I'm Obese, and You Can Suck It

I do not believe in this “Obesity Epidemic” that the media has been forcing down our throats, padded by a large helping of shame. I do not believe that the attention that is being paid to it is really about health, I do not believe that as many people are as fat as the media implies, and I do not believe that being fat is as much of a health problem as it is made to be, and I do not believe that being fat is bad, and I am not afraid to proclaim that I am fat! I am obese. I have a BMI (body mass index) of approximately 30, and I am not ashamed.

Of course talking about my BMI is fairly meaningless and misleading, as this slide show helps demonstrate. When someone refers to being obese what generally comes to mind is someone much fatter then me, or anyone else who has a BMI of 30. Your BMI is merely a ratio between your height and weight; it does not take into account things like muscle mass or skeletal size. Weight lifters with very low body fat are often counted as obese. Furthermore the limits for “underweight, “over weight,” and “obese” are hard, giving no lee way for different size of different people. Everyone carries varying amounts of healthy fat on them because, surprisingly enough, people are individuals.

This is aside from the fact that there is no solid evidence that being obese leads to health problems. There are fairly comprehensive studies indicating a correlation between being obese and negative health effects. This is true. But this doesn’t mean that obesity causes the aforementioned negative health effects. As my mantra goes, correlation is not causation! Just as the fact that frogs tend to croak before stores does not mean that frogs croaking will cause it to storm, the fact that obese people tend to be less healthy does mean that the obesity causes the poor health. Obesity COULD be the cause of the ill health, or the ill health could be the cause of the obesity. Or it could be that eating foods with a high calorie content and not exercising tends to cause obesity and poor health. (Which is very different then obesity causing the ill health. One is a concentration on losing weight and one is a concentration on “healthier” exercise and food habits.) Or it could be there is a certain chemical in our water supplies that causes both obesity and ill health. Or they could have nothing to do with one another, and the correlation is just a statistical accident. No one really knows for sure.

But, of course, none of this really matters. The media’s obsession on the “Obesity Epidemic” has nothing to do with health anyway. It is about shaming people, mostly women, into believing that fat is bad. It’s ugly. It’s slobby and unsanitary and lazy and unsexy and unfeminine and ugly, ugly, ugly. If the media really cared about our health it would not be pitching weight loss and waist size at us, it would be pitching improved health and better fitness. We are screamed at to lose weight, not to get healthy, while other habits, that are just as wide spread and has just as strong a correlation to poor health as obesity pass unmentioned.

Smoking comes to mind most readily. Approximately the same number of people smoke as are obese. There is a similar correlation between poor health and smoking as there is between poor health and obesity. And yet no one is whining about the smoking epidemic. True, there are ads telling us not to smoke, but the attention given to it is not near as much, or as shaming, as the attention given to obesity. No one applies the word “epidemic” to smoking, and epidemic is a buzzword with a lot of emotion attached to it. It is designed to cause panic. But smoking is sexy. Which, apparently, means that it’s ok.

I am reclaiming fat. Fat is just a descriptive word. Some people are fat and some people are skinny, and that's ok. And I'm fat.