Sympathy or contempt...
There was a printed story in my morning paper today by Chelsea Carter, an Associated Press Reporter who lost 100 pounds -- on Weight Watchers. But that's not the thing I saw in it that was of interest to me, and to others on this forum.
Carter interviewed C.C. DeVille, the gituarist for the hair-metal Poison. DeVille had to come back from drugs, alcohol and weight gain.
"You can be the biggest drug addict in the world, and they will still like you in this town (Hollywood). But if you're fat, they treat you like a leper." He went on to tell Carter "You know what I'm talking about, right?"
In her article, Carter wrote: "I wanted to tell him it's not just Hollywood. It was everywhere: At work where editors wondered whether or not I was up to the assignment; around friends, who avoided discussions of appearance; even at the grocery store, where the checkout clerk never looked me in the eye."
I think that it's true that fat, among all self-destructive habits, generates the most contempt, and almost no sympathy. Hollywood savaged Brando for his weight gain, but give part after part, and speak in soothing terms of healing about Robert Downey Jr. There is perhaps anger at smokers who have ruined their health, but hardly the grisly contempt there is for fat people.
It's unique to the fat, I think, because a fat person's failings are on display every day, all day. And, think about children. There are fat children in schools who go through brutal, cruel days. There are rarely any smokers in second grade, and if there are, they're more likely to be thought of as cool. From an early age, we have somehow taught our kids that fat people are open targets, and that it's probably the worst thing you can be. They come into adulthood with no less contempt of the fat than they had as children. They're just better at censoring themselves.
I don't like the "fats right" movement much, but they are spot-on, about what they say about the treatment of fat people in today's world. Their movement is based on the lie that they're comfortable being fat, something any fat guy knows isn't true. Still, while I resist being part of any group of that kind, I would love to see more acceptance of the fat in the vein that you see acceptance of the addicted. Sympathetic, supportive, and typically not contemptuous.
I don't want the world to treat fat people special. If they want to discriminate against me, that's fine -- I'll outwork and outthink them. But I'd like it to at very least treat fat and other self destructive behaviors the same way, whether that's with contempt or with compassion.
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