Too Fat for Fabulous

So I'm watching MTV's latest teenage outreach show. It's called "If you only knew me." Under the watch of "cool" counselors (you know, the ones that know "the lingo," and can "rock the look," like some sort of psychologically trained Peter Pans) tell you about boxes, expectations and encourage a student body to really know each other and have a safe space for all. Besides reminding me of the movie Heathers (one of my favorites) it gives a chance to remember how misunderstood we all were.

This isn't about that. It's about a single comment said by some Robert Pattinson mini-clone (he even has the hair)."In fifth grade," he says sobbing, "a girl called me fat." It's driven his body image ever since. He's sitting across from a "fat kid," and next to his perky, perfect girlfriend who feels she doesn't get another parental approval.

Yeah, I am violating the safe space. Once when you in fifth grade? How ever did you survive? God, imagine what the fat kid in front of him -- who has probably been called fat every single day of his life thought. Inside, he's probably curled into a fetal position chewing on his ankles because he's on some weird diet.

Today I put together a whole bunch of random things I've seen lately (not unusual for those of you who know me) and realized, "Oh my God! I'm fat!" No, actually I realized that society is fixated and at war with itself about weight.

I read today that most men's clothes (particularly pants) are sized large. For instance, a 36-inch waist is actually 37 inches in a store like H&M. In Old Navy, it's actually 41-inches, which explains why I love Old Navy so much. It's the other side of the looking glass from the wedding dress, which is usually sized 4 sizes smaller. A perfectly normal woman at a size 12 becomes a tent-sized 18-20 when she tries on a wedding dress. The fact that white is really unforgiving just adds to the insult. Men get to pretend they're thinner. Women are made to feel that they're fatter. We could talk about the inherent misogyny of this. But we won't. It's about fat.

We have so many shows about fat loss. Sweaty, starved, dehydrated contestants win money for being the thinnest at the end. They can Bob and Jillian their way thin, dance their way thin, go to a celebrity boot camp, lose weight with morbidly obese teenagers, surgically remove their stomachs and of course, follow the various diet and exercise regimens sold by the participants. We can lose weight and have our pounds count towards free food for the impoverished in the United States. The fact that a great many of these people can't sustain their weight loss after the program couldn't possibly be relevant.

Do we even really need to talk about the infomercials and ads?

But it's about lifestyle change, they say. We need to feed them better food in the schools so we need the First Lady (who I really do like, honestly) to push childhood nutrition. It's an epidemic and needs be calculated for the cost to economy in terms of health-insurance claims and lost productivity. People die because they're fat. They also die because people aren't immortal.

When I was a kid and fat wasn't an epidemic, just a aberration that needed to be stamped out immediately, things were different. School teachers were encouraged to write down what I ate on field trips. It was proposed that I take my lunch and eat in the nurses' office to help me feel less isolated. Yes, you did read that correctly. I always got a "B" in gym because fat kids can't be allowed to get an "A," it would be a tragedy of Biblical proportions. Kids teased me, drew pictures of my bloated, fish-belly white body in a swimsuit, chose me last for sports teams and were generally mean. Last time I checked, kids were always monsters. Paging Lord of the Flies, paging Lord of the Flies. Please report to our collective consciousness. Oh, it's probably been banned. The best one for me was in ninth grade when a girl said to me, "Eric, if you lost weight you have so many more friends."

I replied, "Yes, and then they'd all be as shallow and stupid as you."

Ooops. Did I say that?

On the heels of all this mania about weight loss has come a push back, or is it a fat back? Yum. Fat back. We get to watch people wander around in fat suits realizing they're being ignored (I love those experiments). The participants, suitably chastened, promise to buy a cake and smile at the next 10 fat people they see before they start ignoring them again. There are now shows where we get to appreciate fat people for the wonderful individuals they are. People reincarnated in fat bodies, large collections of larger people in family settings, friend settings, high school, college and ever expanding venues.

So we have two sides of the coin, one happier, fatter and better fed and one bitter, thin and starving. Or is it the other way around? Never-you-mind. We're at war with ourselves over the most significant issue of our time -- fat. Really? Do you think that fat is really the most significant issue facing our society? Frankly the whole discussion is a red herring. A wonderful, beautifully sauced with two great sides for $10.99 herring.

I love the way we can be distracted.

We have a political system that works intermittently, an economy that's depressing in the most positive possible view and a circus of political oddities traipsing across the public stage like a parade of suited morons. We have fights over who can marry, who can serve, who can stay, who can work and who can build what religious structure where. We have an aging population that's sucking up all the resources of Social Security and Medicare that we can't pay for because -- ooops -- these same aging people stole from the SS Kitty for decades.

Under all these weighty issues, is being thin or fat really that important? Shall we discuss it over a snack?