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Beautiful, intelligent, creative, strong, and fat
by Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News
Aug. 26, 2005
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Gluttony is a sin, and an enlarged girth is the evidence of sin to simple-minded people. Scapegoat the sinner. It's all the rage, it'll make you feel superior, and raise your rank among your peers.
So bash the fat people.
Bash the poor, bash the women, bash the non-white. Bash anything and anyone that's different from the ruling elite's idealized image, the image we're force-fed as desirable!
We ... Must ... NEVER bash the white straight elitist RICH, no matter how much they exploit us!
We ... Must ... Never denigrate the most charismatic shallow pretty and vain popular sociopaths, no matter how sick they make us. Never bash the CEOs and kings who live so well and with such status they do not deserve, who become ghastly rich living off of our denied dreams when we go to work for THEM.
We must obey!! We are taught that we must submit to the almighty asshole and live with our unhappiness, we must not complain about our confusion, fear, and abject misery, so the precious elites can live well. Their good livin' is fueled by our predisposition to obey "authorities," and by our fear of poverty and fear of getting a low social rank. So we suffer and bash each other.
Whatta load of crap. Yet every day, people play that same old game. Obey the alpha, obey the boss, and kick the nearest socially-sanctioned frightened bullied human dog you can find, anyone who'll take it and not complain.
This medieval Church and chimp-like way of thinking is alive and well in 2005, and I see it in the "health-conscious crowd." These self-declared mouthpieces of authority act like shit-throwing chimpanzees when obesity comes up for discussion. I for one am tired of it.
The old "hellmouth" morality lesson is still around, even on progressive sites like DemocraticUnderground, and it shows its ugly bias everywhere obesity issues are discussed.
Look and listen, and you will always find a self congratulating chorus of biased self-righteous busybody uninformed people and food phobics looking for a big fat scapegoat to prop up their egos. Their opinions are usually couched in terms of "science," but if you peel away the hype it's just socially-sanctioned and reinforced bigotry, and social, hierarchical stupidity. Put up a study that contradicts any of their pet theories that excuse their bigotry and they will not read it."This survey shows that the perpetuation of an unattainable body image for American women is not just demeaning, it's a public health threat." They automatically doubt and smear anything that goes against their feel-good food phobic or fat phobic beliefs. It's like they desperately want to believe fat people are morally inferior to thin people. Prove that fat people are inferior, craven gluttons who cannot control themselves around food and are therefore unworthy of love, inclusion, or respect that thin people assume they deserve because -- look at me I am the right size! I look so healthy I must be rightious!
Anti-obesity arguments can get very classist, considering the link between poverty and obesity. But then again, people who do not want to look classist will just overlook that inconvenient damning link between poverty and obesity. They would rather go on blaming the victim than ever blame the corrupt social system of "rank and status" or hate the few insanely rich uncaring sociopathic people we are all supposed to desire.
Fat people can die from social shame and bullying. Fat people can be killed by bigots, just like gay people or black people are. And self-righteous food police, along with pressures to be something you are not, drive fat people into depression and despair.
But I wouldn't expect a food cop to have empathy and listening skills, concerning someone they are taught by this crazy culture to assume is their moral inferior. Many fat people are suffering, willing or even eager to carve out chunks of their own stomach in weight loss surgery, or to endure painful liposuction, to appease the hierarchical demands of our thin-dominated bigoted rank-based society.
Fat people suffer to be accepted as a person, something thin people automatically get for being thin and fitting the social ideal that we have all been programmed to desire and compete for (even if it kills us).
Thin people who have been fit all their life know nothing of fat people's lives. People who lose 20, 30 vanity pounds are not aware of what obesity is really like. These people are talking out their ass, but they never stop talking.
People who have been both fat and thin do know: The world treats you very differently when you are heavy.
Let's set this bullshit straight. Non-obese people, you are not experts on fat people's food situations. When you judge us with every breath, you look like moralizing, controlling, food police. You arrogantly see yourselves as better people than fat people, but no-one I know deliberately plans on becoming fat. Fat happens to us.
So your ignorant "advice" on diets or judgmental diatribes about overcoming the "sin" of gluttony are tainted with your moral disdain -- and therefore it's just plain bigoted in my eyes. Until you sympathize and admit the bigotry our culture puts on fat people, your "advice" and opinions are nothing but the same old claptrap I hear out of any other self righteous bigot.
