Oh for the love of...

I was having a lovely day, then I had to go and read this bullshit.

To spare you from having to read it, it's basically this: It should be okay to discriminate against and hate fat people. Because they CHOOSE to "stuff their pieholes with Big Macs" (yeah, right here? Never had a Big Mac in my life.) and therefore like, totally deserve it.

Sigh.

It's not even the article that's making my head explode, although it really is just the biggest load of shit I've ever read, and I can't even believe that it made the front damn page of the Huffington Post (the guy throws around all sorts of crazy generalizations without a single scientific fact to back any of them up). It's the comments.

What's hilarious to me about reading any article having to do with weight/obesity/fitness/whatever, is that every single person who comments on it is immediately a goddamn EXPERT on exactly what's going on in someone else's body--or in their kitchen, bedroom, gym membership, whatever.

Just look at the comments, "most fat people," "the VAST majority of fat people," "maybe 5% of fat people"....everyone throwing around stats willy nilly and using them to justify acting hateful towards a specific group. Because if you CHOOSE something, you like, totally DESERVE to be hated and discriminated against.

Yes. Because all fatties? We WANT to look this way. We want to be actually mooed at from moving cars when we go out to jog (and yes, this has happened to me--my favorite thing is that the same people bitching that fatties should "get off your butt and exercise" are probably the same ones who enjoy making fun of those who do. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, "Get off your butt and exercise! Just not in front of me, or I will publicly shame you for trying to be healthier, because you deserve it, now stop being fat at me!"). We sit at home at night with...now what is that fat-hating people always accuse us of?...oh yes, "piles of Twinkies" and "tubs of ice cream" chortling to ourselves about how GREAT it's going to be to be made fun of and laughed at and marginalized.

What gets to me most about articles like this is what I call the "Virginia clause," where the guy wrote the famous article "Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," because the little girl said in her letter that her dad claimed, "If it's in the Post, it must be so."

As soon as people who enjoy feeling morally superior to fatties see anything backing up their hatred in any sort of legitimate news source, they use it as an excuse to be hateful. Just LOOK at the comments on that article!

There are people saying that because no one comes out of a concentration camp fat, that it is proof that fat isn't genetic.

Okay. (deep breath) People in the concentration camps were FUCKING STARVING, YOU RAGING DICKWAD.

As in, they were denied almost any food at all. Oh, clearly, this is the solution. Let's throw all the fatties in a work camp (another brilliant commenter idea), starve them all half to death and expect them to live on that diet for the rest of their lives.

GREAT IDEA.

Oh, then there was this charming exchange in response to someone rightly pointing out that no one would ever encourage actively hating any other group of people, blacks for example:

"No one is suggesting we lynch fat people."

"Of course not, the rope would break."

LOVELY. And Ridley is claiming there's no such thing as weight discrimination? Suuuure. Then there's the guy who actively admits that if he had to choose between hiring two equally qualified candidates for a job, he'd choose a thin person over a fattie, because OBVIOUSLY if a person is large it means they have no self-discipline and would be more likely to miss days due to all their "health problems" (and yeah, right here, normal cholesterol, normal blood pressure, normal everything, totally healthy). I kind of hope that guy hires a perfectly thin cokehead or heroin addict as karma for his complete idiocy.

Are there plenty of fat people who eat out-of-control and are sedentary and unhealthy? Yep. Definitely. I've known plenty. But are there also fat people who exercise regularly, make good food choices, but still are not societally acceptable weights? Yep, I've been one of them. And are there also thin people who eat like pigs and never exercise? Yep, I've known plenty of them and so have you.

Why is it that people go on and on and on and on and ON about how "simple" the calories in/calories out math is, but never take the "heavy eating thin person" into consideration? Why is a fast metabolism easy to accept, but a slow one isn't? Is it because the person with the fast metabolism has a body that society doesn't direct us to hate?

My sister and I grew up eating the same shit, playing outside for the same amount of time, taking the same swimming lessons and skiing lessons and playing on the same soccer teams. She was skinny as a rail, and I was always a chunk. Same with my dad (skinny) and his brother (chunk). Actually, I beat the crap out of her at swimming, I was the one bringing home ribbons and medals, all while being (gasp!) fatter than her skinny ass.

But regardless of any of this crap about the science (which is INSANELY complex..go buy a biology book and try to comprehend the vastness of information that's out there on the human metabolism and how different it can be from person to person), regardless of anything: why is it okay to actively hate on someone?

Do we really think "if I just hate them and shame them and humiliate them and denigrate them enough, THAT will make them skinny?"

Please! I don't care if you are the laziest, fattest human on the planet who really DOES stuff your "piehole" with, um, pie, or Big Macs or donuts....You still deserve to be treated with the same respect that anyone else does. No one "deserves" to be hated.

Except maybe like, child molesters or something. Oh! Especially FAT child molesters.