Fat and the Environment

A while back I posted a New York Times article that brought to light the notion that fat people are the scapegoat for today’s problems. Whether we are talking about global warming, commercialization or the economy for some reason it’s the fat people who are taking everyone one else down with us. As a fat individual myself I find the idea that my own “carbon footprint” is any larger than a normal 22-year-old college student/waitress to be preposterous.

Take into consideration that I drive a brand new car that gets 32 miles to the gallon, I take special care in not accelerating too fast since it can burn gas faster and make sure my tires are inflated properly. But with that said, the American lifestyle that I am accustom to makes it hard to change myself into someone that is more eco friendly. I have begun not using plastic bags; instead carrying around the reusable shopping bags that target or GreenLoop.com carries.

On Thursday Slate posted an article about Pixar’s new family film Wall-E I must admit that I have been itching to see it ever since I found out about it but since the details of the story have come out I have not only not seen it but it has left a sour taste in my mouth about ever seeing anything related to Pixar again.

I find it alarming that a movie that has been made for children is sending out such a harmful message, not only because it has the possibility of creating even more hostility towards fat individuals but because it is completely mindless. Read the complete article here.

So what is this powerful and profound message? Wall-E tells us that if we don't change the way we live, we'll all get really fat and destroy the world. The plot begins with the idea that a megacorporation called Buy N Large has essentially taken over the planet and induced so much consumption and waste that humans must escape their dying planet on an enormous, space-faring cruise ship. Once onboard, their self-destructive tendencies only get worse: After 700 years adrift, humans have grown too bloated to walk and too lazy to think.

See what I’m saying? Yet again the fat people ruined this fantasy world that Wall-E lives in now, and are stupid on top of it.

It ought to go without saying that this stereotype of the "obese lifestyle" is simply false. How fat you are has a lot more to do with your genes than with your behavior. As much as 80 percent of the variation in human body weight can be explained by differences in our DNA. (Your height is similarly heritable.) That is to say, it may not matter that much whether you eat salads or drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," whether you bike everywhere or fly around in a Barcalounger. If you have a propensity to become obese, there's only so much that can be done about it.
That's not to say that our circumstances can't lead us to gain weight. But there's little evidence that overeating causes obesity on an individual level and no real reason to think that anyone can lose a lot of weight by dieting. (Most of us fluctuate around a natural "set point.") We also know that children who watch a lot of television are no less active than other kids and that pediatric obesity rates are not the direct result of high-fat diets.

In the end I think this whole idea that fat people are destroying the world has more to do with the fact that the hummer driving upper class doesn’t take the initiative to reduce their own carbon emissions. They would rather point fingers while looking down on others about what they are doing in their own life that might be causing global warming and many other problems in our American society. Maybe what Pixar should be preaching is how we should learn to first put the blame on our self, not others.

Worthy

Working in the service industry can leave you feeling empty, you are only there for the enjoyment of others, they could give two shits about you but when they do it is only to fill their own interests. Most of the time people will ask what you do, as if working at a restaurant does not qualify you for their respect unless you have some other sort of life that goes on outside of what you are doing. Whether it be going to school or having a day job, the fact of the matter is that many people will not find you to be a person with which they can respect unless they know that you are not just planning on being a waitress for the rest of your life.

One of my coworkers was talking about this a few weeks ago, its something that I have thought about for a while, but for her its so surprising the different response that she gets. She’s planning on going into the peace core after college but works at a rape crisis center while in school and working as a bartender. The fact that people will not even act like she is worth their time until they ask what she does, and then they will not only respect her but will treat her completely different. What makes it so that people feel that someone is not worthy of their respect is beyond me but while looking at this from a different view I saw many of the same aspects happens to overweight people.

For some reason people feel that being worthy as a person when your overweight can only happen if they find out that you are trying in some way to loose the excess weight. Being active and trying to be happy with who you are is not enough, unless you can and will fit into the mold of what society wants. It’s sad that we will shun others who do not fit into what as a society we have deemed to be worthy, not only based upon what we look like but down to the job that we hold and what we want from life.

Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up to the stars; to be satisfied with your possessions; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor’s except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends…and to spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit, in God’s out-of-doors. These are the little guideposts on the footpath to peace.

– Henry Van Dyke

College

Everyone is getting back from school this week and every person that I see return reminds me of what happened back in February at the college I was attending. First off I’m more annoyed at myself for thinking that Baker College could of given me a degree worth my time. I’m also annoyed with how everything turned sour in the end with the head of the Graphics department basically telling me that I have talent but my “behavior” will make it so that I never get a job.

Anyone who knows me in my real life knows that it is completely untrue, aside from the fact that I already have a job, I’ve had an internship for almost a year that if budgets and lack of work didn’t get in the way I probably would still work there. Might I add that this internship started before I went to Baker and they were no way involved with getting me the job.
After having a private conversation with the department head I went to one of the deans to have the whole problem put on record. Not only did it not go anywhere, when I was asked why I went to the dean about the problem and didn’t just keep it between the DH and me, I told them how I didn’t feel she was very approachable. But according to Baker College’s dean “We don’t hire employees that are not approachable.”

Around this time last year I decided to focus my study on just graphics so that I could get out of college faster and get a job before coming back for my second major in marketing. What happened instead was I started to see the lack of knowledge that I would receive from the program I was enrolled into. Students were able to walk into class the last day without their final projects done and spend the next 4 hours working on them while a few of my classmates and I were finished and bored out of our minds. That was only the small stuff, the amount of talent that filled the seats in these classes was depressing and I found myself bored with the classes since everything I did was done with half the effort but still got me an A and better than 90% of everyone else.

