Shaddup Already!





















2005-01-19

The last, great American prejudice and genocide

You know, I'm getting sick of people trying to hide their prejudice for fat with concern. If one more person tells me "it's not how you look, it's the health issues," I'm gonna hurl. Which, of course, they would applaud because then I would be losing some of that ugly, um, I mean unhealthy fat.

Let's get blunt here, these people don't care much about my health. They see me at work, if something happened to me, they would be sad in passing and then go on with their lives. I wish they would realize that when they look at me, they see all the problems they perceive in themselves.

They don't want to look like me. Fine. Say it that way, don't give me a bullshit story of how you're worried about me.

Frankly, what the hell do they know about my health anyway? And have they read the goddamned studies that say repeated dieting throughout the years may actually be more harmful than obesity? Do they realize that every fucking time they're together they talk about diets and how "good" they've been.

I would rather be 500 pounds (which I'm not, BTW) and die young than spend every waking (and sleeping) moment thinking about food. I do not care to bring down my worth to a calorie or fat count. Unfortunately, my psyche is like a little baby when it comes to eating.

I know I can't diet, but I'm still at the stage where, if I hear people obsessing about food, it starts me obsessing about food. Then I binge. God, I was doing so good over the summer when I didn't have to be around these people.

I understand I can't blame them for this, but this is definitely an environmental thing for me. How do I counter that without completely isolating myself?

Thing 1 is pretty overwhelming these days because she is back on Weight Watchers. Okay, if dieting is so goddamned great, why are you on your third diet since I met you less than two years ago? I suppose it's your fault that the diets fail. And since the vast majority of diets fail, humans are weak willed? Somehow I can't see someone telling a person with arthritis that if their medicine didn't work, it's just because they didn't try hard enough. You would throw the medicine away. Right?

This leads us right back to the good old American tradition of prejudice. People are fat because they are lazy, out of control and unworthy of any good. There, I put it in print for all of you out there who think that fat people are worth less. Now you can print this out and show it to everyone who's "health you're concerned about." Don't forget to tell them it's straight from the mouth of a fat person. That should be pretty impressive since everything goes in my mouth not out, right?

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Please excuse the above rant. It was written by a fed up fat person.

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Thing 1 came in to the teacher work room at the end of lunch yesterday. She was eating some rice cakes and she and Thing 2 (who has sworn off sugar and chemicals of any kind and will gladly tell you what sugar and chemicals are doing to your vital organs) starts asking about them. Thing 1 and Thing 2 are discussing the merits of these rice cakes. They're low in calories, they're light and tasty, blah, blah, blah.

I was slightly interested because I'm trying to cut way back on trans fats, so I'm currently looking for new crunchy snacks. So I got in on the conversation, in what I thought was a conversational, not accusational tone:

Me: Do they have trans fats?
T1: What are those?
Me: Anything that is partially hydrogenated is a trans fat.

(at the same time I was telling her how to identify trans fats, T2 starts listing all the horrible things trans fats do to your body)

T1: Yeah, there's a little in here.

(I'm thinking "how do you know it's only a little since the trans fat labelling hasn't gone into effect yet? It's just and ingrediant on the list." Meanwhile I was about to eat a snack sized candy bar)

T1: But they're a whole lot better for you than chocolate!

She tried to recover after that by saying that chocolate tasted a lot better, but still it was quite the half-hearted attempt.

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Alrighty, I've talked about the smartass teacher who I would do if he weren't married and the father of twins, right? Right.

Okay, I enjoy lunchtime on Wednesdays and Thursdays because I actually get to eat lunch with Smartass. He amuses me to no end and I find him a challenge to converse with because his wit is so quick. I would like to quicken my wit, so I like sparring with him.

So we were talking about TV shows and Smartass starts talking about all the weird thoughts he has during certain shows. These thoughts make it impossible for him to watch these shows, like Gilligan's Island.

Thing 1 walked into the room and into the conversation we were having. I think Smartass was really offended. If I didn't know Thing 1 so well, I would have been offended too.


Smartass (SA): You know after about the third time I watched Gilligan's Island I started wondering why they would let the little guy touch anything. He just screws everything up. I always thought the professor should just kill all the stupid people on the island.

(We joke about killing the stupid people (on Gilligan's Island) and Thing 1 catches the tail end of it)

T1: You know, someone did that already. Oh, I think his name was. . . HITLER!

She wasn't joking. I find this difficult to take from someone who routinely talks about our students as being "dumb as stumps" and wants to sterilize mentally disabled people without their consent.

Smartass and I did find a little humor in this--dark, sick humor, but humor nonetheless. We decided that we would start our own genocide and we were going to start with math teachers.

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