You probably aren't going to like this, but, fatphobia isn't a thing. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. And speaking as someone who has been a Big Lad all their life and thanks to lockdown expanded to over 150 kg, being fat is a very, very, rational fear. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Yet there is a significant group in society that reckons that no, being enormous is right and proper and that society should change themselves to fit around them in all things, and then moaning and flapping their arms around and doing the hand tragically nailed to the forehead business when people say that this isn't going to be doable.
Thankfully I'm less flabberous now thanks to swimming fairly decent distances three times a week, limiting the amount of stuff I shove down my neck, and more recently going lifting. But I'm afraid it really makes me very, very, angry seeing all these great fat wobble bottoms basically engaging in obesity denial on sites like Vice and Huffpost not to mention on Twatter. Because apparently the truth that carrying enough unnecessary mass to make up half a baby elephant on your form is "problematic." No. Fuck off. I've been there. I've been over 150kg, remember? I know what it is like to be morbidly obese. And it's not a nice feeling. After all, who in their right mind would volunteer to be:
Because that's me post lockdown, that is, when I was so enormous I genuinely thought I was going to die. I know, I'm 6' 3" and I could probably have got away with it due to height for longer than most, but I would like to see my 50th birthday. And that made me think. How fucking delusional are these
body positivity and
Health At Every Size activists that they don't realise that something is wrong and that they would prefer to blame
society for their inability to put down the fork? Do they not realise that if they cannot see their feet, much less their genitals, that they surely have a problem? And then it dawned on me. They deny they have a problem and therefore the world is to blame. Everything else stems out of that.
And it is a problem. Overeating is an addiction. I'm not talking about people who like a sticky toffee pudding with their pub grub or a Mars Bar in their snap tin at work, or who have an occasional blowout calorie fest at parties or suchlike. You don't get to be morbidly obese, or, as body positivity activists have hilariously renamed it, deathfat, simply by a slightly lackadaisical attitude to your food intake. No. Getting to 150kg or more requires you to pretty much be munching on empty calories every hour of the day. It requires you to be eating stuff just for something to do. It requires that you wilfully and persistently shove pies and pasties and those coffees from Costa or Starbucks that are topped with cream, marshmallows, sprinkes, chocolate bits, and are basically a pudding in a stupidly oversized mug down your neck. In short, it requires some sort of underlying issue. Just as alcoholism and problem drug use is often a result of people self medicating to dull something at the root of it all, so too is overeating. Take me for example. I escaped my alcoholic ex in 2016 and had nothing. From 2017-19 I stuffed my face with crap and was on my arse all day at work and all evening. Being on the velnafaxine didn't help either as it gave me the appetite of a horse. Then, 2020. Lockdown has entered the chat. Now there was nothing else to fucking do even if I wanted to because it was closed in turn because our lords and masters shat the bed and decided to emulate a genocidal cabal of Commie rodent scum and their worker-ant minions. Working from home. Wake up. Log on. Work from home in pants. Never leave same room all day. Hungry and tired from lack of real stimulation. Buy takeaway pizza. Only a 10.5 inch one though because you're not greedy. They accidentally deliver a 15 inch. Munch through it all. Still hungry because feeding frenzy. Truck out to corner shop and buy more empty calories. Munch that. Next day much the same. There's nothing else to fucking to but eat. The end result of this was that I became deathfat.
But no, society is to blame entirely for it.
Now I'm not denying that we live in a society. That is wholly obesogenic. There are competing mobile phone apps that are built around sending you tons of empty calories. Takeaways, fast food joints, and coffee shops which sell puddings in mugs are huge growth areas because they have tapped into the lazy pound. Manual labour is on the way out because our lords and masters in their infinite wisdom saw fit to outsource industry to the aforementioned genocidal cabal of Commie rodent scum and their worker-ant minions. Most people work piloting a desk nowadays. Therefore they aren't expending the energy day to day that they previously would, but they still eat as if they're doing a full shift mining or farming or engineering. So it stands to reason that people generally are getting fatter. But that in and of itself does not explain the sheer number, mass, and volume of out and out hamcannons that we see. No. Getting to that level of sheer blimp status can only be the fruit of addiction. I mean, in current year vertical drinking establishments and cheap beer and wine are legion, but there is less of an incidence of alcoholism than there was in the past because society as a whole has decided that long liquid lunches and drunk driving and similar are not acceptable any more. Similarly, while in the 1960s smoking was so common as to make it abnormal not to smoke, increased awareness of it being a cause of lung cancer and all sorts of other horrid things as well as the fact that it's simply put unpleasant to be around means that nowadays you just don't see people with a fag clamped between their teeth any more a lot of the time. That, and vapes. Both alcohol and cigarettes are less popular than they used to be, and I am sure that the NHS thanks them for it. And I'll not deny that there was a level of social disapproval of both of these things that brought down the rates of alcoholism and smoking. Nobody, after all, wants to be run over by a drunk driver or have to battle through a cancerous fogbank in the workplace.
