I [...]]]> I have skipped this probably two weeks in a row and I’m sick of it. I’m so sick of it that although I’m writing this at 13 minutes past midnight, let’s pretend I’m actually writing it on Sunday, so I’m totally lying with the datestamp. Yes, I’m that OCD. Fuck it. Let’s roll.

I was going to take a photo of a lacto-paleo cheesecake I made “tonight” in honor of my child’s sperm donor’s recent birthday, but he cut into it before I could yell HangOnASecLemmeGetTheFuckinCamera. So you get kitties again instead, because I like pictures to go with my LinkWithin plugin. This is my cat Lundi getting mommy hugs. She likes to get up on the bathroom sink and then prop her paws on my chest and purr like crazy while I pet her.

OK, there’s the cute part, on with the bitching.

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First up tonight, I had been looking for some info about the Paul Campos book The Obesity Myth, which I checked out of the library some time ago. He had shared a story about a little girl who’d been diagnosed with obesity at the age of three, and I was looking up particulars, including her name. I know her first name is AnneMarie or Anne-Marie or Ann-Marie or some variation thereof and that was the best I could do. Anyway, in the process, I ran across this interview with him from last year.

Paul, Paul, Paul. I fucking hate you. Do you want to know why I fucking hate you? Because you drive me certifiable. You really do.

First off, there’s so much you say about obesity that just makes too much damn sense. I totally agree with you that a large component of the obesity debate is moral in nature. People really do believe fatties get fat on purpose. (I am a fattie, in case you’re late to the party, so I am using the term ironically.) And boy do they hate us for it. I want to call up all sorts of metaphors to illustrate this, like clubbing baby seals and hijacking Santa’s sleigh and canceling Halloween but I just can’t get up that level of snark-fu this fine evening. I’m kind of in a hurry. Anyway. They hate us. Just because we’re fat. I think that’s fucking stupid, and I applaud Campos for pointing up its absurdity.

I also think he may be onto something when he says there’s more difference in health status between men and women, and the young and the old, than there is between overweight people and slender people. Of course, he’s probably counting everyone who’s the least little dab over the upper limit for normal BMI, so the argument isn’t entirely honest. And I don’t know where to begin to follow up all these grand sweeping declarations of his about how actually harmless obesity is and therefore we should all stop worrying about it unless the fattie in question is so huge they have to move him or her with a tow truck. So I’ll leave it alone for now and simply applaud him for saying that there are much more serious health problems to worry about than how much energy we’re storing.

That said, as I stated up there somewhere, I have read The Obesity Myth. And unlike the legions of fattiebloggers who scanned, like, the first chapter and went “OMFG see it’s NOT our faults we’re fat and it’s NOT gonna kill us and this guy is AWESOME!!!1!!!one!!!”, I read large portions of it, if not the whole thing. I have this bad habit of skipping around in books and reading them in non-chronological chunks, so I can’t say for sure, but I got quite a bit of territory covered.

And… This guy is a whackjob. A few examples of said whackjobbery:

1. He claims feminists, particularly NOW and their ilk, have never cared about body image issues. More accurately, he wonders why they are so mysteriously silent on the issue. Typical fucking man, you could get in his face and scream at him that his skid-mark-encrusted underwear is all over the floor again for the third time this week and he’d push you out of the way ’cause you’re blocking his football game, then five minutes from now dig through his dresser and wonder aloud why he has no clean shorts. They don’t listen. Ever. I’m sick of it.

2. Actually, he seems to have quite the hard-on for knocking feminists, because next he blames them for the destruction of marriage, which means women spend a lot more time on the meat market, which means we can’t afford to let ourselves go. Unlike, of course, say, Italian women who sit at home cheerfully packing on the pudge while their hubbies go around boinking every nubile young teenager in the village. He seriously uses this as an example of proper womanhood, y’all. I’m not making this up. Because feminists suggest we don’t have to put up with this shit, it’s their fault we can’t be fatties anymore.

3. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere that I read in his book did Campos even come close to addressing the fact that obesity is often a symptom of chronic disease even if it is not the cause. I actually agree with him that it’s likely to not be a cause of illness. Cool with me. I’m hip, dude. But somehow he cannot wrap his brain around the idea that maybe if I suddenly gain fifty pounds in a year connected with childbearing even though I am exclusively breastfeeding, maybe that means there is something wrong. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, for example, frequently occurs in postpartum women–and it causes weight gain, and thyroid dysfunction is nothing to fuck around with. If Campos had his way, millions more hypothyroid women would go undiagnosed, ’cause being fat ain’t nuttin’ but a thang.

Idiot. Naturally, because being so chunky you can’t tie your own shoes or walk faster than fifty yards an hour is just a normal genetic variation and can’t be avoided, the fat acceptance crowd embraces him wholeheartedly and even says he’s a good feminist. Yeah. Because ignoring and dismissing entire fields of feminist work is totally a feminist thing to do.

One of many reasons I avoid the fat-acceptance movement like the fucking plague it is even as I acknowledge the importance of (1) treating fatties as human beings and (2) not making fatness into any more of a moral issue than a runny nose or a bad rash.

And Paul? Do me a favor? Quit sacrificing fat women on the altar of your lack of marital success. I’m pretty sure you’ve been dumped on your ass by a feminist woman at least once in your life. You don’t come out and say so, but it’s not difficult to read between the lines. If I want your help, I’ll tell you how to give it. Til then, pick something else to write about. No love, Me.

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Second up tonight is something I have been meaning to bitch about for a few weeks now. It isn’t a major thing, just another symptom of the ridiculous lengths people will go to in order to make fatties out to be subhuman and dysfunctional.

New Theory: Messy Apartments Can Lead To Obesity

I think there should be a law against using the word theory unless you’re going to use it correctly. Creationists use it to discredit evolution, the implication being that “theory” means “guess.” The same usage is going on here. If you’re accustomed to reading headlines about the latest research studies in some field or another, you might be misled into thinking there’s some new study out about a link between messiness and fatness.

You would be wrong.

The article quotes a Glamour writer and no, she’s not aware of any studies either. She hasn’t even talked to anyone else about this subject matter. It’s just something she came up with one day and wants to put out to a wider audience.

If you look at her story as she tells it, though, all you can really discern is that she gained eleven pounds and let her apartment go to shit at the same time. She seems to think the messy apartment led to the weight gain. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that the weight gain led to the apartment getting messy. Why in the world would it do that? Aren’t I blaming a mess on fatness anyway? No, not really. Just as I think obesity is a symptom of diseases like diabetes (type 2, anyway), I also think weight gain can be a sign of depression–and who the fuck cleans house when they’re depressed? Mutants, maybe, but for most of us, housekeeping is the LAST thing on our minds.

But let us not pass up an opportunity to diss the fatties. Why, that wouldn’t be any fun.

‘K, got to go. By the way, if y’all see any snark-worthy material out there on the internets, I’d love to have it. I find plenty on my own, but I’m sure I miss a lot of stuff. Later.

Epic. Win. Super Bowl 44, 7 February 2010

I no longer have any excuses for not seeing this weight loss through.

Sorry for the uncreative blog post title but I’ve had a couple grievances simmering and it’s about time to take the lid off and share. Today’s snark, brought to you bright and early at almost 3am (I’m up late, not early), comes from the fact that I can’t even read a book to [...]]]>

Sorry for the uncreative blog post title but I’ve had a couple grievances simmering and it’s about time to take the lid off and share. Today’s snark, brought to you bright and early at almost 3am (I’m up late, not early), comes from the fact that I can’t even read a book to my kid or play a goddamned video game without being bombarded by stupidity.

First up, the book, entitled (appropriately enough) The Belly Book. You may notice it’s by the current publisher of Dr. Seuss’s books. It is not, however, by Dr. Seuss. It is by some bozo named Joe Harris, because Dr. Seuss would never put his name on this crap. I don’t know who Joe Harris is, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t get his ass kicked enough as a child.

