Today in Out of Control Fatties

[Content Note: Fat hatred; dehumanization.]

Currently on the front page of CNN.com, under featured articles:


Yes, whose FAULT is obesity? Who can be BLAMED for the existence of fat people? Obviously, SOMEONE needs to take responsibility for the TERRIBLE SCOURGE of fat people living on this planet!

At the actual story link, the fault-seeking headline is repeated, as is the headless fatty photo, cropped to show a fat man adjusting his belt around his fish-eyed fat belly, because a story about the plague of fatties isn't complete without a dehumanizing image that reduces fat people to nothing but our insidious blubber.

Following is a "round table" about how fat people are a drain on society blah blah yawn "these expanding waistlines will translate into billions of dollars of health care costs." Allegedly. What will certainly translate into billions of dollars of health care costs is an aging populace, although there are precious few articles on CNN or anywhere else wondering who is to blame for aging or how to stop it, despite the fact it makes approximately the same amount of sense to tell people to stop aging as it does to tell them to stop being fat.

This is not true for everyone, but it is true for me and it is true for a fuckload of fat people: My diet and exercise have varied significantly over the last decade, but my weight hasn't. The only thing that changes is my fitness, which is not reflected in my weight.

I can get fitter, and do, without getting thinner. (I can also lose fitness without getting fatter!) It really is just as absurd to tell me to stop being fat as it is to tell me to stop aging.

Yet my fat is still treated like a moral failing. Someone for which someone needs to take some blame.

Here's a fun game: Next time you see a bunch of progressives talking about "the obesity epidemic" under the auspices of being concerned about fat people's "health," count the number of times something they say about fat people and personal responsibility and what a drain we are on the healthcare system and how we ruin insurance rates/food accessibility/airplane rides/everything for thin people, sounds exactly like Mitt Romney talking about poor people and personal responsibility and what a drain they are on the social safety net and how they ruin everything for rich people.

Poor Fat people are just lazy with no personal responsibility and can never be convinced to take care of their own lives bodies.

I hear people who loathe Mitt Romney and his contempt for people in whose shoes he's never walked say the same shit about fat people all the time, without a trace of irony.