I remember that study. The researcher would flash a command to the right brain to stand up and walk out of the room, and when the patient obeyed, the researcher would ask them why they just got up, and they would say “To get a Coke.” That was what finally convinced me consciousness is a lie, we don’t have souls, and there’s no god. It was awesome.

“These findings could, and hopefully will, relieve guilt and anxiety for hundreds of millions of women worried that what they eat could be to blame for their cancers or their chances for survival. Similarly, a recent clinical trial showed that eating gobs of fruits and vegetables doesn’t affect cancer recurrence. All foods can be enjoyed and shared as pleasureable nourishment of body and soul, rather than toxins or cures.

“The WHI trial data showed a few other points that may help women feel less worried. Other things that made no difference in risks for the invasive cancers between the dieters and control group included: diabetes; dietary fats, grains, or fruits and vegetables intake (in separate analyses); physical activity (from less than 1.5 to more than 14.8 METS/week); and BMI. Yes, despite all of the fears about body weights, incidences of invasive cancers were not significantly different among women who were fat (in the “overweight,” “obese” and even “morbidly obese” medical categories).”

And as an example of how prevalent and harmful anti-fat prejudice can be, even among “liberal” “feminists,” check out this post on Bitch PhD’s blog. I heart Bitch PhD, but when a fat woman who is a *triathlete*gets shamed into silence by a *feminist* blog’s commenters, for the “crime” of being fat and athletic and in public… well, something is wrong.

Jesus Christ. Where are the bunnies?

Maybe it’s more likely to be true for those who lean left (and maybe it’s part of the reason we do lean left). I’m thinking of the article about right to lifers getting abortions, or all the recent GOP scandals…I don’t know. People are weird and seem amazingly able to rationalize things when they want to. I attended a lecture a few weeks back on neuroscience and the law where they talked about split brain patients and how your left brain will just make shit up to explain the right brain’s behavior. (Or maybe the other way around, can’t remember.) We are weird creatures.

Actually, in the U.S. fat hatred is yet another form of class warfare against the poor and anyone who doens’t live up to the “fit” (upper-middle class, thin, white, well-dressed) ideal. There is some pretty good research to suggest that “obesity” (a bullshit term, but that’s another rant) is related to periods of food scarcity. Sometimes food scarcity is the result of societal pressure (dieting) and sometimes it’s because there’s just no money for food. I know a lot of kids who eat two meals a day - both at school.

In my mind, the more convincing argument for fat acceptance has always been that—it’s not mine to tell you what kind of food to put in your mouth, or to dictate to you what your pleasures are.

The trouble with these arguments is that they ignore the very real pressure from advertising/marketing/publicity to eat this or smoke that. It shifts the blame of dangerous foods and habits from the creator of those dangerous foods and habits to the consumer.

Fat acceptance shouldn’t come with a pass for the cigarette and fast food marketing gurus. And it shouldn’t come as a justification for ignoring our neighbor’s health and wellbeing.

Not saying that’s what you’re implying; just pointing out that’s something we need to be careful of.

But no matter what the cause of obesity is, the one thing many if not most will admit to opining is that it is unattractive. That’s the drive behind the rudeness and discrimination. Not a valid reason for someone to be an asshole, but it’s the starting point. (And I say it’s the rude person’s views that stoke their inability to not be rude, so lay off the idea that I’m blaming fat people for their discrimination!)

And when I’m at a bar having a beer or three it’s not the time to be judging someone’s allegedly unhealthy lifestyle. Healthy people come in all (maybe not all, but damn near most) sizes, and loads of unhealthy people don’t display any outward signs of disease at all. But, to me and many others, attractive people are in a much narrower range of sizes.

Fat people are of the Other that appear across all the different racial, class, and even political demographics. They are vibrant and hardworking, lazy and obnoxious, the butt of jokes and the writers of great comedy, healthy and on the edge of death. Kind of like everybody else. They just don’t tend to be that attractive.

There’s this idea that fat people shouldn’t get to sit around “eating whatever they want”, probably because they think nobody should ever “eat whatever they want”. We’ve stopped trusting ourselves to eat what our bodies are hungry for and to listen to our appetites to find out what we’re lacking in our diets. Fat people end up paying for everyone’s food issues.

Joy Nash has another Fat Rant about “compulsive eating” that’s just too delicious to pass up. Really illustrates how dumb it is to beat yourself up over something your body needs you to do every day. I love that woman.