The Persuasive Fatty

Last Thursday, Elle sent me this article at MSNBC in which Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, wondered if Dr. Regina Benjamin, Obama's pick for Surgeon General, is too fat for the job. Caplan decided she was not.

Elle and I were amazed the question was even being asked. To be honest, I sort of thought that would be the end of it.

What the hell was I smoking?

Yesterday, Shaker Kathy sent me this ABC News story about the "debate" over Benjamin's weight. I can't even succinctly summarize the overwhelming amount of fuckery in that article—although I can tell you it is slightly less than that of a segment by Fox's Neil Cavuto on the same subject, in which he (I shit you not) interviewed a former gym owner wearing a "No Chubbies" t-shirt.


MediaGadfly over at Left In Alabama lays it down:

Dr. Regina Benjamin is a doctor, and a damn awesome doctor at that. If anyone knows how to take care of themselves, it's probably Dr. Regina Benjamin. Maybe she just understands the overwhelming failure rate of diets. Maybe she just understands that eating habits and physical activity are oftentimes not related to weight - come on, don't pretend you don't know at least handful of rail thin friends who can eat what they want and never gain a pound no matter how much they exercise. Or maybe the President picked her because she understands how hard it can be to have access to quality medical care in lower-income, rural areas. Maybe it's just the oysters and the shrimp she's paid in when her patients can't afford anything else. Maybe it's just nobody's damn business how much she weighs as long as she's in good health and capable of doing the stellar job President Obama picked her to do.

The sexism and flat-out fat hatred that requires someone to bemoan the weight of a health care professional they've never seen in person and know absolutely nothing about is something that goes on pretty much every day, from Judge Sotomayor to a fat, female-bodied kid like me. What would you rather have in the Surgeon General spot? A good-looking television guy who doesn't have any problem shaming you about your body, or a more than qualified health care professional who may just understand every body is unique?

Meanwhile, World-O-Crap's Scott asks the question we should all be asking:

At a time when 47 million Americans are without health insurance, and many people are being bankrupted by medical expenses, what can this woman possibly bring to the issue, besides a love of drawstring sweat pants?

Indeed!

The critics' ostensible premise that this is about "setting a bad example" is predicated on the absurd contention that there are people in America who are not currently fat, but will decide to "let themselves go" based on a tacit permission granted by the mere fact of a fat woman serving in the post of Surgeon General. No one with two functional brain cells still knocking together can believe that horseshit, could sincerely argue that position with anything resembling intellectual honesty. It's exactly the sort of lazy, oh-noez-but-what-about-the-childrenz reasoning slapped on to all kinds of bigotry—the old Pied-Piper-of-Vice canard, where "vice" actually equals some morally neutral state of self, by chance or choice or some combination of both. Just being fat (or being gay, or trans, or asexual, or feminist, or Wiccan, or tattooed, or purple-haired) in the presence of others will fill their heads with the unrelenting desire to be just like you, will infect them with your intrinsic traits and/or choices.

That's crap. This is about fat hatred, pure and simple.

And it's a hatred so deeply entrenched in our culture that I suspect many of the people engaging in it, justifying it behind piles of illogical contentions about what a "bad example" Benjamin will set, don't even realize they're doing it. That's the thing about pervasive cultural bias—there's a very strong disincentive against taking a moment to stop and examine the profoundly faulty logic behind "perfectly reasonable sounding" theories like the Persuasive Fatty.

Because without the Persuasive Fatty theory, what else is there but naked bigotry?