Being Fat in America

This is not a diet article. Neither is this a article designed to encourage exercise or a healthy lifestyle. This article will not help you to find yourself or to understand why you overeat. This work is written as a guide for those who, for whatever reason, must face life as a fat person in an increasingly hostile environment. Many of us have accepted our seat at the back of the bus believing that we deserve the treatment we receive. If this book serves any purpose, it will be to inspire some of us to refuse to accept demeaning treatment at the hands of thoughtless tormentors.

We fat people suffer primarily because our shortcoming is easily seen. There is easily seen, immediate evidence of the fact that we overeat. By the societal standards imposed today, a thin child molester or mass murderer is better received than are we. A pedophile has a better chance at employment or promotion than we do. Every fat person spends each day desperately hoping for some way to join the ranks of the acceptable. An entire industry has arisen around this pain suffered by the overweight in our society.

In this enlightened, sensitive age in which we live in there remains one allowable prejudice,one acceptable hatred, one type of person on which we may project all of our repressed anger and resentment : fat people. Some time ago I listened to a radio talk show which focused on legal issues in which the listeners were encouraged to call with their questions or comments regarding matters of the law. The discussion centered on the decision that had been recently made by a major airline to charge their overweight customers for two seats. Without exception, the callers and the host found this a reasonable decision and congratulated the airline on making such a customer conscious decision. The host then began a series of jokes demeaning fat people and making light of the problems that they may experience with air travel. A good time was had by allBat the expense of a population segment estimated by some to exceed 25% of American adults.

The American Medical Association has described obesity as an incurable disease. Would then that radio audience have laughed along with the radio host as he blithely demeaned those suffering from AIDS or perhaps cancer? I think not. Why then do we accept such treatment for such a large minority? Many who would never consider saying unkind things about Gays or for whom racial comments are completely unacceptable are the first to go on the attack when encountering a fat person.

This final frontier of effrontery continues unabated or affected by self congratulatory pronouncements regarding our heightened sensitivity and awareness of others. Indeed, it is likely that we have simply transferred our negative emotional energy from those now disallowed prejudices to the only acceptable victim left. Obese people are denied employment, promotions, social activity, travel (one man recommended a bench at the back of each airplane for the fatties sound familiar?), and freedom from harassment. The machine of social exclusion is in fine working orderBit has simply been aimed at a new set of targets. This target is one that many find quite acceptable. Fat people can be discriminated against with impunity. You may fire at willBthere exists no societal or governmental restrictions to limit your expression of hate.

This response to the obese crosses all lines: age (indeed, it seems that many senior citizens are more obsessed with weight than the skinniest super model), sex, ethnicity, financial status, education and intelligence. The hatred of fat people is an equal opportunity prejudice.

Why is it that overweight people elicit such a response from the general public? What is it about the obese that causes otherwise reasonable people to behave like cretins? Let=s examine some reasons given by some who are not overweight (and some who are!) With respect to why they react as they do to fat people:
1) Fat people are ugly. This, at least, is a true statement. As defined by our current standards, obese people are not at all attractive. Fat is ugly. This, however, does not explain why it becomes necessary to harass fat people. If fat people are ugly, why then do they not elicit sympathy from those whom they encounter? Certainly someone disfigured through an accident or by birth defect is not attractive. What is different about a fat person=s ugliness?
2) Fat people are lazy. Perhaps so. There are also many lazy slim people. We have long set aside most of the standards imposed by America=s Puritan religious heritage. We accept homosexuality, divorce, pre-marital sex, etc., etc. Why is it acceptable then to use the memory of the Puritan work ethic to attack those who do not fit in?
3) Fat people are consuming resources. This one is usually proffered by the same people who build 4000 square foot home for them and their spouse to live in. They heat, air condition, maintain and clean their little palaces. Few comment of the absurd use of resources needed to feed the ego of these conspicuous consumers. Moreover many thin people, whose physique is more related to an overactive metabolic rate than virtuous self control in eating, consume huge amounts of food. Like the pedophile, their indiscretion is simply not so easily seen so they face none of the social reproofs that are heaped upon the overweight.
4) Fat people are stupid. Only in that they have quietly accepted demeaning treatment and discrimination at the hands of self-appointed guardians of human beauty. Stupidity is an equal opportunity ailment. Indeed, I suspect that, were adequate studies done, the opposite might prove to be true.

There will likely never be an effective fat rights movement such as those seen organized to combat discrimination for other segments of the population. This is not because there are too few overweight people in this country or there are no effective mediums of communication for organization. It is rather because fat people essentially believe that they deserve the treatment they receive. Amazing as it may seem in this culture which has become obsessed with controlling the role of religion in public life, there remains a deep and abiding belief in the puritanical ethic followed by our forbearers. This results in an interesting philosophic admixture in which modern people, who would proclaim themselves liberated thinkers and free from all forms of prejudice, respond to others in a way that is influenced by thinking so rigid that it would make the most vapid right wing fundamentalist blush. Fat people must be so because they are lazy, if they are lazy they must be evil, if they are evil we must attack them. Simplistic thinking, however, is most often useless when dealing with human problems even if it is easier to develop and propagate. We are complex beings and efforts to find easy answers to the issues we face only serve to diminish us as people.

A. Lee is a working mother and observer of life.

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