Fat is the new Gay

Recently I’ve been involved in or witnessed a number of debates regarding obesity. In one situation a person found a note on another person’s car. The car was legally parked in a handicapped space, the note said, “Being fat is not a handicap”. The person removed the note from the car so that the owner would not find it and face the humiliation of anonymous denigration. And so, the debate began, and within that debate the fat hate rolled fast and furious.
To start, I’m appalled, absolutely appalled, that someone with the most minimal of information would decide that the only reason the person had for receiving the handicapped designation was that they were fat. There could be any number of reasons for the person’s handicapped designation, many of them completely unrelated to their weight. But that’s not the point, really, it isn’t. Whatever the reason might be, it’s none of your business. How cheap is your mind that you can waste its efforts on policing handicapped designations? What an asinine conceit to believe that you are the one who gets to decide based solely on a few moments observation who does or does not deserve to park in such a spot. That you, above even the various state guidelines, should decide and these people must justify to you.
Fat bashing is an easy sport these days. While there are certainly a number of medical reasons for why a person has the extra poundage, it’s readily agreed that most people are overweight because they eat too much and exercise too little.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a total fatty. I’m fat because I eat more calories than I expend. I have no excuses to offer up.
Picking a group to hate on is relatively easy. One only has to find people who are different in some way and then expound on those differences. Used to be we could attack natural differences like gender or race or sexual orientation, but not so much anymore. We’ve learned (some people slower than others) that ostracizing people for differences they did not choose is pointless. But fat people are different, they made choices! Choices that the skinny people would not make.
When a fat person goes out, every pint of ice cream, every cheeseburger, every slice of pie, every milkshake, every tub of popcorn, every bad choice they’ve made is on display to the world. People can look at the fat person and see a clear history of ‘bad’ choices. And so, safe in the anonymity of their own choices, they attack. The attacks are cheap and easy, they don’t require much effort at all. They can snort in derision if the person is there or later they can play Internet Tough Guy, logging on and vomiting out everything that is wrong with all the fat people they see. And the fat people, how do they defend themselves from such attacks? Sure, a few can rightfully proclaim medical conditions, but even those protestations are often met with, “yeah? well I have a medical condition that is entirely different but decidedly worse and I’m not fat!”
For the rest of us, there is no defense. We know we’re fat, we know why we’re fat, denying it rings as hollow as the arguments for intelligent design. So we take it. We take it because there is no other choice. If we didn’t want to be mocked we shouldn’t make bad, mockable choices, right?
Right?
But that’s the thing, our choices are highly visible, you can see them. What if every one of your bad choices were laid bare to the public? What if your credit score was on the back of your shirt for everyone to see? How about the details of every one of your failed relationships? Your sexual urges? Your poor performance reviews from every job you ever had? Would you be so quick to judge and mock someone if they could see that one time in college you intentionally gave a chick too much to drink so you could fuck her with little resistance? Would you be keen to remark, “You just have to eat fewer calories than you use! I don’t see what’s so hard about that!” if someone else could say, “you just have to spend less money than you make, I don’t see what’s so hard about that!” every time you left your house?
Fat bashing is cheap and easy, it doesn’t require much thought and you know the majority of the population will back you. But what I want to know is who the fuck are you to climb on such a high horse? Sure, you can spout off all the statistics about obesity and health issues, but really, who the fuck are you? Are your bad choices any better? Or are your bad choices just less evident?
Don’t worry, if history tells us anything it’s that soon enough, your bad choices will become evident and the majority will turn on you as well.

11 thoughts on “Fat is the new Gay

  1. Thanks for a great blog. I am also fat (thanks to a thyroid problem that went undiagnosed for 5 years) and I see the way people look at me. I can feel them judging me the way I used to “mentally judge” overweight people when I was thin. I assumed that they must be fat because they ate too much and if they wanted to they could change it. Of course I would have never said anything or left a note because that would have been plain rude and I was raised better than that. I just “thought” it. So now that I am on the other side of the fence and I see that it’s not always their fault and it’s not easy to lose extra weight once it’s there.

  2. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
    Yes, I’m fat, too; used to be skinny, thought I was fat (we all know about that one, right?), even at 98 lbs. I know I’m fat: I own a mirror.
    There was a period of my life when most of my closest relationships — DH, so-called-BF, others –said, essentially, “I may not be okay, but at least I’m not as bad as YOU,” and repeated it incessantly. I believed them. I needed armor, so I packed it on.
    I’m working at taking it off, but it’s slow, hard going. And, yes, the medical conditions make it even harder. The pleasurable endorphins that are supposedly released whilst exercising (not that I’ve ever experienced that) are irrelevant when I’m trying to exercise with bone cancer, scoliosis, and lupus.
    I recently read a series of blog posts from Glamour from last year. They’d run an article about feeling good in your own body, accompanied by a small photo of a gorgeous “plus size” (she wears a size 12, for God’s sake!), naken model. She has a teensy little pooch of belly flab. Most of the letters — and there were a LOT of them — were positive. But there were also a lot of self-righteous, judgmental, frankly snotty letters telling her to get some exercise & eat less. Makes my blood boil just thinking about it. Get a compassion transfusion, people!
    Okay, I’m done ranting for now.