If you are not understanding of the plight of fat people, if you don't want to hear what their experiences are, if you would rather just fix them, then you clearly just want to make fat people ashamed of their bodies. You want to force them to be thin like you, and until they are you won't grant fat people equal rights and equal respect. You use health scares and bigotry to do your dirty work, and people looking for an ego-boost jump on the bandwagon. I for one tell you, take your rank-pulling bullshit game, your medieval bigoted morality and skewed health statistics and eat it.
Being fat is hell in this food phobic body image obsessed culture, and carping about the evils of being fat does not help anyone.
Also, the fat issue is very complex. Also, diets do not work most of the time, and in fact if you diet there's often a rebound effect, and you end up getting fatter. (I do not expect thin people to get that.)
In every interaction between people in our culture, there is a social hierarchy, a hierarchy of people from top to bottom with multiple layers in between, all competing for status by pushing their peers down to get a little respect from their superiors. Receiving respect or dishing our disrespect is perceived as pushing people closer to the top. Saying the socially-sanctioned perceptions in an eloquent way gets a person approval. Saying things contrary to popular beliefs gets you ridiculed (even or especially if the ridiculed perception might be closer to the truth). The popular lie always pulls rank, and rank is a lie.
Every time a person of a lower rank -- a fat person, a smoker, a handicapped person, etc. -- gets fed up with the abuses and says enough, every time he or she tries to tell how it feels to be spat upon, tries to build up their own self esteem, it's breaking rank. So in come the sarcastic comments, the critics, the funnyman bullies, in come the detractors, the minimizers, the "me too" crowd who want their issue sympathized with too. All this tends to discourage the lower-ranked person from saying they're tired of their rank, tired of being treated as less of a person, tired of being told they can't feel good about who they are, regardless of their perceived rank.
This disregarding of rank is a social taboo. Fat people, for instance, are not allowed to love their bodies or love who they are, because they are fat. And to rankers and bigots, fat means ugly, therefore undeserving of love and self-love. They haven't modified their bodies enough to earn a higher rank from the bigots, food police, and health marms, who make sure the guilt never stops. The sarcastic assholes make sure the shame never ends, and the critics make sure fat people are not taken seriously. On TV or in movies, the mere sight of a fat person is supposed to be funny.
All this ensures the status quo of the social hierarchy, and sends the signal again and again that fat people are morally inferior. It ensures that no one of higher social rank loses face.
I think all of us have got to stop bashing the weaker, different, or hurting among us. We need to realize that this competing for rank is really competing to be respected by someone else, to be heard by an authority figure, to be protected by peers as a worthy member of the clique, to be wanted as a worthy human being despite the flaws we have. And we are all weak, living in an uncertain, unpredictable world where we could easily become homeless, poor, or fat and despised by the beautiful people.
But in our society any flaw says weakness, and weakness means we are unworthy of being who we are ... and we must get rid of the perceived flaw to be good enough to be accepted as a human being.
Rank and social hierarchy serves the alphas of society very well. We envy the lives of the beautiful people, so we try to be like them. When our flaws prevent this, we attack those weaker and less socially loved.
It is always easier to kick a lower-ranked person, an abused or weakened person, a disabled or fat or otherwise "less perfect than yourself" person than to rise up and attack the kind of person you've been taught to emulate, the people that everyone around you envies. It is terrifying for creatures that have been taught to submit from day one to break rank and stand behind the people that do. It's much easier to scapegoat your perceived lessers, than to challenge your perceived superiors.
People, I think it is time we throw away that part of ourselves that is greedy, competitive at all costs, hierarchically obedient to authority. Many of us deny that part is in us, but I see it come out of people all the time, and it forms ugly group dynamics, ugly US VS THEM games.
Whenever someone feels good about themselves, that kind of thinking tells them they're not entitled to feel good, to feel hurt, or to complain about mistreatment. That sickness of societal rank in us is what says, I am not good enough, not worthy to be who I am and be loved. And we are taught to feel like this by people around us, the dominant people, the alphas, the popular and the admired ones.
We need to stop and ask ourselves why our society believes certain things, like ...Thin people are more deserving of self-esteem than fat people?
Christians are better morally? They deserve to be treated as moral authorities, more than non-Christians?
The super-wealthy who have anything they want and live lives of ease, deserve to get more money than I deserve?
Who says greed is good? Who says being poor is virtuous? And why do we not bother to look at the social rank of the people spouting these opinions?
Why do we believe in rank? Why do we obey social hierarchies? How much of this is taught to us by others, and how much is based on abuses in our lives? Does rank help us avoid further humiliation or traumas, or steer us toward more of the same?
