As Promised, Why Fat People Piss Me Off

Believe it or not, this is actually related to culture and politics. Max, enjoy.

In our culture today, like no other time in history, we have fat people. I'm not talking jolly, rotund, pleasantly plump. I'm not talking your Italian grandparents, or your comfortable middle-aged retired factory worker. Carrying around a few extra pounds at a certain age is part of the human condition.

I'm talking people who need mechanical support to get around. I'm talking young women who walk around in spandex that is audibly weeping. You know when you bend one of those cheap forks at Harvey's, and the black plastic turns white from stress? I've seen that happen to pleather pants.

Aside from the obvious aesthetic problems, why do I hate fat people so much? It's because they are the expression of cultural weakness. The inability to master your body, or at least hold it in check, is a symptom of your inability to become an adult. Our whole society is centred on removing as much responsibility from the equation as possible. Eat too much McDonald's? It's ok, the government will regulate the size of the portions they can serve you. Heaven forbid that you should just choose to eat there less frequently, or even more unthinkably exercise more to make up for your grease intake. In our society, addiction is always someone else's fault. Whatever happened to individual willpower? I love the hashbrowns at McD's. Love them. Could spend days eating them. There is a McDonald's on my way to work. It would be easy, so easy to eat breakfast there every day. It would actually be about the same price, too, considering the price of milk and cheese and eggs (I like to cook a decent breakfast). And yet, I get up an extra half hour early, make my breakfast, put in a lunch bag, and go to work. Luckily for me, work involves a morning workout. I eat my breakfast at my desk, and indulge in some coffee.

All this to say that I made a choice. I accepted responsibility for my own body, and what goes into it. I'm not perfect, but I don't need a government agency or ad campaign to tell me that too many burgers makes Morgan a fat boy. Tragically, and contemptibly, many people do. I had an interesting conversation with an attractive older woman at the bar last night. She is a cancer survivor, and she found it unthinkable that I should be against government healthcare. I told her it's simple. I know my drinking will lead to illness or injury inevitably. If the government provides my healthcare, it also has the right to tell me when and how I can drink. I didn't agree to this; in Canada it is fait accompli. I would rather live 60 years as a free individual than 80 years as a serf. Serfdom in Canada is leisurely and not unpleasant physically, but it is still serfdom.

Fat people have embraced serfdom. It's weakness. Worse still, it is weakness being actively supported and enacted by the benevolent tyranny that is the nanny-state. And they aren't even resisting. After all, I doubt they have the endurance for even that much activity.