Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Rise Of Fattism

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Why are fat people abused?: "...It might surprise some people that the person doing the kicking was a middle-aged woman, who was also travelling alone. But it might not stun those who are already significantly overweight.

'Fat people are fair game for everyone,' says Ms Coupe, who weighs 22 stone (139kg). 'Yes, I've had beer cans thrown at me by youngsters, but the abuse doesn't just come from the obvious places.

'The normal rules about behaviour, respect and common courtesy don't apply to us...'"

Since this is another club that I don't want to be a member of, I can speak to this with some authority. I took crap from people in a K-12 environment-- I certainly don't put up with it today, though it rarely happens anymore. Still, from Jay Leno talking about our asses to airlines charging extra, yeah, it does seem that it is ok to make any sort of stupid comment about people's weight. The only time in my civilian life when my weight was reasonable was during a period of a few years when I ran upwards of thirty miles a week. That, folks, takes a tremendous amount of time, and no it is not as simple as "don't eat," which is rather akin to telling a smoker to quit smoking by not breathing. Trust me-- no one wants to be fat but until a magic bullet is found society is just going to have to tolerate us.

2 comments:

billy pilgrim said...

i think the gov't should tax the shit out of fast fatty food. right now it's cheaper to eat crap than healthy food.

in a sane world healthy food would be cheaper than fatty food but it's not gonna happen in my lifetime.

Bob Harrison said...

The world is insane-- when green spinach can kill ya quicker than a Big Mac, something is definitely amiss. Oh, and the taxation is I think a good idea--kinda like taxing smokers, but I hope no one makes us start standing outside in the rain to eat our yogurt.