My youngest daughter and I don't have a lot in common, probably because she's 12 and I'll be 52 in a couple of weeks. (When I told my mother I was pregnant, her first reaction was, "Don't you know better than that at your age?" )
So .... my daughter and I were pleased when a new TV show came out that we both liked. It's called Huge and is about a summer camp for teenagers who want to lose weight. It's based on a book for teenagers and has a lot of the usual teenage things - a boy likes a girl and doesn't know how to tell her. A girl thinks her parents don't love her because she doesn't fit the image they want. A woman's father left when she was young and she hasn't ever been able to talk to her parents about it.
One of the actors in the show is over 300 pounds. When he was interviewed for a New York Times article, (http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/huge ) he said that he had always been overweight, and he did go to a weight loss camp once. He said,
"... the problem doesn't go away but you can open up and be a teenager instead of a fat teenager."
That's probably what I like about the show - the lesson that people are more than the stereotypes we have about them. What my daughter likes is mostly the stories about girls who like boys but can't get their attention, girls who are trying to stand up for themselves. The writing on the show is good.
So, you might imagine my surprise the day after the first episode when one of the comments on Twitter was
"this show is about some fat-### teens trying to get it on."
This is the sort of comment you see on-line all of the time. A thousand times a day, if you you had time to look. It's the sort of comment people make to one another and, more often, about one another behind their back.
Why? Why do we have to tear down successful people? Why do we have to point out the faults in others?
Regardless of the reasons, I wonder if people who do that realize how it makes THEM look. Maybe some people laughed with the person who wrote that remark. My first thought was,
"You must be a mean, bitter, little man that you feel the need to put down some people who are trying to produce something good for families."
Seriously, what was that man trying to accomplish? My guess is he's a teenager, too. He's not a successful actor like these people (hey, at least they have a series), he's not a writer for a TV show. Not having accomplished anything like the people on this show he tries to make himself appear better by tearing them down, "Ha, ha you're fat."
Not only does his behavior show a "huge" lack of generosity, but when I got to thinking about the people I respect and admire in life, very seldom are they engaged in cheap shots like this. They're the type of people who want to build others up, not tear them down. When they have a criticism it is the constructive kind, they sincerely intend to set you right.
As for twitter-man and the rest like him, his lack of generosity doesn't make him seem bigger, cooler, tougher.
Instead, he just looks like a loser.
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