Fattening Lifestyles

When I first brought up those dumb Weight Watchers ads a separate thought had occurred to me about the way diets like WW try to pitch themselves as a "whole new way of living". It wasn't really on point, so I left it for another time, but I had wanted to talk about how this manner of discussion is really a backwards way of accusing fat people of having made a "lifestyle choice" to become fat. Just as that line is used as an insult by homophobes against gays and lesbians, diet mongers use a reverse application of it to make the same accusations about fat people. It felt like a good point to make so I held off until I could discuss it more detail.

Then some fools go and explicitly talk about fat as a "lifestyle choice" and ruin my point about it being a sublte message.

I guess there is some new book out by some surely very self-satisfied writers who think they are geniuses for accusing American culture (well, economy to be precise) for fat people. We've seen the same self-satisfied conclusion made before, of course, but don't tell them. They really think they are onto something and it'd be awfully mean to confuse them with reality. Their lynch pin is trying to steal the lifestyle choice bash from the homophobes. Never can turn away a good weapon against the fatties.

Looking over their site, one is struck at how proud they are with themselves for their "insight". Why, did you know that there are lots more fat people these days? You may not have heard of such fun facts, but that's why they are here. To shed new light on this ignored problem.

You want to know a fun fact? Their site has a poll about whether you think "obesity" is a a problem in the U.S. One option is "No, not at all". Wonder what it would be like if a bunch of fatties kept voting that.