Those Happy Fat People
Says the website of the University Heath Service:
Weight stigma in athletics. I’d better write that one down. The site also stresses the importance of “body positivity,” which is,
Well, losing some of that excess weight would probably help on that front. Less crippling self-consciousness. Less sweating and wheezing, too. We also learn that “weight stigma” is perpetuated by language. Not, say, by being massively fat and the problems that so often follow from that.
At which point, sharp-eyed readers will notice that the direction of all this effort is away from the actual problem.
Well, again, obesity will do that. Best, then, to keep oneself in some reasonable proportion. Rather than faffing about with five-dollar bits of cardboard that make it clear just how neurotic you’ve become. As a result of being fat.
Update, via the comments:
Svh quotes this from the university’s website:
And adds,
Well, quite. And it has to be said, if you’re unwell and are avoiding going to the doctor because you can’t bear the prospect of being asked how much you weigh, this doesn’t sound like “body positivity.” Indeed, the very notion of “body positivity” will likely be of interest only to people who very much don’t feel “positive” about their bodies.
Say, on account of being fat.
And then there’s this, from the College Fix article:
Because – and I say this will love – you’re too fat for the chairs.
So, at risk of sounding insensitive, a choice comes to mind. You can either try to reorganise your every interaction with the universe – every encounter with chairs, mirrors, small spaces, stairs, and so forth – and drag everyone else into some never-ending drama in an attempt to ease your hangups – or you can, you know, dial back on the carbs and sugar and take a brisk walk.
I mean, the thing you can hope to control is not other people.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Pies and cakes available on request.
The last thing “progressives” want is for people to actually solve their problems.
I’d say they’re bending over and sticking their heads in the sand, but… Well…
Also, time is racist. Because of course. I guess we just need to look to other lands where people have other ways of knowing to see how all of that is working out.
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/06/28/white-time-dutch-professor-argues-that-time-itself-is-racist/
A modest suggestion: Set aside all of Africa as a refuge for all who feel themselves harmed by “white time”. Let it remain a land of poverty, ignorance, and superstition.
Smarter than the average bear.
Can’t get a government pension from resolved issues
But you don’t have the autonomy to put down the giant soda.
In honor of today’s matches, I bring you Scott Sterling.
Well, quite.
And it has to be said, if you’re unwell and are avoiding going to the doctor because you can’t bear the prospect of being asked how much you weigh, this doesn’t sound like “body positivity.” Indeed, the very notion of “body positivity” will likely be of interest only to people who very much don’t feel “positive” about their bodies.
Say, on account of being fat.
From the College Fix article:
Because – and I say this will love – you’re too fat for the chairs.
So, at risk of sounding insensitive, a choice comes to mind. You can either try to reorganise your every interaction with the universe – every encounter with chairs, mirrors, small spaces, stairs, and so forth – and drag everyone else into some never-ending drama in an attempt to ease your hangups – or you can, you know, dial back on the carbs and sugar and take a brisk walk.
I mean, the thing you can hope to control is not other people.
[ Post updated. ]
I’ll just leave these here. Anxiety resolved. Some assembly required.
https://www.eventstable.com/1000-lb-capacity-big-and-tall-extra-wide-stack-chair.html
https://www.eventstable.com/1000-lb-capacity-big-and-tall-extra-wide-stack-chair.html
https://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Metal-Stack-Chair/10620062/product.html
Er, I managed to paste the same link twice. I choose to blame my phone. Because I’m obviously not the problem.
[ Fetches Stool Of Shame. ]
From the previous thread:
Yes, that did occur to me, too. Especially if they’re established influencers.
Well, yes and no. Our standard of living is actually much higher than theirs, especially in terms of living space and disposable income. When they gape at our wide roads and big stadiums, they’re responding to the fact that in Europe/UK, everything’s more compact.
They built a lot of their infrastructure before the car was invented. Their roads are narrower, especially in the countryside. In the English countryside, many roads are enclosed by ancient stone walls, and the road is about a car-and-a-half wide. People have learned to very carefully negotiate these narrow passages.
They just don’t have the space to build a WalMart Supercenter or an 80,000 person stadium in most places. Their houses weren’t built to accommodate huge refrigerators, so buying a gallon of milk or ranch or mayo at a time is impractical.
As for sunsets, they do look different in different parts of the world. If you’re from an area where everything’s enclosed by trees or the atmosphere contains certain amounts of humidity and smog, you’re going to be startled by a sunset where there’s Big Sky or different humidity, etc.
Also, they do NOT have the equivalent of Buccee’s. Nobody does.
Further, they’ve been led to believe that America is pathetic, dirty, degraded, full of morons, full of Ugly Americans and rednecks eager to pop you with their shootin’ arn.
They’re discovering that we’re not at all as they imagined. They’ve maybe been to NYC, LA, San Francisco, or Chicago. They’re now taking road trips through Texas and Kansas and Alabama. They’re seeing a side of America they didn’t even know existed.
And come on… Texas barbecue IS unparalleled, Costco and WalMart Supercenters do contain an embarrassment of choices and BIG SIZES OF THINGS.
And ranch dressing is sneered at by elites whereas the rest of us appreciate it on multiple levels.
Free refills? That actually is novel. Stadium flyovers? AMERICA HELL YEAH!
Some of them might be playing up their amazement for clicks, but much of it looks pretty genuine.
When we go to their countries, we get all het up about stuff that they barely notice anymore.
“What do you mean this house is 500 years old?”