How much of this hierarchy game is fear based? Genetic-based? Or the effects of a systematic exploitation we take as "normal"?
Why do we say you can't fight 'the powers that be', when we feel dominated and exploited and believe we must endure it?
What tells us we must endure it? These are questions worth asking.
It's time for throwing away hierarchy, and reevaluating the criteria we use to give rank to others. Giving respect to bullies is deadly. We have all been a victim of a criminal class, the peculiar charismatic personality of the "winners".
It's time to stop the games and see the real cause of our distress, and it is not each others' body fat, smoking, race or religious preferences, geekiness, zits, homosexuality, or freaky tastes in clothes. No, it is the bully mind, and the bully people getting ahead, by using the ugliest parts in us to secure their own lofty social rank, allowing them to be the ones who get to declare who is worthy and who is worth less or worthless.
Our very survival might depend on throwing away these pecking orders, dumping hierarchy, stopping the status and chains of command that bind us to sociopaths. Our future in their ranking culture is nil. We need to say to the bullies (and victims who go along to get along, screaming meee tooo) ... STOP!!
Those who do not want to stand up for themselves or for others' rights, but instead tear others down, need to stop and look at who the real oppressors are. It isn't hard to figure out. It looks like us, but it isn't like us. It is the bullies, the winner-take-all types, the dominants, the alphas, the entitled, the elitists, and all the peculiar personalities who go out of their way to say you are less worthy, and you and you and you are less worthy. They say: Thou shalt not be who you are because I do not like it.
When will we give these fuck-heads the comeuppance they so desperately need?
** ** **
I am big.
I am beautiful, intelligent, creative, and strong.
I'm an excellent friend to good-hearted people, but bigoted people would rather not see that kind of character and warmth shining out from inside me. It makes it harder for them to feel superior to me. A lot of fat people are beautiful inside and outside, just like me or any other good-hearted person. I do not care what any "food police" and BMI-obsessed people think about weight -- they are biased.
I have the right to be who I am, as does everyone else. I have a right to look like I look.
I have the right to be loved by people who choose to love me for being myself, even if some bigoted people (who will swear up and down they haven't a bigoted bone in their bodies) would rather snub me because they don't like my body type. Well, to the bigots I say, if you don't like the way I look, don't look, asshole. Take responsibility for where you cast your own damn eyes.
I am heavy. And like everyone else, I am worthy of being listened to, loved, and participating in life in my own way, on my terms.
If you don't like that, you can kiss my big fat ass. Don't worry, there is plenty of space on my ass for you and all your friends to kiss it.
© by the author.
What do you think?
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Let's set this bullshit straight.
Non-obese people, you are not experts on fat people's food situations.
When you judge us with every breath, you look like moralizing, controlling, food police.
You arrogantly see yourselves as better people than fat people, but no-one I know deliberately plans on becoming fat.
Fat happens to us.
So your ignorant "advice" on diets or judgmental diatribes about overcoming the "sin" of gluttony are tainted with your moral disdain -- and therefore it's just plain bigoted in my eyes.
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I have the right to be who I am, as does everyone else. I have a right to look like I look.
I have the right to be loved by people who choose to love me for being myself, even if some bigoted people (who will swear up and down they haven't a bigoted bone in their bodies) would rather snub me because they don't like my body type.
Well, to the bigots I say, if you don't like the way I look, don't look, asshole.
Take responsibility for where you cast your own damn eyes.
I am heavy.
And like everyone else, I am worthy of being listened to, loved, and participating in life in my own way, on my terms.
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Say it with a bumper sticker:
$3 each, or two for $5
We need to stop and ask ourselves why our society believes certain things, like ...
Thin people are more deserving of self-esteem than fat people?
Christians are better morally? They deserve to be treated as moral authorities, more than non-Christians?
The super-wealthy who have anything they want and live lives of ease, deserve to get more money than I deserve?
Who says greed is good?
Who says being poor is virtuous?
And why do we not bother to look at the social rank of the people spouting these opinions?
Why do we believe in rank?
Why do we obey social hierarchies?
How much of this is taught to us by others, and how much is based on abuses in our lives?
Does rank help us avoid further humiliation or traumas, or steer us toward more of the same?
How much of this hierarchy game is fear based? Genetic-based? Or the effects of a systematic exploitation we take as "normal"?
Why do we say you can't fight 'the powers that be', when we feel dominated and exploited and believe we must endure it?
What tells us we must endure it?
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