I am in the Apple store with my grown daughter, waiting our turn at the Genius Bar. I have edited on Macintosh computers for 25 years, but my home-grown skills are no match for a computer monitor that randomly produces streaks of light, dark, and fuchsia.
A little girl about eight years old walks by and looks at me with fascination and horror. Her expression looks as if she accidentally came across something unspeakable on the Nature channel. A woman with brittle, broken-off blonde hair - perhaps the little girl's mother? - stares at me when she thinks I don't see her looking.
I'm not a burn victim. I'm not disfigured. I'm not wearing a chicken suit. I'm fat.
I balance somewhat precariously on a stool - the only available seating - while we continue to wait. I feel like an elephant on tiptoe on a beach ball. I wish I were in the old Abercrombie store, where they had deep leather couches for exhausted shoppers of all sizes.
It's uncomfortable being fat. Clothes are too small. A restaurant bathroom seems doll-sized. Seatbelts are too tight. Aisles are too narrow. Sitting for two hours on a plane or at the movies is torture. Armrests become flesh prods. But these indignities and inconveniences are slight compared to the disapproval and outright hatred from those who are not size-challenged. Airlines publicly humiliate large people and kick them off the plane. People with road rage call out, Fatass! If you're a woman, men look right through you.
Hating fat people is the last acceptable prejudice. Simply being too large earns you the utter contempt of others. The thought process seems to be: you are fat, therefore I am better than you, and I hate you. Read virtually any online argument: they invariably end up with one person calling the other fat. Even though it is completely irrelevant. it's the worst insult anyone can use. Watch the nightly news, where they illustrate the dangers of fast food by using clips of huge stomachs and fat behinds accompanied by hippopotamus music. Or watch one of those I wore a fat suit for a day documentaries, which always reduce the pretend-fat person to tears. In one of them, when the girl in the fat suit left to use the restroom, the person dining next to her boyfriend leaned over and said, What are you doing with her?The Genius at the Apple counter won't meet my eye. I could speak to him at length about computers, but he seems to assume I am not too bright. For some reason, fat has become synonymous with stupid. The assumption is probably that any intelligent person would not allow herself to become unattractive and out of shape. In fact, weight has nothing to do with brains.Recently, fattie-hater Maura Kelly, writing in the women's magazine Marie Claire, posted an article entitled Should 'Fatties' Get a Room? (Even on TV?). Her stomach-churning review sounded off about the TV sitcom Mike & Molly, which stars two large people. To be brutally honest, she writes, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room. Amazingly, she continues, I'm not some size-ist jerk, she and goes on to dispense her own dieting advice - as if fat people have never heard it before.
We can only assume she had the decency to blush when, during the firestorm of controversy that erupted, readers pointed out that Maura Kelly used to be anorexic. So someone who was incapable of normal eating took it upon herself to criticize others for their eating habits? And she occupies the moral high ground because she was too thin?Kelly argues that fat people cost society money, but this also applies to people with anorexia, who often require months of expensive hospitalization, rehabilitation and therapy. Sometimes, despite all this, they are incurable. Still, people pity the poor little anorexic with an eating disorder, even as they despise the large person whose problem is the other side of the same coin. Anorexia and bulimia are socially acceptable because they keep you skinny. Portia de Rossi emblazons the cover of People magazine with her anorexia story knowing she'll be embraced and forgiven, not mocked and shunned. On his 9/14/10 program, Glenn Beck said of morbidly obese people, Let them die. In this society - where we go to great lengths to save abandoned puppies and oil-soaked birds and dolphins that have washed ashore - he says fat people should simply die. If he had made this remark about unborn babies, or children with Down's syndrome, or African Americans, or Muslims, he would have been fired. What happened? Nothing.
When did thin people become morally superior to fat people? Apparently all normal-sized people assume that fat people are lacking in willpower and simply eat too many Snickers bars. People believe obesity represents a failure of effort, that fat people are lazy and unmotivated. God forbid a fat person is seen eating an ice cream cone. There it is! Proof of gluttony! In fact, many factors that pack on pounds are difficult or even impossible to control, including different illnesses, the use of steroids for autoimmune problems, insulin insensitivity, many medications, genetics, depression, hormones released during sleep, hunger hormones, and even the kind of bacteria you have in your gut. Your individual rate of thermogenesis - that is, how many calories you burn off as heat - may be far higher than the next person's. In fact, the fat person next to you may eat exactly what you do.Fat does not represent a moral failing. It represents pain. Every fat person has a story to tell - diabetes or hypothyroidism, depression or sexual abuse or poverty. People are not fat because they want to be, and they are not fat for lack of willpower. How do you explain the increasing size of children over the last 20 years? Do kids these days lack the willpower of kids in years past?
Next time you meet people of size, please do not assume they are stupid, or weak-willed, or a burden on society. Do not judge them. You have no idea what they have been through to get to where they are. And here's a hint: you don't have to tell them they are fat. They already know.At last my daughter's computer is sent off to Apple Repair. A quick look inside, a tweak of its electronic innards, and it will be good as new. Fixing obesity and prejudice are far more difficult challenges, but we must start trying.Nellie Sabin is a writer and editor who has published 10 books on a variety of topics. She can be reached at her blog, www.nelliesabin.tumblr.com.
