A rant from the past.

Inspired by this post, I decided to bring over a rant that I first posted on Livejournal, regarding public perceptions of overweight people. It was written in January 2010, when I had little else to do all day but watch videos I found online. (Not that this has changed much, given my employment status...)

I'm watching Supersize Me, and thus far it's definitely an interesting watch, but I've found one quite objectionable thing that I feel needs addressing. The comparison of smokers to fat people.

The comparison wasn't that both smokers and fat people are in unhealthy situations. No, the likeness being drawn is that they both intentionally put themselves in unhealthy situations. The person being interviewed mentioned seeing one guy start heckling a smoker about his habit, and how that was socially acceptable, but heckling a fat person for eating too much wasn't. He said he could draw no distinction between those examples.

Nice to know that some people are really effing blind.

For one thing, outside of stupid tabloids, babies aren't born with cigarettes in their hands and mouths. A child can be born obese, on the other hand. It isn't common to see parents pushing cigarettes on their kids. It is increasingly common to see parents pushing unhealthy fatty food on their kids. Smokers don't make appointments with doctors and are suddenly told that they have a "smoking condition" which will make them smoke for the rest of their lives. Some people, on the other hand, end up with metabolic disorders through no fault of their own, which makes them gain weight easily and shed it with great difficulty.

I think comparing fat people with smokers is unfair. Comparing compulsive overeaters with smokers might be a little closer to the mark, but the insinuation is that every single overweight person is overweight because they choose to overeat.

It may even work that way in the majority of circumstances. But not all, and it's not fair to tar everyone with the same brush.

In media, it's still a gag to have a fat character who's obsessed with food. Heckling smokers in public may be more acceptable than heckling fat people, but smoking is also more accepted in the media. Nobody blinks an eye if somebody lights up a cigarette in a movie. But everybody laughs if a fat character dives after another piece of chocolate cake.

I'm overweight. I also eat for comfort more than I should, and eat more junk food than I should, and I don't eat as many vegetables as I should. And some of that is my own fault and I hold myself to blame. But some of it is because I have not yet broken down all the habits of childhood, where my parents thought it was better for me to drink Coke than orange juice, where they'd allow me to eat 3 burgers from McDonalds when I was 8 years old, and where vegetables other than potatoes were a rare occurance in the household. I haven't always been this large, but I have nearly always been a larger than average child, and I'm sorry, but when my eating habits are under the control of my parents (mostly my dad, who's still largely overweight), there isn't much a child can do to stop developing bad eating habits and to avoid putting on excess weight.

In the obesity crisis these days, people tend to overlook that aspect of things a lot. They see an adult who's fat, and who has been fat all their lives, and they blame the person. It doesn't cross their minds for a second to remember that for many years, that person's food was under somebody else's control. My father once tried to force me to eat bad eggs or else go to bed hungry, not listening to my complaints that the omelet tasted horrible and metalic. How am I to blame for the weight I put on during those years?

And yet somehow I am. If anything, people will look at fat adults and hear that they were fat children, and also instantly make the assumption that once the person got out from under their parents' thumbs, they should have worked out every day and dieted like a fiend and lost all that excess weight very quickly so that they could avoid being blemishes on society any further.

Here's a newsflash to all who think like that: IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!

I'm not defending everybody who's overweight. I'm simply saying that all overweight people are not the same as all smokers. And I'd appreciate it greatly if people would stop saying that.

If you want to look at it from an overeating point of view, how about this: implying that overeaters are as publically reviled as smokers makes them feel bad. Which makes them want to eat for comfort. Which makes them larger. It's a load of bullshit, but it might fit better into some heads to phrase it that way.

Very very narrow heads.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I had an explosion of fanfic ideas last night that I really must write down before I forget about them.