i sure hope you aren’t a Canadian, webmastr, that would prove your statement that Canada is the US without assholes as false.
You may not be overweight (presently), but you are definately an asshole!
This Canadian says, don’t include me in your hatred, jackass!
Bingo, Trion, except you forgot shallow and judgemental.
dweebmastr, it must be difficult for you to be flawless and live in this imperfect world. But please cut us humans some slack. Whether we’re fat or short or bald, whether we eat too much or drink too much or swear too much, whether we’re poor or we can’t sing or use poor grammar or whatever, most of us are doing what we can with what we have.
You don’t like fat people. Fine. Given your attitude, I’m willing to bet they probably have no need for you in their life either. I personally have no use for close-minded, self-centered pedants like you in my life, so in the future, I will avoid you at all costs here on the boards.
And I will continue to embrace wonderful people like Falcon and Ayesha and other warm, thoughtful people, whose hearts are “bigger” (there’s that word again) then anything in your pathetic life.
Trion, wouldja slice off a chunk of that cheesecake for me too?
Hey! Falcon is neither shallow nor judgmental! You take that back! 
Apparently WebMaster’s distaste for fat people doesn’t extend to people who make big fat ol’ targets of themselves, since that’s what he’s done. Oh, well; to each his own.
Awwwww. Jodi, you’re just saying that because yer in my sig.
First, I want to point out that I think the OP is an ass, too. But…
I’ve read lots of threads like this, and the same thing always comes up:
But the CDC says that 17% of the people in this country are obese. That’s a lot of sick people.
Capitalism.
2 people, including the normally extremely intelligent and interesting Dropzone, have blamed capitalism, or the insurance companies for manufacturing this.
Err…the money-grubbing folks at the CDC have defined and tracked obesity.
Redefinitions of over weight/slamming fashion mags
JuanitaTech, a size 12 is pretty normal. We’re not talking about a few pounds. Or 20 pounds. You want to qualify? Try 30% over weight. For a reasonably normal range of sizes, we’re talking 30 to 60 pounds overweight. Now, if you’re over that, that’s cool with me. I don’t particularly care if you’re overweight. But don’t try to construct a strawman “ally mc eat something already is a mutant”. That’s agreed. We’re talking about just the really heavy.
I’m not hurting anyone/smoking is worse for you.
Sorry, no, you can’t use either of these. Smoking got slammed because it had negative extrenalites. It cost society more than it cost the individual (in the form of increased medical costs). Guess what? 300k extra deaths last year. To quote the CDC quoting JAMA -
Sounds like negative externalities to me. N.B., this point only makes sense if you were a fanatical anti-smoker.
Look, I’m opposed to people judging people on shallow, superficial things. I tend to date heavier women (I want some one who looks substantial, its a me thing). I think the Calista Flockharts/Kate Mosses of the world are scary. But 17% of our country are 30% above their ideal body weight. It is a national disgrace.
That said, no, you can’t judge any single person based solely on one phyiscal characteristic, and slackergirl (if you aren’t busy cursing my name) if you want to go dancing, I will personally beat the crap out of anyone who insults you.
I’ve got a nice pan of sweet cornbread here , just dripping with butter. Anybody want some ? Cornbread too.
Oh yeah, since this has been moved to the pit. (I love you Coldy)
** Hey Webmastr, bite my big fat sexy ass ** !
This assumes that “ideal body weight” is known, but this is a poor assumption. Ever look at the data from which those numbers are drawn? They might as well be arbitrary figures pulled out of a hat.
Yep . . . that sounds like me. The amount I eat in a day would probably sicken you. I never excersise. I eat nothing but fast food, sodas, donuts, french fries, potato chips, and other various yummy fattening things.
But I escape your condemnation, for I am 120 pounds. I have a fast metabolism. Do I deserve it? No. I have a terrible lifestyle. The most excercise I get in a day is the walk to my car in the morning. I smoke, eat nearly constantly, drink no water at all, and won’t go near diet soda or fat-free foods. By rights, I should be 200 pounds. My best friend is, and she eats considerably less than I do, and I’d venture to say that she’s healthier than I am, because she doesn’t smoke, and she eats health food.
People come in all shapes and sizes. Are some people fat because of their lifestyle choices? Yes. But is that wrong? In earlier times, the Rubenesque woman was considered quite attractive, and the scrawny, waif-like creatures weren’t. “Fat” is only ugly today because we’re bombarded with images of heroin chic.
Yes, I have. They are a little better than that, but I’ll concede the gist of your point. There have been several “ideal body weights”, and the CDC uses a fairly liberal version.