But... no. The same social disapproval of being a Fat Bastard is evil, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, and evil. Pay no attention to the social harm that problem overeating has. Pay no attention to the fact that it puts a load (both literal and metaphorical) on healthcare systems and thus spends the taxes of people without such problems. Pay no attention to the fact that you can eat yourself into being unemployable and thus a net consumer of public services. Pay no attention to the fact that just like drug users, when mega fatties get together they enable each other and then start encouraging their less lardsome compatriots to eat more. Pay no attention to their less flabberous partners and children who become neglected because said family member is too busy stuffing their face or too worn out from just existing at that brobdignagious quantity to actually tend to them. Maybe if the fat activists and Health At Every Size idiots and other obesity deniers stopped thinking about themselves all the time and considered other people for once they might realise that they were hurting others as well as themselves. But they won't, because they all sit around enabling each other and pointing to anecdotes and woo and excuses as to why they can't admit they have a problem.
I mean, if I set up a movement called Health At Every Liver Function and moaned on clickbait webshites about sober culture and drunk shaming and how blood alcohol content is an inexact and discredited measurement and how I should be allowed to keep a bottle of Sainsbury's Basics vodka in my desk drawer at work, I'd be told to fuck right off and I'd deserve it.
"Oh, but you are just insecure and fragile and can't handle REAL WOMEN who have curves!" That's usually the go to excuse at this point.
Now I'm not saying everyone has to be a supermodel or have the body of a Marvel character. Those people spend all day titivating themselves and are rich enough to go without a day job or are paid to do as much (and in the case of actors in Marvel films, are full of steroids). Hollywood and the fashion industry are both full of shit and exploitative. That is also unhealthy and starving oneself can become an addiction just as much as stuffing one's face. I like women with curves. Christina Hendricks for instance I have fancied since Firefly. All red curls and buxom and broad hips and strapping thighs. Hnnng. But being a beachball isn't curves. It's a curve. Singular. And I'm sorry, but if I have to lift up folds to gain access to your happy slot and then wish for a set of surgical retractors to keep them there, it's probably not going to work. Then there's the fact that someone that size probably does have the aforementioned health problems and likely does have a problem with overeating which means I'm going to be signing up to potentially be their carer or subject to a torrent of abuse because I wouldn't enable them, or worse, succumb to said abuse and end up enabling them. I did mention my ex was an alcoholic, right? I've been there. I'm not falling for that sort of thing again. But here's the point. The fact that there are models and actors who are not rail thin or pumped up on the juice or suchlike is perfectly good. But it doesn't mean that you, fat activists, can point to them as a justification for being enormous. Because I bet you any money that the REAL WOMEN WITH CURVES that you gesticulate madly towards are as tired of you faceriding them for your gain as they are of the people who point and sneer because they aren't skeletons.
(Oh, and before someone mentions Lizzo, don't. Fuck Lizzo. My life is hard enough without voluntarily watching some blimp blow tunelessly down a flute.)
"Oh but the minefield of being out while fat and getting shamed for it! You wouldn't understand!"
Oh dear. Have you read any of the above? Specifically where I talk about being a recovering Big Lad? Well then. You think I haven't had people refer to me as a "fat cunt" just generally? Or pass comments randomly? Do you think that didn't annoy me? It didn't get me to change, but it did add to it. You know how it can be the done thing to harangue people smoking? Or how it is a legal requirement not to serve people with alcohol in bars and restaurants if they're drunk or take their car keys off them if you think they might attempt to drive? I bet you approve of all those things. Once again, social disapproval is a powerful contributor in pushing addicts towards recovery. Getting slung out of bars because you were acting like a drunken bellend, again, and again, and again. Is that not shaming? But it works, and if it drives just one problem drinker to possibly realise that they can't carry on like this, then their liver, their family, and the NHS will thank them for it. Similarly, why do we not cut off problem overeaters? They go in somewhere and order a 2000 calorie blowout while being enormous, why don't we simply refuse to enable them?