  3. “Are your bad choices any better? Or are your bad choices just less evident?”
    I think I will have that printed on little cards to hand out to judgmental people. This is wonderful.

  4. Thanks for such an eloquent post! It pretty much summed up everything I’ve ever thought about the topic, as I, too, have been on both sides of the coin: anorexic/bulemic as a teen and young adult; and now in my 40s, considering WLS. “Fat” is the last remaining “acceptable bias.”

  5. Oh man. Man. This is awesome. You’ve laid it all out beautifully. It’s something I’ve been trying to do for years. And now you’ve done it.
    I am especially fond of this portion: if someone else could say, “you just have to spend less money than you make, I don’t see what’s so hard about that!” every time you left your house?
    Yep. And anyhow, I am finally losing some of my weight (formerly 240, down to 200). Know how? BY EATING 3 TIMES WHAT I USED TO EAT, calorie wise. I am fat because I went way above and beyond when I stopped letting myself eat convenience foods. I just stopped eating. So. It is not a simple matter of eating less. GRRRR!
    Though I am losing weight, I seriously hope I never get smaller than a size 12 or 14. I don’t want to be included in conversations about fat people and just be expected to agree and cohort. I’ll end up puching people. Lots of people.

  6. A funny thing happened to my parents once, along these lines. My father is handicapped. I was about ten years old. We pulled into a department store handicap spot. As we pulled up, a man behind us started screaming at us for taking a handicap spot when we obviously didn’t need it. My mother and father were about 30 at the time and the man probably assumed that only the elderly parked in the spot. My mother quietly got out of the car, opened the trunk and pulled out my father’s wheelchair. As soon as she did that the man stopped screaming, and pulled off. To this day, I think that is one of the funniest situations I’ve ever been in.
    You are absolutely right about not making assumptions regarding why people are obese. Sometimes they have thyroid problems. Sometimes they have joint problems that make it difficult to move around. In short, as the saying goes, “When we make assumptions, we make @&&3s of ourselves” just as the man in my story did.

  7. I just had to comment. I’m overweight too. And when I was pregnant with my son, I developed gestational diabetes. I got lecture after lecture about over eating and exercising by doctors and nurses that assumed that because I’m overweight, I overeat and don’t excersize. Imagine the crow everyone ate when they realized what a struggle for me it was to get up to the 2200 calorie daily limit they thought they were dropping me to….
    I’m lucky if I can force down 1000 calories a day and I walk at least a mile a day at work and 1-3 daily recreationally….
    Courtney

  8. I just had to comment. I’m overweight too. And when I was pregnant with my son, I developed gestational diabetes. I got lecture after lecture about over eating and exercising by doctors and nurses that assumed that because I’m overweight, I overeat and don’t excersize. Imagine the crow everyone ate when they realized what a struggle for me it was to get up to the 2200 calorie daily limit they thought they were dropping me to….
    I’m lucky if I can force down 1000 calories a day and I walk at least a mile a day at work and 1-3 daily recreationally….
    Courtney

  9. Here ya go . . . read it and weep (or not)
    Unless and until there is a safe, sane, self-loving way to be thinner, I am not giving it my best attention. That has more productive uses.
    Gina Kolata is still one of my favorite plain English science authors. Here she takes on the weight loss industry.
    http://us.macmillan.com/rethinkingthin
    Rethinking Thin
    The New Science of Weight Loss—and the Myths and Realities of Dieting
    Gina Kolata
    Picador, April 2008
    ISBN: 978-0-312-42785-6
    ISBN10: 0-312-42785-9

  10. Loved your post. As an actual, real plus size woman (not the America’s Next Top Model version) I see the way people look at me when I decide I really need a double cheeseburger fix, or when something in my grocery cart might not be 100% healthy……that look of disgust. I used to feel shame, guilt, embarrassment. Not anymore….well, at least not everyday anymore. While my BMI (and who made those things up anyways?) is 46.3….I am healthy. According to the BMI chart, I am so severely obese that I should ring up Jerry Springer and have him bring a forklift and wrecking ball crew to extricate me from my house and escort me to the hospital because I must be near death. Not so. I played a fair amount of sports growing up, mainly competitive hockey, and am adorned with mucho muscle…all cleverly hidden under my fat layer. Never skinny, just average, after having my four kids all via c-section, it has just been impossible to loose any of my 270lbs. Anyone looking at me wouldn’t guess I weigh more than 200. So perhaps an overhaul needs to be done to this BMI chart, because it certainly isn’t an accurate portrayal of health, or obesity and is just one more way for a weight obsessed society to bring down the chubby girl. I am beautiful, sexy and desirable….and I don’t need to look like the models portrayed on Fashion magazine covers to know it! So if the next person who decides to give me a snide look when I buy that chocolate bar catches me on a mediocre day, they better watch out, because I am no less human then them.

  11. I have an overweight friend who I know does not exercise like she should. My concern for her is not that she’s fat, but that she may be just plain unhealthy. I’m worried that she may not understand that her high cholesterol and blood pressure could lead to serious issues for the rest of her life!
    And then I realize: she not only has a mirror and a scale, but she has a doctor and she’s bright enough to know that she needs to make changes in her diet for health reasons. If she asks for my help in making healthier choices, I would love to give it. But frankly, if she hasn’t, it’s not any of my business to try and tell her what to eat, or when to exercise.

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