So call it 10% of the country, at 30% of your idea of a normal body weight. Its still a problem. Or do you simply deny that there is any such thing as a normal body weight?
And I get absolutely sick to my stomach of pencil-necked web geeks who come to the US and insult people they have never met and know nothing about.
What the hell’s the matter with you, you lazy fuck? Why can’t you get up a little earlier and to a few sets of 10?
**
I’d like to know what buisness it is of yours what these people you don’t know complain about? What buisness is it of yours if a fat person decides to eat the whole fucking world? Why anyone would care enough to write a rant about the size of people in a country that they don’t even live in?
**
Is there any wonder why fat people complain about being discriminated against? It’s bigoted, small minded shit-for-brains like you who give fat people a reason to complain.
Now to some other points that more intelligent posters have made in this thread.
When anyone else in the U.S. complains about injustices done to them, they are being brave and speaking up for themselves. When fat people do this, they are whining. You were looking for a flame JuanitaTech? Well, here’s a small one. You said:
First, you say you don’t anything to lose weight, then fry your mother-in-law, who is obviously fatter than you, for doing the same. And then you tell us she has tried to diet and failed miserably-- yet you don’t want to hear it from her; Well, you don’t have to, do you? What with being a curvy and sexy size 10.
And that little bit about woofing down a five piece chicken meal?
That is as mean, cruel, untrue and as stereotypically backwards as the lazy nigger who won’t get a job speech. Let’s see how quickly this little tidbit gets picked up.
Why, the very next post! And here it is again, but now spritle has raised the stakes. 8 peices of chicken being eaten by the inappropriate victim.
The reason why fat people have a victim mentality is because so many of us think of being fat as a crime. If there was no stygma attatched to fatness, then there would be no “inappropriate victims”.
I refuse to apologize for my weight. I refuse to feel guilty about every morsel that passes my lips. If I want to complain about my weight, like every other fucking woman in the United States of America, I fucking will and I’ll do it while I’m eating.
Webmstr can suck on my right tit and hope to get vanilla milkshake while he’s at it. And he won’t have to worry about being disgusted while looking at me. If I’m ever in his line of vision, I’ll gladly take one of my pudgy fingers and poke his damn eyes out.
bashere, I’m above my ideal weight, and I have maybe five pounds of fat on me, total. And Falcon and others who have seen me can attest to the fact that I am very much NOT fat or even overweight.
I’d rather have a fat country than a bigoted, stupid and ignorant country - perhaps you should start that club.
I post an insulting, rambling, 10 paragraph rant, in which I name four well known and respected posters, and the only thing you pick on are my cites from the CDC? I’m clearly losing my touch.
You are, of course, correct. What do doctors know about health, anyway?
I was fatter and closer to the low end of my ideal weight 2 months ago. I’ve bulked up some, and dropped body fat, so I know exactly what you mean. But remember, in this case, you are arguing with:
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity-epidemic.htm
not with me. I very seriously doubt that the preceived health problem is a bunch of well-toned swimmers on the far side of their ideal weight.
iampunha, I just checked your home page. I very much doubt you are 30% above ideal weight. Please note my point 3 (err…my first point 3), above. That’s one of the things about this debate that bugs me. One side is talking about the 300+ pound 14 year olds, the other side says “yeah, I should weigh about 180, but since I started benching 450, I can’t get my weight below 200”.
Your lack of “bigotry” is killing people. 300,000 premature deaths last year because of your openmindedness. You may want to be a little more careful about who you call ignorant and stupid.
Like I said, I really don’t care if people are heavy. It is (very little) skin off my nose. But at least try to be honest about it.
When it comes to nutrition, not very much. Doctors are taught about disease and how to treat it. They don’t seem to know very much about “normal” health.
At least, that’s what my mother – a doctor – says. I tend to agree with her, based on what I’ve seen.
There are certainly people who are treatably overweight, but I think this panic mentality about weight is harmful to people who are fat but healthy and who do not need to lose weight for health reasons. I also suspect that this category outnumbers the category of people who are treatably overweight. And when you add to it the people who develop psychological disorders worrying (rightly or wrongly) about their weight, I personally think “obesity hysteria” is a net negative for public health. But there is more money to be made selling diet books, diet foods, and diet drugs than there is in telling people that they don’t need them.
I’d like to associate myself with the remarks of my learned compatriot, eh.
I think an important point here is that being fat is no one else’s business. Sure, someone can have a privately-held opinion about it, but bottom line - NOT YOUR BUSINESS. So while a person’s weight may be totally their own doing, it is still THEIR BUSINESS. If they want to eat Big Macs all day, and totally pig out, they still do not warrant or deserve your mean comments, or discrimination.
