soapboxdiner

JD's Elucidations: A Letter to the Editor

Letter to the Editors (via JD) at We Hate You Dot Com:

Dear JD,

Thank you so much for your thought-provoking editorial on the plague of all humankind: fat women. Your research and depth of insight into what you call "hideous, monstrous, Down's Syndrome-resembling, lycra stretching bovines" has shown itself to be profound and moving. Because of your wisdom, I'm sure many a life of the Wal Mart-going public has been saved.

Especially lucid in your argument was your treatment of the phenomenon of finding fat women with small children in the frozen food isle at the grocery store. You are quite right when you say, "Regardless, morbid obesity is a plague that's spreading like the plague among vagina-toting souls. It's become such an epidemic that you can't go anywhere with encountering one."

I have often found, there is nothing worse than a plague that plagues. You are so right. And Dammit! Who told the plague to tote vaginas with it?!? Furthermore, I don't recall having ever encountered a fat man sloughing down a Tombstone pizza in the frozen food isle. Though thank heavens that on the rare occasions I have, that gross old fat guy left the kids at home. And at any rate, he probably does his shopping after he's worked an 8-10 hour shift, has picked the kids up from daycare, taken them home, fed and entertained them before putting them into the bath and bed, right?

Assuming that a good percentage of the fat women toting kids around the grocery store are single, one must make the correlation, given that women comprise 85% of single parent homes, the remaining 15% that men represent must be innately more organized than their female counterparts. Goodness knows only a man could pull off such feats of multi-tasking in childrearing and wage-earning on top of all the time at the gym to keep fit. Obviously, this is more than a woman could hope to accomplish.

Or maybe the conspicuous lack of fat men present in grocery stores has to do with the fact that recent Census stats state that single fathers earn $10,000 a year more than their female counterparts.¹ Of course he isn't schlepping the kids around the Super Safeway looking for the DiGiorno samples! He's ordering in the Godfather's deluxe.

Lord knows it's a fact that the national weight index has increased in the twentieth century. As a matter of fact, the prevalence of obesity (as measured between the years of 1960 and 1994) increased from 13.4 to 22.3 percent--a relative increase of more than 50 percent--with most of this rise occurring in the past decade.² Pretty "hefty" numbers, don't you agree? It's quite amusing, though... the percentage of overweight men (aged 20+) in America is 59.4, while the percentage of overweight women is 50.7.

Odd, you don't often find people such as yourself entering into a tirade over fat men. Wonder why that is? Do fat men not elicit the same revulsion in you when they have "fat from (his) foot sticking out from the tongue of the shoe" and other such "repulsive, heinous" oddities of obesity so despicably put on display? But it sure is a good thing we don't ever find fat men at ballgames. Whatever would we do if we had to be subjected to the bleacher-tilting effects too many fat guys gorging themselves on hot dogs and beer at a sports event? Not like all those women you mention: "Another place where fat women gather in droves are ballgames. Regardless of whether it's a kid's soccer game or a pro baseball game, there will be a very large number of colossally obese women present at the scene. I can't explain this, it's just one of nature's laws."

Yes, it's a good thing you've brought this to all of our attention. Heaven forbid allowing women to escape from the burden of bearing up to the "worth and attractiveness" scale imposed upon them for untold generations. Whoever in the world would want women to feel comfortable - no, powerful and confident - in their own bodies, regardless of their size or shape? Much better they concentrate on obtaining supermodel status by way of physical, mental and emotional starvation and depravation. That way they can be pleasing to such fine specimens of noble, nurturing, and uplifting character (of the male persuasion), such as yourself.

Humbly yours in awe and enlightment,
SBD

10:15 pm - 07.30.02
previous | next

Home | Archives | Profile | Notes | DiaryLand | Random Entry