The fatty effect

I recently learned the meaning of the term The Halo Effect. It's a cognitive bias wherein people form an opinion about a person based on one or two relatively superficial qualities. It's why pretty people tend to be better liked - why people with symmetrical faces are likelier to get jobs than people with asymmetrical ones.

Sorry, sweetie

This explains so much about my life as a curvy girl. People make some weird assumptions when you're a "friend of fried chicken."
People at the gym treat you like you're beneath contempt. I never understood how people could judge me worthless without knowing a thing about me. Turns out it's the halo effect - I'm fat, which they think is a bad thing, so I must also be a bad, unlovable, disgusting person. 
Gym rats who are kinder look at us with pity. We're fat, which is undesirable, which means we also must be miserable. They couldn't love a fatty, so we must be unloved and unlovable. 
Then there are the folks who want to offer you totally unsolicited diet and exercise, because we're fat, so we must also be too stupid to feed ourselves. What really sucks is that a whole lot of the time, the nutrition advice is wrong, but I'm not gonna argue, because I have no desire to make this humiliating conversation go on longer. And anyway, I'm fat, so I must have no idea what I'm talking about. 
So there. The halo effect. The reason I can't wallow around in a permanent fat suit in peace.