What is happening in America right now scares the piss out of me.
There is a new minority, a special new breed of second-class citizen. These folks are everywhere! Chances are you know one! Maybe you’ve got one in your family! (sshhh, don’t tell anybody!)
These are the new breed of folks that it is safe and socially acceptable to treat poorly “because they deserve it,” and because “it’s for their own good.”
These are the “fat,” the “overweight,” those unlucky souls who don’t look like they just came from a Nazi work camp and who actually have a little meat on their bones. They are diagnosed as being “sick,” (and everybody knows what kind of sickness they really have, wink wink), and the basis of this diagnosis is numbers. Not even current numbers, because current numbers would mean a lot fewer people would be diagnosed as overweight–no, these numbers were derived in the 50’s by insurance companies, studying a generation which time proved to be one of the unhealthiest America has ever spawned.
Every generation needs a safe target, some group to look down upon and feel smugly superior to.
“But I don’t do that!!!” I can hear the collective protest. “Why, some of my best friends are fat!”
No one is helped by this “war on fat”…or, perhaps, someone is.
Billions of dollars are spent each year on diets (mostly ineffective), medications (often toxic), and even body-altering surgeries (often detrimental to long-term health, and occasionally even immediately lethal). Americans are flooded by the largest and most subvasive propaganda campaign ever waged: you can’t turn on the television, pick up a magazine, read a newspaper, take in a novel, watch a movie, or even surf the Internet without being continually bombarded by the Message. “Fat is bad! Fat is everywhere! Fat is ugly! Fat people are stupid! Fat people could change if they would just get off their lazy round overweight asses!”
And, my God, the money just rolls in.
We’re talking more money than the entire I.T. industry. Hell, we might even be talking more money than the entire defense industry.
The war on fat burns on.
And, like any war, there are the casualties, and the collateral damage.
Somewhere in America right this second, there is a pitifully thin young creature, staring despondently into a mirror, seeing only the demon Fat. This unhappy child no longer eats, or perhaps purges after eating. She (or sometimes he) isn’t overweight by any definition, but that’s not the message that society keeps sending, is it?
Some of those poor kids die.
Collateral damage.
Society apparently doesn’t count the cost too high, because the ads keep airing, the surgeries keep getting scheduled, and the money just keeps pouring in.
How to stop it? Can it be stopped?
And the question that really scares me, way down deep where it counts: does anyone really even care?
Folks, this just has to stop. It’s wrong in every way anything can be.
But how to make it stop?
I’ve tried, and folks like me have tried, and we aren’t enough to stop it. And, besides, nobody really listens to what we have to say.
We’re fat, you see.
But maybe, just maybe, you can help.
I hope so.
While there is still time.
–James