“How come you left that castle in ruins? Why not build it back?”
So I figure it’s mostly genuine and partly played up, and either way it’s been pretty fun.
This isn’t funny, David.
TBH, many (most?) Americans have as well. And not just in the blue cities.
But controlling other people is more fun than dieting and exercise.
It’s a bit like having a card to wave at people that says, Please Pretend I’m Not Fat. Or something like, If You Can’t Pretend I’m Not Fat, Then Please Pretend I’m Okay With It, Which, Clearly, I’m Not.
It doesn’t seem to get to the nub of the problem.
As I’ve said before, I don’t much care if someone is fat. I don’t generally pass comment on such things, unless someone is dramatically fat, and fatness in itself doesn’t much interest me. But the weird coping mechanisms that so often go with obesity are, I think, interesting. The displacement, the contrived politics, via which others are dragged into the drama.
Say, by claiming that taking selfies from above, to minimise double chins, is a form of “fatphobia” and therefore oppression.
Shit like that.
I’m fat and I have the “don’t tell me” approach when I go to the doctor – take my weight but don’t tell me what it is, and if the doctor needs to address it, he will.
Unparalleled in the overrated lower BBQ tiers (cough, Carolinas, cough), but surpassed by both Kansas City and Memphis in the upper.
Back to the topic:
The only reason to want to avoid getting weighed is because one is ashamed of one’s weight.
Knowing, as I do, that 200 pounds of lead and 200 pounds of whipped cream stacked five feet high have the same BMI that it is a fairly useless metric as it is pretty easy to eyeball the difference between a 200 pound weight lifter and a semi-sessile 200 pound donut connoisseur.
However, for one among other reasons to know a patients weight, there is a concept called volume of distribution and many drugs are dosed based on weight. In addition, if a drug is lipophilic it’s distribution will be different than one that is hydophilic. The concept is applicable to excessively thin people as well as well as those giving brontosauri a run, OK, a slow walk or cruise on a mobility scooter, for their money.
If children and small dogs go into orbit around you the choice is a SWAG at a dose, or getting what you actually need, besides, if you are going to override medical advice based on feelz, why bother going in the first place?
Heh. This is true. I can think of a couple of country lanes where polite reversing, or driving gingerly into what can only be called a ditch has been necessary. I think it’s one of the reasons cyclists arouse such strong feelings.
Not generally the good kind.
Another reason to believe the kickyball videos of ‘Urpeons giddy as school girls whilst driving big-ass pickups with plenty of road and finding parking lots the size of Luxembourg.
Gene Wolfe on English roads:
Light bends around them. (But then why do they still block the view?)
And in NobodyTellsMeAnything News, Penelope Keith passed at 86.
Does it support 1,000 pounds?
Similar here only the danger isn’t so much of knocking over some insanely old pile of rocks but of doing barrel rolls down into a lake or ravine. Yet somehow they get these huge bucket trucks in and out to do construction and tree cutting.
‘Objects behind this card are larger than they appear.’
Requiescat in pace,
It’s not that kind of stool. It comes in a flimsy paper bag and we tape it to his face.
Hey, I don’t make the rules.
Umm, yes, you do.
[ Fetches second flimsy paper bag. ]
The Narrative. Pretending this isn’t a big part of the problem, actually IS the problem, is naive. And it gets repeated and repeated and repeated every day, along with a whole lot of other bullshit in our schools and our media…but especially our schools…while “conservatives”…Republicans do nothing of substance to stop it.
PMSL
“Don’t bleed in the sink. I’ve just cleaned it.”
“Democracy is all very well, but why give it to the people?”
“‘Xmas’ – makes it sound like a skin complaint.”
“You think A.A. Milne is a motoring organisation I suppose.”
My father was a Marine fighter pilot and a NASA test pilot. He had some experiences with close calls. In about 1972 he visited a colleague in the UK, one Gordon C. Gordon drove, I believe, a Rover 2000, a family sedan but powerful. As dad related to me after his return, “I decided to just close my eyes. We’d either get to Gordon’s (in Surrey) alive or we wouldn’t.”
The Correction Booth was more humane.
For those who may have missed it, I’m just going to leave this here.
On our Ireland trip (2011) we decided to drive it. Flew into Dublin and just getting the car (holy moly it was small) out of the airport on the road was an adventure since we now had to drive on the wrong side of the road and road signage seems more of a guessing game than anything standardized for quick navigation.
And after realizing how many streets narrow down into something barely big enough to walk along 2×2, seeing how many sideview mirrors on parked cars were damaged or missing made a lot of sense.
When we (Amurricans) visited Blighty in ’24, I planned on renting a car to drive the wife and I from Tourquay to Project Eden in Cornwall. At the last minute, we hired Unique Devon Tours and the result was a lovely day out.
Watching him navigate the roads in which hedges grew high and tight against the road made me think this was the right decision.
Oddly, when I tell the wife that I could have driven us there, she refuses to take me seriously.
Nothing shows the integrity of the body positivity movement more than the advocate’s mass rejection of the GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
By which I mean, it showed there was no integrity to it at all.
The celebrities that were positively gushing that people were “healthy at any weight” and that any criticism of obesity was phobic and hateful were practically tripping over themselves to get Ozempic prescriptions. There are even sites showing “Ozempic face” of many actors and singers, some of whom have become almost skeletal after taking the drug.
We need more parents like the ones raising Grayson.
England: Where even a Cooper Mini may be too wide.
Well, not something you would read every day.
What came next, you would.