I am a big woman (have been bigger, have been smaller.) The thing I can’t get past is that the “solution” presented for all the CRAP large people endure (the “oinks” and “moos”, other incredibly cruel and insensitive remarks) is to lose weight. No, that is really not the root of the problem. Losing weight won’t solve this. The root of the problem is the assholes who go out of their way to spew this crap. Being fat does not mean that anyone “deserves” the cruelty. The solution to avoiding the cruelty is not losing weight. The fat people didn’t start the problem, it’s not their responsibilty to solve it. They are MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS. It’s the pricks like webmastr who feel the need to go out of their way to be cruel - people like him prompt many fat people to complain about (at least) part of their plight.
As for what Juanita said - yes, that’s true. It’s silly to complain about how you don’t understand why you are not losing weight, while you slather everything with butter. I know several obese people who do this. But that’s a seperate issue from fat people complaining about being treated like crap because of the way they look. Would anyone here suggest a black person “stop being black” or a gay person “stop being gay” as a solution to the discrimination they suffer? Sure, in some cases, a fat person can lose some weight, and “pass”. And get less cruelty from the assholes. But it doesn’t change the attitudes of the assholes, and that’s the real problem.
There is a difference between:
I went to the U.S. and saw so many overweight people. Isn’t this bad for the country as a whole since it is unhealthy?
and:
I went to the U.S. and saw so many overweight people. Boy was I disgusted by those nasy fat Americans.
But maybe I should have written the OP, waited a day, re-wrote, and then posted. Will do that in the future. Unfortunately, I was writing after yet another trip to the US, and I think every one of the 17% of the US population over their ‘optimal weight’ was waiting for me at the airport (maybe they had read my OP in the future in some parallel universe or something).
This is going to be a LONG post; I have a lot to comment on.
Upon further review, I see that the posts by Juanita Tech and Eft (and maybe spritle) are closer to what I was trying to say. (I will take mouthbreather’s advice and learn how to rant, and with permission, would like to use the flameword fuckstick in a future post). For their sake, I should note that they should probably not be lumped in as being fully in line with the OP.
In other words: I am sick to my stomach of the sheer number of fat people (in the US, specifically) who are complainers. You could call that inappropriate victim mentality, or whatever.
I am not ‘backing down’ or whatever for being flamed. I was, in fact, sleeping (a good portion of the world lives outside the US timezones).
One point that is probably better left for a new thread, but I will touch on quickly here: people were quick to condemn for for ‘judging’. For better or worse, we go through our entire lives needing to make snap judgements every day. Is the person walking towards us a threat? Is that girl across the room a potential mate? ‘First impressions/passing judgement’, whatever you want to call it: short of striking up a three day conversation with everyone we come in contact with to ‘really get to know someone’, it is impossible to function without some sort of impression mechanism that allows us to focus on what we feel is in our best interests. Example: I get dozens of resumes every week. The guy who sent in the lousy resume (poor spelling, or maybe not enough experience, or whatever) may actually be exactly the person I need - but to know this I would have to meet him, and every other person who sent a resume. No can do - so I ‘pass judgement’. I assume that anyone who can not take the time to spellcheck his resume or think about whether or not his experience matches up with what we want is not someone we need to spend time on.
Everyone judges people by their looks, whether they realize it or not. Fact of life; get used to it. I think, however, that there is a difference in judging people by things they can do nothing about (i.e., because of their skin color, or height) and judging them for things they ‘do on purpose’ (such as their hair color, or clothing, etc.). My whole point is that people who are fat ** could do something about it if they choose to **. Fat people look unhealthy, and to me, they look as if they lack will-power. No, probably not all fat people, any more than all resumes with poor spelling will be sent in by people not matching the company’s needs.
sigh I have a feeling I am not expressing this very well. I hope my point is getting across, but probably not. Flame away.
kellibelli and the other person who mentioned that I would be banned if I made a similiar post about blacks, or gays, or whatever. Mute point: blacks can not help being black, any more than I can help being male, or my co-worker can help being Asian. My view is that the fast majority of the very fat can do something about it if they chose to. Do I say they need to be able to act as stand-ins for Calvin Klein ads? No. Overweight is not a problem, because it is probably a side effect of the modern lifestyle, where more people work indoors, at desks, or in cars, instead of ‘working the land’, as it were. The ‘more than overweight’, however, don’t really have that excuse.
