The Skinny on Fat Rationalization

The Skinny on Fat Rationalization
by Samantha Steven

When I enter a grocery store I walk through aisles of labels that beckon: "All Natural", "Low Carb", "Organic", "100 Calories", and "Low Fat".

Throughout the supermarket, I see several overweight people loading their carts with Splenda, diet coke, cookie-dough nutrition bars, and Atkins diet books.

When I check out of the grocery store, I'm bombarded by magazines screaming about an anorexic epidemic and supermodels in rehab for eating disorders juxtaposed with articles celebrating celebrities caught with visible cellulite.

Behind me, a woman points to the anorexic feature and says, "Look at those girls starving themselves. Thank God, I'm healthy."

I take in her tiny, child-size feet and 5'0" frame that has to support 200 pounds of lumpy potato-sack exterior. I see oxymoronic "healthy junk food and the anorexia epidemic feature in her shopping cart.

I heard the prompt and I knew my line. The overweight majority has set the stage and waits for me to conclude their act in rationalization.

I expected to say: "Yes, anorexia is such a big problem nowadays. More and more girls are getting eating disorders with all this societal pressure to be thin."

I don't know anyone in this vague catch-all word "society" who dare casually remark on someone's weight; much less pressure them. If anything, society feeds the woman's rationalizations. If this woman asked me if I thought she were fat, the correct response must be: "No, of course not. You're voluptuous and curvy. Real women have curves."

I'm expected to deny the evidence of my own eyes and agree that I see more anorexics than overweight people, that Size 12 is the new Size 6, and that avoiding carbohydrates, the primary energy source, is healthy. Yes, Big Sister, 2+2=5.

If she were an alcoholic, drug abuser, or within the small percentage of anorexics, I could advise rehabilitation. But I cannot call an intervention on a fat person and take away her junk food. Obesity is two times more deadly than smoking, alcoholism and drunk driving put together, but everyone feeds an overweight person's denial and rationalizations. It's taboo to call a fat person fat.

Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia have been supersized out of proportion. Obesity outweighs them as literally the biggest eating disorder. A whopping 65% of Americans are overweight, while a mere 1-4% have anorexia and bulimia eating disorders Furthermore, New York Times writer Gina Kolata discovered that "Studies indicated that, contrary to many reports, the incidence of the disorder [bulimia] is not increasing" Obesity, on the other hand, not only increases at a steady rate every year, but the increase occurs in children and teenagers. This overweight youth then likely become overweight adults.

And yes, I am aware that those low statistics only represent the anorexic cases that are reported. Still, even if ALL anorexic cases are reported the number of anorexics will not even come close to a fraction of the 65% overweight majority.
This woman might also mean societal pressure in the other typical argument, that the evil media and clothing industry pressure girls to be thin because they employ thin models and actresses.

Thin actresses earn leading roles and girls aspire to be thin not because society arbitrarily decided thinness should be a tenet of beauty, but because it is an objective reality that thin bodies look better in clothes than bulging bodies. Clothing industries want to sell their clothes and they do this best by showcasing their product on a model that would best accentuate it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and behold, blubber is not beautiful.

Then perhaps this woman might say, "It's impossible to have a body like a celebrity or model anyway. Even the ones that look like they have good bodies really don't; it's just photoshopped."

In other words, "No one can look that good, and if it seems like they do; that's all a hoax, just technological manipulation." Why is it so important to overweight people to first state that thinness is unattainable and then when given examples of those who have attained a healthy and attractive body weight, they jump to say that those pictures are fake?

Then there's the "societal expectations" claim that seeing thin people on TV and in magazines causes eating disorders and low self-esteem in young women. Have they ever considered that eating disorders could be triggered from seeing a fat majority and not from seeing a thin minority? One need not turn on the TV or read a magazine ad to, they merely have to go anywhere he post office, the hospital, the mall, restaurants, grocery stores, Walmarts and see pounds and pounds of overweight people. Why is the obesity epidemic never blamed for the so-called anorexic epidemic? Because by overscaling anorexia, they can underscale the bigger problem.

The overweight majority want to believe that losing weight is an impossibility because they do not do it. They want to believe it so much that they strive to make thinness the new ugly, to make the word norexic not only apply to Holocaust-victim-skinny true anorexics, but synonymous with normally thin people for a derogatory spin. They have instigated words to rationalize fat such as "curvy", "full-bodied", "voluptuous", even "love handles". Who loves handles of blubber on the sides of obliques? Their push to have plus-size women as models is a part of their rationalization campaign. If they are proud of their fat, that's their prerogative, but that does not change the reality that thin models better represent clothes.

Another way that the overweight majority rationalizes their weight is that they insist they are doing everything within their power to lose weight: eating Splenda, drinking diet coke, going on low carb diets, eating nutrition bars. The Splenda container screams "98% natural"; studies show that the other 2% has arsenic. It's a chemical sugar, and as bad as normal sugar is, obviously chemical sugar will be worse. Diet coke has 0 calories but it's not a spinach leaf; it's brown acid. Low carb diets urge followers to eliminate the body's primary energy source and become comatose zombies. Nutrition bars first ingredient reads "High fructose corn syrup Overweight people know commonsnesically that none of this junk is healthy. But they want to believe it. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

And now, overweight people can believe what they want to when it comes to clothing sizes too. Anne Taylor, DKNY, French Connection, Old Navy and J. Crew retailers created "vanity sizing," a size inflation in which size 12 may convert to a size 10, 8, or even a 6 at certain stores. Without standards in place, it's easier than ever to make up the reality. Why not just leave the tags blank and allow everyone to fill in the size they want to have instead of their actual size? As long as we pretend that there is no problem, does that deny the existence of the problem? For people who already take a size 0 or 2, they either have to start shopping in the kids section or gain weight to wear clothes.

We see overweight people every day and everywhere, and we continue to help them rationalize their heavy problem. We need to stop feeding them scapegoat stories, fake junk food, vanity sizes, and ballooned statistics about an anorexic epidemic. We need to tell them straightforwardly and tactfully, just like we would anyone else with a health issue, that they are overweight. "Do these jeans make my butt look big?" Yes.

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