than inconveniences and impositions by others. Putting a finer point on the matter she says, “People see fatness as elective and changeable and therefore exempt from the right to compassion, but the reality is far from that simple.”
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.