In the thread following Neville Rigby's article about BMI, a particular comment caught my eye. A reader asked:

What I would really like to see is a response from an obese person's point of view, I am very polite as well and would not presume to comment on a person's weight but I remember reading sometime ago a report that said many obese people do not see themselves as fat, whereas those of us who put on a few pounds do recognise the fact, don't know whether that is true or not?

Well, I am a genuine fat person. I've been fat since I was seven years old. And amazingly, I know I'm fat. I've never not known it. How did I acquire this knowledge? I knew because I was told. Constantly. Incessantly. Inescapably. From every source. From every direction. No reprieve.

I knew I was fat, as a child, because my mother put me on a diet when I came home from summer vacation. I knew I was fat because when school started that year, some boys in my class teased me and called me names and threw things at me on the playground.

When I was a kid, I knew I was fat because I did not look like any of the kids in the JC Penny catalogue. I did not wear any of the clothes that I thought were cute because they did not make cute clothes for fat kids. Retail told me I was fat.

The doctor, when I got sick with allergies, let me know I was fat by telling me to lose some weight. Apparently, losing 20 pounds would have made me magically less allergic to pollen.

Once I started high school, I knew I was still fat because that pesky clothes issue cropped up again – as it did tonight when I went to buy myself a pair of festive velvet pants for the holiday season. I knew I was fat because I had a gym coach who was into humiliating the fat kids. And then there were some jerks from the football team who acted just like those kids back when I was seven years old.

Magazines told me I was fat – and that my boobs were too big, not perky enough, too small and shaped wrong. Television told me I was fat – and smelly and not wearing the right clothes. The clothes I could not buy because I was too fat.

The internet tells me I'm fat all the time. Every time I post a photo in a public forum, there is the inevitable refrain of "lose some weight, fatty." Sometimes, there is also "die in a car crash, fatty" and "you should hang yourself if you can find a strong enough rope, fatty." Those are always fun to wake up to in the morning.

I know I'm fat because I can't just join a gym or go the mall or visit a new doctor without it being an enormous – pun fully intended – part of my identity. It is part of my presence. It is part of who I am – that loud, fat girl with the curly hair and the weird sense of humour.

You want to know the funny thing here, though? I'm not a special snowflake. My experience is not unique. I am not the only fat person in the world who is repeatedly – every time I leave the house, and even if I don't – reminded that I am fat and the world thinks that is a problem.

Fat people – even people who are only marginally fat, if that – know they are fat because the world is full of people who are ready to leap out without any provocation to remind them of it.

We're fat. We know it. You really don't need to tell us.