Annotated Bingo Part 2

Welcome back to the next set of Fat Hate Bingo annotations. Had some great suggestions from Part 1 in the Comments section, so be sure to check those out, too.

Won't someone please think of the children?
I'm darn sure thinking of the children forced into dieting and weight cycling younger and younger every year.

Fat kids are a trump card for fat haters. They may pretend to allow us adults to accept ourselves, so long as we all agree that its not okay for the kids. It's patronizing to adults and victimizing to kids. If its okay for us to accept ourselves, why isn't it okay to encourage it for kids? This is a false concession that often gets made. Basically it translates to, "You are free to make stupid decisions, but we cannot allow that for kids". Don't mistake these people. They aren't okay with you accepting yourself one bit. They are relying on fat adults who ultimately aren't okay accepting themselves either. Don't play into this.

Fat children are exceptionally vulnerable in our society. This is when we are taught to hate our bodies. This is when we are started on the dieting cycle. We must not give up on fat children. We must not give in to the treatment our culture deals out to fat children. We think of the children.

Fat people are a burden on our health care system.
The "health care system" is a burden on fat people.

A favorite cloak for fat bigotry is economics. Yeah, right. All people are a "burden" on our health care system. The truth is that fat people get substandard health care for a multitude of reasons. We're more likely to be poorer and without health insurance. We get denied health insurance because of our size. When we go to the doctors, they often refuse to treat us past our weight. As a result, many fat people don't go to the doctor. The burden is actually on fat people, not the other way around. Fat people need better health care and health care which is not focused on a futile attempt to turn fat people into not-fat people.

The law of thermodynamics says you're a liar.
No, YOU say I'm a liar because you don't understand the law of thermodynamics.

You see this one a lot and it lurks behind most fat hate bingo items. Some people think fat is just a simple product of mathematics. Calories in-Calories burned=fat ass. This is a tough one to argue against because they are just fundamentally barking up the wrong tree but are unlikely to understand that. It just isn't that simple and every fat person who can say that will just get labeled a liar or an exception. The hard truth, though, is that the human metabolism
is a complex system designed for a myriad of circumstances. Maybe for some people it works in one simple manner, but not for most. Good luck getting people to admit that, though.

But you're going to die!
So are you.

Faux concern for our welfare is another popular tactic. Like much, its just faux. Not that this concern for the well-being of others does not present so fiercely in other circumstances where the stakes are much higher. Do they spare such self-righteousness for smokers? For people without health insurance? Or is it just fat people? The "facts" may suggest that fat people will die sooner than not fat people, but most would be shocked that the difference is negligable for the vast majority of us who are beseiged in an effort to protect us from death. Even where the difference is noticable, the fact still remains that there is no safe or reliable means of turning a fat person into a not-fat person. If our impending doom really was a concern, then we should work on prolonging our lives. Not attempting to make us not-fat.

Inside every fat person is a thin person trying to get out.
Aw, like Gwyneth?

You see, we aren't "real" people. Our lives and happiness just doesn't count. All that matters are the fictional thin people residing within us like thetans or something. Similiar to the notion of fat people being prisoners inside our bodies, its a way of defining fat people by what it is presumed we could be rather than what we are. I don't know if there is a "thin person" inside me, but its the fat person you're talking to. Lets talk about me, and not the hypothetical thin person you think I should be.