On weight

The Surgeon General has declared war on me. I am an obese person and the Surgeon General and all his cohorts have decided that my body and Osama Bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists and genocidal maniacs are all on the same plain of existence. My weight threatens the world. The United States of America is so afraid of me that my weight, and I ranked above the possibility of the extinction of a species of animals. What has brought the world to this? Read the newspapers at any given time there is a study going on somewhere in America showing that my weight can cause anything from heart attacks and strokes to breast cancer and diabetes, there was even an article about having overweight friends leading to weight problems. I want to declare war on the media, on fast food, on people who have the audacity to declare war on me because of the size of my underwear! I will go on the news, petition the government, hold rallies, write to the paper. I will go to the schools and show the children in kindergarten how unnecessary it is to have the media. I will picket fast food restaurants, throw tomatoes at insensitive people.

I wake up in the morning just like you, I can walk down the street, count my fingers and my toes, have friends, I can even pass gas and it doesn't threaten anyone's existence and it certainly shouldn't be on the top 10 most wanted list. If Osama Bin Laden hadn't have bombed the twin towers President Bush would have gone on National Television and explained the necessity of hunting down obese persons and ending their control on the US. The war has taken many forms from behind the door sneers to outward comments discouraging me from being proud of who I am. Fat discrimination is the most widely accepted form of discrimination there is. The Fat Acceptance movement has taken hold bringing to the attention of those looking for it, the fact that 60% of North Americans are considered to be at an unhealthy weight, but lets take a look at that. What makes the general populous fall into a catagory that is generally accepted as dangerous to the rest of the world? In the past were all the people in the world thin or at a desirable weight? When did the BMI come into effect and when did it begin to dictate to the world's population that more than half of the worlds' inhabitants were on a slow road to Hell?

Fat Acceptance is a large movement, if you'll excuse the pun, holding seminars and gatherings throughout the United States and Canada where some of the largest people live. At the gatherings the BBW or Big Beautiful Women and BHM or Big Handsome Men and their admirers gather together in a week long fat extravaganza taking over hotels and restaurants, buses and taxis, airports and vehicles. Obese people from all over North America get together and celebrate their existence one or more times per year to bask in their acceptance. The message of the Fat Acceptance movement? Exactly what the name indicates, we are fat, we accept it and so should you.

The pockets of the medical profession are bulging with Fat money, the media has gone “hog wild” over the half tonne teen, mom and man, the Biggest Loser is one of the most popular shows on television. Once a week the general population sits down in front of their TVs eating their munchies, and gasp at how big so and so is, how much weight so and so lost and whispers of “How can they let themselves get so big?” can be heard behind closed doors. Big people watch with apprehension or anticipation wondering why if Ally can do it they can't, hoping inside that the biggest loser is still fat at the end or shaking their heads knowing that those people's weight loss may happen quickly but it is after the show that counts, not while they are “on the ranch”. The 80's and 90's were cruel to Fat kids, parents sending their kids to the Fat Camps where they survived on too few calories and all the fun was taken out of sports, counselors helped the kids to see how unhealthy fast food was by showing them pictures of morbidly obese people who couldn't get out of bed and hammering it into their heads that that is where fast food was taking them. Eating disorders replaced baby fat and will power became a power that kids couldn't control and didn't want to because after all, they were finally “normal”. When did starving to death, always being hungry and worrying about every single thought you have about food become the new “normal”?

The media's pockets bulge along side the pockets of the medical professions, sponsorships from McDonald's and Burger King, Jared and Subway, always food commercials all day long. McDonald's spent over 5 million dollars to air a 30 second commercial during Superbowl Sunday. Two women in New York tried to sue McDonald's for “making them fat” and everyone laughed it away. Think for a minute about the last time that you watched tv, did you see food commercials? I sat and counted once for an hour, how many food commercials were aired during the time of whatever particular show I was watching. In an average of 20 minutes of commercials there were approximately 62 commercials, of those 62 commercials 45 of them were for food. The girls should have sued the media producers, they had it all wrong.

Someone must be held accountable for the hatred and disgust displayed towards heavy people. If you sit in the park and feed the pigeons you can see the similarity with humans, looking at those pigeons you will see all different color pigeons, some will be grey and white, some grey and blue, others still white. Some of those pigeons will have pink eyes and some will have black and some of those pigeons will be bigger than the others, some will be so small they look like babies and some will be halfway between or “average” size. Do you honestly think that the bigger pigeons got that way because they ate 10 times as much as the average and 20 times as much as the small pigeons? People and pigeons, cats, dogs, cattle, trees, we are all on the same plain, some of us are one way and some of us are other ways, that's just the way it is. With every living thing no two things are identicle, there has to be something to differentiate it all. Even the planets are different sizes, not because those planets enveloped too many stars, not because they ATE anything, they just are different sizes. There doesn't need to be Fat Acceptance, just a ban on Fat discrimination.