But no, because it is an addiction they don't get the message. They prefer to surround themselves with excuses and enablers. And I get that because that's addictive behaviour down to a T. "But diet culture! Fad diets don't work! Starvation and yo-yoing! Eating disorders!" Yes. Fad diets don't work because they are fads. But thermodynamics does. If you eat fewer calories than you expend you WILL lose weight. And if you don't, well, call the Nobel Prize committee because you've just discovered how to produce mass out of nowhere and rendered all of physics wrong. "But genetics and condishuns!" Yes, some people have higher metabolisms than other or put on weight more easily, but genetics alone doesn't make you the size of a house. Similarly, you might have medical issues that predispose you to putting on weight, or take medication that is associated with it like I did when I was on the venlafaxine. But those don't directly cause you to become fat and I'm afraid you have to take it into account and work around it. I also recommend getting of the venlafaxine generally because that stuff is absolutely evil, but that's another node. "B-but most former fat people just pork it back on anyway!" Regrettably, yes they do. That's addiction for you. You think that recovering alcoholics don't relapse? Or drug users? Al-Anon has its issues but "one day at a time" is fairly sound advice to be honest. See. Those excuses are the addiction talking. Stop fucking listening and admit you have a problem.
And this is why the body positivity and Health At Every Size movements can go fuck themselves. They are addicts who want society to rework itself to enable them and their addictions when they ought to be getting help. They would rather deny the facts of the matter which is that by being colossal they are hurting themselves and those around them and society as a whole. They may not be responsible for their addiction but they are responsible for their recovery. And if this makes me a fatphobe, then fucking yes, I'm a fatphobe.
Don't @ me.
Update, 3 March 2023.
Oh joy. Looks like I rubbed some people up the wrong way. Honestly, the flotilla of downboats from people on here not because anything I said is wrong but because it doesn't fit current year shibboleths. What is this, Reddit? I am disappoint. I've msgd them but I think some of this requires more of a lengthy response than I can fit into the small little boxes here. Right.
@Zoq-Fot-Pik - I'm glad you found someone you love because as a fellow divorcé I've not managed that yet mainly because dating in current year is a toilet. However. With the greatest of respect. It seems to me that you didn't actually read my writeup. Had you done so, you would note that the main target of my ire (which was pretty evident) were obesity denialists. I'm sorry, but HAES is up there with anti-vaxxers and pro-anorexia types in my book. So unless your wife believes all their shibboleths she's not in the cart with me.
I also object to the idea that anyone who doesn't want to be a land beluga must be somehow brainwashed by Big Diet and Big Exercise. Yes. Fad diets exist. They don't work. Ignore them. I said as much already. You will starve yourself and pork it back on. We've known this for decades. However, the maths of this doesn't add up. The global fast food market's turnover was a curvaceous $862 billion in 2020, and is proejcted to hit $1.6 trillion or more by 2028 according to Fortune. That's an awful lot of excessively calorific beige belly timber. Compared to this, the global fitness industry is falling from a peak of $91 billion in turnover in 2019. This means that there is likely around ten times as much money in fatness as there is in fitness. I don't know how much of the latter's fall is because gyms took a beating during the Chinese Batclap though, so there is that. Could it not have occured to you that extremely obese people are brainwashed by said industry far more?
I also enjoyed the sneering about insecurity, which I kind of pre-empted. I was going to stick with just the over/under I go clay shooting with, but since you insist I might add a nice lil' pump action jobbie to the cabinet as well. Mix it up a bit. Not going to get too carried away though. Do I look like an American?
Meanwhile, you enjoy your pleasingly plump wife and I'll enjoy not feeling like exerting myself is going to kill me. I don't need to hear about your sex life because it is likely very boring as listening to other people give blow by blow accounts of same generally is.
@Intentions - Daily reminder that we don't generally accept addictive behaviour to the point at which it causes widespread social harm. Gratuitous and exploitative exposition of drunk driving victims and lung cancer victims.