To understand my ire, it is not enough to look at the front cover. No, we must read the book to our child all unawares, and then stop up short at the following pages.

Silly fat guy. Everybody knows the only socially acceptable body parts that should take up a two-page spread are tits and ass.

If you don’t want to be a fatass when you grow up, kids, be a vegetarian that eats fish*.

There were more pages about not eating junk food or else you’ll get a tummyache, which would actually not be so bad of a message if it were I dunno remotely true. You’d be amazed how much crap a kid can put away and not feel sick afterward. Boggles the mind. Hell, I can’t even drink a full twenty ounces of full-sugar soda anymore without feeling funny later.

But holy shit. I got the book because it looked like it’d be a cute rhyming book about bellies. It was, too, until I got to the preaching. Can I not even read a book to my daughter without running across this shit? Must I flip through every book I check out of the children’s section of the library now before I check it out, in case more of this garbage is out there?

Don’t get me wrong. It is important to teach our kids how to eat healthy. But…

1. If I want Random Q. Stranger interjecting themselves between me and my daughter during storytime before bed, I’ll ask. Keep the shit out of her books. The time to talk about proper eating habits is at the table. And that’s for me to decide, not someone I don’t know.
2. This information was presented as How To Not Be A Fatass When You Grow Up (or, I guess, more properly Fat Gut), not How To Grow Up Big, Strong, and Healthy. Shit, adults probably aren’t allowed to present “growing up big and strong” as a good thing. I mean, totally, who wants to be big? Yuuuuuck! Gag me with an alli pill!
3. Also, far too much nutritional advice out there is bullshit, especially that aimed at kids and their parents.

For instance, I mentioned I had two grievances. My second one is this. I just recently began playing Plants vs. Zombies by PopCap Games. Tremendous game, you should totally try it. The adventure segment was shorter than I thought it would be, but there is so much more to the game software afterward that it’s still worth it.

That part isn’t my grievance. My grievance was the cute little song running during the credits after I beat the big zombie boss. The song is awesome for the most part. Except for this little line about brains containing cholesterol, but it doesn’t matter since the zombies are already dead.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

You know, for the past forty years those assholes in the government have been telling us “don’t eat cholesterol, don’t eat saturated fat, it’ll clog your arteries.” In the last forty years we’ve seen rates of mental illness, attention deficit disorder, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer skyrocket. There are lots and lots of possible culprits for these things, but we live in a stressful world that is constantly exposed to radiation. (It’s part of the reason we have evolution here. The natural levels of radiation present on Earth are one of the major causes of mutations that lead to evolutionary changes.) If we were that damn fragile we’d have died out as a species long ago. I can’t believe it’s just lifestyle that is making us sick. It’s got to be the food.

And here’s the thing. Yes, we have in the past forty years changed over to more and more industrial foods as a percentage of our diets. However, and you knew there would be a “but”–What do these food companies do as a selling point for their crap? Think about it. Ever read a label? Not the ingredients or the nutrition information but the front of it. This is most often done with breakfast cereal. What do they put on the front of the damn package to make it more appealing to buyers?

Right. They tout the nutritional benefits of the food.

What benefits do they usually point out? Do they tell you the food is chock-full of sugar or cholesterol or saturated fat? No. They usually brag about fiber or vitamins and minerals or about the food being low in fat.

So people are eating more and more industrial food. Do you think they just mindlessly eat whatever the fuck they see in front of them or do you think they might look at those nutritional claims and go “whoa, this says it has fiber in it and it reduces cholesterol. I should eat me some of this”?

I think you know the answer. Because you’ve done it, and I know I sure fucking have. Hey, it’s HEALTHY! The label says so! Fuck it! In the cart it goes!

So do you really think we’re all dropping dead of heart attacks because of a little CHOLESTEROL?

Seriously?

Think about it. And get this shit out of my video games because it stopped being funny twenty years ago. Thanks in advance.

No love,
Fuck you.

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*Fish is a vegetable, after all. Isn’t it?