Be good, Billy, or a fat person will steal your breakfast and sit on your face while you're sleeping
08.17.2005

I am fat.

You would think that the majority of those people in the Western World who read those words, being reasonable folks and all, would consider this an innocuous, unimportant, unthreatening statement. You would have made the mistake of assuming the majority of people in the Western World are reasonable. The majority of people in the Western World are, in fact, entirely unreasonable, and have been suckered into mass hysteria by government and media misinformation as they have been on countless occasions in the past.

You see, we always need an enemy of the people, be it a race or a nation or a religion or a disease or any kind of physical or behavioural difference. For example, at one time it was the Japanese. In fact, we became so fearful of the Japanese we built prison camps and stuffed all the Japanese Americans and Canadians we could find into them, because, you know, they're evil. Doesn't matter that they were born and raised here, have businesses, fought for our country, supported our government, and so on. It's genetic.

Of course, when you read such things now, they sound hysterically moronic and prejudiced. Most reasonable people know that people infected with AIDS do not deserve to be kicked out of swimming pools and schools, the Russians are not coming, the Japanese are not the evil hordes of Satan, the Jewish population is not plotting to take over the world, the mentally disabled should not all be euthanised or locked away or sterilised, and black people are not more closely related to monkeys than humans. We've been educated. We are enlightened.

And fat people should be forced into internment camps where they should be fed only salads, chained to treadmills, and kept from wearing any article of clothing that might assault skinny virgin eyes with the horrific sight of adipose tissue. After all, fat people are bad people. They're weak people. They are inferior.

I know that most of you are reading this thinking, "Oh, that's not me. I never think those things." Now, I want you to stop a moment and examine that thought of yours, because in most cases, it's total bullshit, bullshit that you've come up with to make yourself feel better. A vast number of you snicker and are disgusted when you see a fat woman on the beach in a bathing suit. A vast number of you gossip with your friends along the lines of "oh my god, have you seen how much weight Martha gained? She's a cow!" A vast number of you think it's perfectly OK to talk about fat people like they're diseased, or you don't, but do it anyway when you're pretty sure no fat person can hear you. Your rational brain may know that fat people are no different than anyone else, but the social conformist part of your brain thinks that fat people deserve everything they get. You talk about a fat person eating a Twinkie as if they're shoving a newborn baby into their mouth. You talk about a fat person wearing bathing suits or tight shirts and pants as if they've walked up to you and slapped you across the face with a rotting carp. You know who you are, and you know I'm talking to you. You, my friend, are a bigot.

No, don't start getting all defensive on me. Don't start rambling about how oh, everyone knows that being fat is the worst thing for you, that it kills you, that if you eat one too many Big Macs you will spontaneously combust. Being fat isn't nearly as bad as you've been led to believe. In fact, even the Centers for Disease Control have had to admit this, with a great deal of egg on their face while doing so. Turns out the study they put out last year that estimated death from obesity at 400,000 a year, the #2 killer, sort of kind of maybe overestimated the death rate just a bit in order to assist the US government with a big anti-obesity campaign they started. Just a bit. Like by about 300,000 a year. So maybe obesity isn't the #2 killer, but the #7 killer. And maybe, just maybe, people who are presently considered "moderately overweight" are actually healthier than people who are presently considered to be of "normal weight". So maybe, just maybe, you're trying to justify your bigotry with supposed health statistics by simply mouthing the bigotry of other, more official, more scientific people. Maybe, just maybe, you're scared of fat because fat people become social outcasts, unable to fit in with the group, and you're terrified that one day, you too could be fat.

Being fat is like being physically disabled, or being black - it's visible. Very visible. The thing about very visible differences is that, well, they're different. Being different means you're not normal. You're not the same as everyone else. You don't fit in. People who don't fit in are rebels. They're dangerous. Then they go around and make like they don't care they're fat. Oh please. Of course they care. They hate themselves. How could they not? I mean, you've put so much effort into it for so long to make sure they're appropriately shamed and humiliated for being visibly different. Obviously they're just putting on a brave face to make like their rebellious, dangerous difference isn't as bad as you all know it is. I mean, you can accept the cocaine addicts, wife abusers, and serial killers into your midst as long as you can pretend it's not there because it doesn't show. Being different is fine - as long as no one else has to know about it. Fat people can't just walk around in public being fat and not pay a price for it. A fat person deserves to have complete strangers roll down the windows of their cars and scream insults at them, or have them pass by on the street and mumble "fat cow". And if a fat person challenges them on it, then they feign innocence and make like the fat person is obviously crazy and bitter for being fat and is just imagining these slights because, well - they're fat.

Get over yourself.

I will eat what I please in public, wear what I please in public, and confront random insults in public. If I feel like going on a diet to help my health out, I will. If I don't feel like it, I won't, and in either case it will have nothing to do with anything that any of you have said or done, nor do you have any right to say or do anything about my weight as if somehow you have a vested interest in it. I will continue to like myself, have fun, dance naked, get my freak on, and eat cake like skinny people do. I will continue to have a life. Why? Because being fat is not, in fact, the worst thing that can happen to a person - take it from someone who's had worse things happen. Because being fat is not always the result of being a lazy pig who sits around the house all day watching TV and eating ice cream. Because by you jumping to that conclusion at the sight of every fat person you see, you clearly reveal yourself to be prejudiced in the way you lump an entire population of people into one tiny box. Because even if being fat were always the result of being a lazy pig who sits around the house all day watching TV and eating ice cream, this is not the equivalent to clubbing baby seals. It's ice cream. It's not radioactive waste. It has no effect, absolutely none, on you and your life. So why the hell does it bother you so much? Why do you consider fat a personal affront? Where the fuck do you get off, asshole?

You want to take a challenge with me? Here's what you do: go to the doctor, get your heart health checked, your cholesteral, your blood pressure, and your overall fitness. I will bet, hands down, that I'm healthier than at least half of you, that I have less chance of dropping from a heart attack than you do.

Don't make like you're only concerned about my health. I know better. All of us fat people do. What - do you think excess adipose tissue jams up our brains or something? Of course you do. Fat people must be stupid - otherwise they wouldn't be fat. Well, we're not stupid. We hear what you say. We see you roll your eyes and frown in disgust. We're not deaf. We're not blind. We know exactly what you think. You know what? In the case of this particular fat person, the only reason I pay any attention and give a shit is because it angers me, because I know there are many people out there who are not the ballsy bitch I am, who don't have the confidence to stand up for themselves, who don't want to be further made an outcast, and who are crushed and humiliated by your idiocy. Hell, I catch myself feeling bad about being fat, and if someone like me can be suckered into that nonsense on occasion, then I can completely understand why suicide rates among the obese are so much higher than average. No human being deserves to be treated like that (unless they really do shovel dead babies into their mouth), and the worst thing about all of this is - you know it.

Don't take up my time making me call you on being a bigot. I consider it a waste of good energy. Just shut up and grow up. Otherwise, why don't you go away somewhere where the sight of you won't offend people like me? In your case, the world really would be a better place if you did.


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Last 5 entries:
01.14.2007:Finally, a support group we can all get behind
01.09.2007:The City That Ever Reeks
01.08.2007:Waiter, there's a uterus in my soup
01.03.2007:Long Lost Mummy of Nefertiti Found in Smoog's Apartment
12.30.2006:New Year's resolutions we can actually keep



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