I retract the ‘98%’ statement; I just pulled that out of my hat. Ummm - I still think that the vast majority of the very fat are that way for reasons other than disease or whatever.
To the many people who commented about ‘poor self image; trauma from people who insulted them about being fat as a child’, etc.: This is one of my problems: I don’t see what your rationalization for your ‘fatness’ (for lack of a better word) has to do with the fact that you could choose to do something about it, and apparently are not.
From the overweight people I know, none of them like it. They get tired easily, they have a hard time finding clothes, they (apparently) tend to get sick more frequently, and heart disease seems to be more common. Forget aesthetics; I just find it hard to believe that any one would choose to be fat because they found it preferable. The conclusion then is that people who are ‘well-adjusted and at peace with being fat; I love my body, etc.’ are simply trying to convince themselves that, in fact, they don’t have any problem with being overweight–perhaps because it means they don’t have to go through the hard work needed to lose weight. Please don’t assume I am calling all fat people lazy (at least for the purposes of this paragraph). I am asking for clarification – is my thinking wrong on this point?
**Johnny L.A. ** and the other Depression era post: Nope, don’t buy it. The Depression was a *worldwide *condition, not just confined to the US. Also, (sticking to modern times) the aftermath of WWII in Europe and Asia was far, far more devastating than anything seen in the US during the depression. Japan, for example, suffered from massive levels of malnourishment and (probably) starvation in the aftermath of WWII; the whole country literally probably would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for the Occupation. If the ‘Depression backlash’ theory were true, we would expect to see similiar trends in other countries, and I just don’t see it.
**goboy ** and others on the ‘Our society has imposed an artificial body template, especially on women, which causes people to endanger their health as they try to get down to a waist size nature did not intend them to have’ debate. Sorry, I just don’t get this whole debate. Last time I checked, the guys in Baywatch and Calvin Klein commercials also look pretty chiseled, and most guys (myself included) not only do not look like that, we don’t expect to. You don’t hear about guys complaining about ‘unrealistic standards’. Guys don’t complain about being fat because society ‘expects them’ to have six-pack abs and a washboard stomach.
TV is unrealistic by nature. I have rewritten this paragraph about 5 times, and I just can not get it to come out right, but what I am trying to say is that TV (and books/plays etc. pre-TV) has always been a medium in which the characters are ‘larger than life’, be it the beautiful heroines or handsome, dashing heros. With TV, you leave a lot less to the imagination, but the image(s) portrayed have not changed that much, really. Also, one of the (perhaps unfortunate) aspects of TV/photography/cinema etc. is that people tend to ‘look’ fatter than they really are. I don’t understand it myself, but it may have something to do with three-dimensional people being portrayed in a two-dimensional format. I have been involved in some movie production, and people who look very very ‘weight in proportion to height’ look a bit on the chubby side on screen. So people in Hollywood, for example, need to be ultrathin just to look normal.
Uhh - this is getting long. More later.
Hmmmm, all I have to say is I’m not at peace with my busty body.
Because there is absolutely nothing wrong with my body. I know you probably think the world revolves around you, but it does not. I’m not here to please you, or anybody for that matter.
KellyM
Doctors are taught about disease and how to treat it.
While I hold your low opinion of the american medical establishment, what diseases do you think doctors know how to treat?
You mean diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus, musculoskeletal disorders, psychosocial dysfunction, and early mortality? Or do you mean more like cancer of the breast (postmenopausal), endometrium, ovary, gallbladder and colon? Or perhaps you were refering to breathlessness, respiratory infections and sleep apnoea? Are those the sorts of diseases that doctors are “taught about and [know] how to treat”?
I’ve given you stats from a pretty reputable source about the problems involved with obesity. Believe them or not; it is your life.
I’ve already acknowledged that the OP was a potentially interesting question coated in gallons of slime, but I’d like to express my disappointment in all the posters who have the knee-jerk reaction to compare anti-obesity to racism, anti-semitism, etc. I haven’t seen straw fly like this since that cow went airborne in Twister. Either address the OP or flame the OP to hell (we are in the Pit, ain’t we?); but please don’t insult our collective intelligence.
Food for thought (no pun intended): I’d be curious to know how “open-minded” all the overweight folks who’ve chimed in react to people who, for example, stink to high hell. I mean reek like they’ve been basking in the Vomit Jacuzzi. Or wear threadbare clothing. Or (gasp!) nudists? Would you complain about their indecency or inability to take proper care of themselves? How ignorant is it to have a problem with these folks, if it’s their choice?
(I understand that a personal stench can have a deleterious effect on one’s co-workers, but these are the only meager examples that come to mind now)