9.22.2008

A helpful reminder to politicians.

Just a helpful little reminder to any politicians looking to score points off fat bodies this election season. The world still really, really hates fat people. Tells them so every day. Reminds us in magazines, TV, newspapers. Reminds in ads and "news" alike. Reminds in fiction, too. Also has been known to seek us out on the street and in our home and even on our blogs. This world is not friendly to fat people. It is not even hands-off with fat people. Its decidedly hands-on in expressing its condemnation and intolerance for our bodies and expressing how we are a representation about countless things that are wrong in this world.

I say this, because John McCain, my friends, seems to not realize this. In discussing health care in an editorial this month, he explained how parent's need to teach their children "a sense of personal responsibility for their health, nutrition, and exercise" because such information has been "expelled from our schools". By what, you might ask? Political correctness, of course. Oh, political correctness. Is there nothing you can't be blamed for.

Evidently, fat acceptance (which I remind you, is still largely loathed and hated by progressives and conservatives alike) has been so successful it has now cowed our educators into supporting our point of view. Schools are not havens of fat tolerance and our childrens are suffering. Gone are the days of fat kids being berated by teaches and classmates alike. Gone are the gym class humiliations and public weighings. Gone are the days when children would be fat baited on their report cards. Except, of course, not.

This is a common theme among fat haters. So frustrated that the drum beat of their fat hatred has not made everyone skinny, that they decide the problem is that they aren't yelling loud enough. So they each think they are the first person telling us to hate our fat bodies. They must be, after all. If we had heard it before, we wouldn't be fat. Why haven't we heard it before? Well, obvious fat acceptance has come to dominant our life and society to such an insidious degree that we're keeping this information from the public to advance our political will.

So, just a reminder, fat acceptance does not control our educational system or anything else. Fat acceptance struggles at even holding sway in the FAT ACCEPTANCE. The suggestion that we are some sort of monolith of a political advocacy, imposing fatness on the American public is not a reality-based viewpoint. Its just an effort by fat hatred to disclaim responsibility for the fact that after decades of advancing their fat prejudice in every corner of our society, it simply has no productive results to show for it. Rather than acknowledge that their purpose has failed, they'd rather claim a loosely unorganized band of a few hundred activists are actually the most powerful force in matters of health in the nation.

So, just as a helpful reminder, we're not. You guys are still controlling the show. Fat people are still hated.