I really, really hope I get a chance to debate MeMe someday. You can imagine why.

http://freedomandlinux.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/cspis-michael-jacobson-smears-obesity-truthers-and-anti-monsanto-activists-as-dangerous-extremists/

Sure, just explain to her that it’s for her own good.

Your numbers make quite an impression…

Really loved this post, Tom. Thanks!

The Founders were pretty much all libertarians. What’s considered libertarian now — and fairly radical to boot — used to be known as upholding the Constitution.

Once upon a time I weighed about 150# more than my still fat self. It was great for the social environment how I was not ‘accepted and encouraged’ by, for example, having clothing or shoes to fit.

So in the snow in wintertime, I wore 4 homemade skirts and slippers or flip-flops. And when I tried to mow the high grass in spring, with all the great bugs and twigs and so on, half of nature could be crawling and flying up my legs and I’d be trying to keep my skirt out of the weedeater. Hard to understand why I didn’t really want to go anywhere… or do yard work.

Not that this had anything to do with an entire society of people who, when I was thin and a performing artist thought I was cool and witty, but when I got hugely fat decided that I was morally depraved and disgusting. (Ironically I ate like crap when thin, and ate vastly less when fat. People unfamiliar with real science don’t believe it, but it’s true. One assumes I wrecked my metabolism with the first behavior. Still, why was I cool when thin, despite my eating, and not cool no matter what when fat, despite my eating, if ‘eating’ is allegedly the reason people are biased about weight?)

I lost some weight and over time, some online stores have actually started to cater to 6x reasonable pants, and I found some (men’s) tennis shoes, and WOW. You wouldn’t believe how much more inspired I am to get out and DO something physical when I have clothes that fit me, and that don’t make me feel humiliated, and that are appropriate for the weather or the activity!

Now, I can wear my pants and go sit on the bleachers at a sports game. When my kid was little, I couldn’t climb the bleachers, they always had the bottom one full, and it’s windy and my skirts were a problem, and no portable chair would fit me (and I couldn’t sit on the wet grass as it’d take me a long time to get up, with my legs asleep etc.). I couldn’t stand for 1-2 hours (nor could the thin people who brought chairs). Nor could I fit in some of the bathroom stalls and actually move around as necessary in them, eeek. So I watched my kids’ sports from a distance in the car. (“I saw you baby!” yeah sure.)

Yet they wonder why a lot of really big people “sit around the house in their pajamas.” Huh, go figure right?

I avoided public things that would have gotten me out of the house and ACTIVE and engaged in life, because nothing fit me, chairs wouldn’t fit me, and a surprisingly high number of people were occasionally so openly hostile, rude or insulting I didn’t want to go to the grocery store, never mind public/social events. I’ve had perfect strangers at banks, DMVs, etc. take one look at me, apparently project all their personal fears upon me as the Representative of Fat or something, and be so bizarrely, surreally hostile that a line of strangers behind me were gasping and commenting. Suuuuuuure it’s “acceptable” to be fat. Please, let’s put Me Me in a fat suit and send her out into the world, shall we? I would be more than happy to share reality from my perspective.

So industry starts to make a few (a FEW) clothing lines that fit supersized people. Hey guess what, I can pay $120 for a dress a size 9 person would pay $14.99 for (it ain’t just the extra fabric). But at least I can leave the house. At least I can FUNCTION in proper clothing. Industry starts to make a few (a FEW) options in the commercial world for big folks — so I can get an armless chair at a restaurant and attend grandfather’s 80th birthday party. (And should I eat 1/5 what half the thin people there do, nobody will notice this, of course; if you inhale more than air when fat, people look at you like well! That explains everything!)

In one side of my family, all the women are gigantic. In the other side, they’re not — but they’re all sick. At a recent family gathering I realized that only me and a cousin (a mostly lowcarb natural bodybuilder) actually were seemingly healthy. Not a single person in the big packed house was NOT on one or more medications, hadn’t had major organs removed, etc. Yet they’re all giving me advice on how not eating a “balanced” diet with whole grains and potatoes and fruits will harm me. (“Since when is sugar a food group I need to balance?” I say.) Yet aside from my size I’m very healthy and getting moreso all the time. Oh, but THEY are the ones advising — since, not being fat (or not as much as me), they obviously are the experts on all things health, oh brother!

Meanwhile skinny bitches like Me Me Roth make a career out of having different genetics and metabolism than ‘some other people’, like this is some god-given evidence of moral superiority. In a different time she’d be the dude petitioning against letting the ‘indians’ or blacks into public places. It’s just her own -ism and this is the only one left ‘allowed’.

She’s too stupid to be embarrassed for herself. But while annoying it can sometimes be, in a very dark way, sort of entertaining.

Well said. I remember making clothing decisions based solely on how well they hid my belly and (especially) my boy-boobs. I actually hated to see warm weather return in spring because I couldn’t wear thick sweaters anymore.

MeMe has never had to lose weight and has no idea what she’s talking about.

MeMe definitely brings out the snark in me.

What I DO have a problem with is that I don’t know how to change this.

Aaron -

What you can change is the dieting mindset, the “thin = better” mindset, and the endless search for the “right” thing to eat/do/be. Size Acceptance, Health at Every Size, intuitive eating/Ellyn Satter’s “eating competence,” etc. can all be helpful. Good luck.

http://jezebel.com/5479381/just-what-are-meme-roths-qualifications-exactly?skyline=true&s=i

http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2009/05/27/the-skinny-on-meme-roth/

Her main credentials seems to be that has fat people in her family and she loathes fat people. I thinks he needs therapy more than most fat people need to lose weight.

What’s a kapha?

I have mixed feelings on that one. Smith apparently buys two seats most of the time, but took this flight as a standby passenger and couldn’t get two side-by-side seats. Maybe Southwest was justified in not allowing him to squeeze into one seat for safety reasons or the comfort of other passengers, but it wasn’t a great P.R. move on their part.