All of these points were brought up with the dean before meeting with DH about all of the problems, but in the end I’m still waiting for the behavioral report from DH and am planning on attending Wayne State University in the fall. At one point I will graduate from college and when I get a job I will make sure to send my first paycheck back to the college. Maybe in return they will send my behavioral report filled with things I didn't do.

Follow the Leader

Just like the children’s game, the majority of us are followers in this small world of ours. The only people who make a difference are the few that speak up or act out of the norm. We are sold conformity in the package of independence; beauty is all about conforming to a greater ideal and idea. Even the rebels are conforming to the idea of unconventional ideas, the idea the true independence is found when you think outside of the box, which in most cases is found within another box that someone else thought up.

We are taught to be consumers with the idea that buying something will not only have a greater value to you than its actual function. Lipstick is not only nice to change the color of your lips but in an uneducated mind can make you sexy, a purse is not only great to carry your wallet, phone, and keys in but will make you popular and fashionable. Men are just as susceptible and are starting to be lured into the same products that women have traditionally been advertised to.

All of these ideas are also very relevant to women and body issues. The majority of advertising that is geared towards women are also selling an ideal body that can make a women not only feel ugly but question her sexuality. We are told that being sexy can only mean that you fit into this small box of an ideal that is unrealistic. It’s something that I question within myself everyday, the idea that sexuality can be bought or put on.

In a way it’s the same with beauty, it is all within the eye of the beholder, but how does one learn to feel sexy without knowing what the fuck it is? I need to go close my eyes and stop looking at the over 3,000 ads I see per day.

Off to go be a shepherd, don’t be a sheep.

A Bad Day

I can normally deal with the arsenal of bad treatment that fat individuals such as myself have to live with, but there are days that I just want to break down and cry. The idea that someone could actually write what is below in reference to myself, or others like me from the mindset of an individual in higher education makes me sick to my stomach. Twenty year olds are suppose to be the leaders of tomorrow but how can that be possible if someone would still allow this filth to fill a university’s newspaper?

(Printed in THE NEWSPAPER: Toronto''s Student Community Paper, 27 March 2008, page eight)
"10 Reasons it's not OK to be fat"
1. Public health care - why should the rest of us have to pay high taxes for you to eat yourself to death?

2. Nobody likes you. Except for, possibly, other fat people.

3. Even if you're successful, it just means you'll have enough money to become a drug addict and kill yourself like Chris Farley.

4. Because I don't want to ever have to think about fat people again.

5. Not only do you frighten children, but you're also setting a bad example.

6. You ruin pictures.

7. You ruin moments.

8. The thought of you ever having sex single-handedly ruins the day of at least 50% of the people whom you meet.

9. Because only aircraft are meant to be equipped with flaps. Their flaps serve a purpose.

10. It's fucking disgusting.

What you can do is write them about the bigotry that this university is condoning but allowing for this to be printed.

Bozikovic Alex INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, THE (CAMPUS NEWSPAPER) 416-593-1552* 416-593-0552 alex.bozicovic@utoronto.ca


Fogels Janina INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, THE (CAMPUS NEWSPAPER) 416-593-1552* 416-593-0552 janina.fogels@utoronto.ca



I’m off to go write my letter right now.

Standards

I get asked multiple times a night what my tattoo says, it doesn’t bother me since I knew getting something that people can read permanently tattooed onto my body might make people interested. The reactions are mostly good although I have had one person get into a fight with me that it is missing punctuation, my boss thinks its hilarious and I think not. I have had someone ask me how drunk I was when I got it but mostly people just turn the quote around to ask me “So what change do you want to be in the world?”

I know I am idealistic, I have this vision of a world that is not practical to happen in the next decade but the tattoo has little to do with what I want to do with my life and more to do with the person and/or standards that I want to hold myself to now. In my darkest days there are moments when I think about stopping eating, hoping to fit in, wishing that I could just be like the other girls. At work I often feel like I am drowning, surrounded by such fakeness from my coworkers to the people I serve. I will never be the girl who thinks lip gloss makes me pretty or being thin is the only way to go through life.

I just needed a daily reminder so I don’t drown in the sea of all of the sheep. Anyone else want to be a shepherd?

Fashion Don’t

I’m not sure what it is about clogs that make people think that they are an option when going out in public. For some reason people who wear clogs always have clogs on while looking at another pair, they are obviously stuck in some late 70’s time warp, but I am happy that they gave up their go-go boots while they had the chance. My dad owned a pair of clogs, they were from the 70’s and he would jokingly put them on when trying on clothes that my mom bought for him, but wearing them in public he did not.

I personally would rather go barefoot and walk on hot coals then put on the a pair of clogs, I mean unless you plan on wearing a cute little Dutch outfit and start clogging I wouldn’t wear them. The funny thing is that I am beginning to think that people wear them so that they don’t have to tie their shoes. What I don’t get is why they would wear socks, obviously at some point their hands went near their feet, which means that they could join the normal population and wear a pair of sneakers.



When famous people go to Amsterdam they are given clogs to get their picture taken with. Basically you’re supporting a horrible part of Amsterdam’s culture; they were originally made for cotton mill workers who wore them because of the wet environment they worked in, not so you could wear shoes that don’t need to be tied.

So basically, unless you’re Dutch, your a small child, you plan on dancing for me, or you work in a cotton mill walk away from the clogs.

Leonard Nimoy is a God.

If anyone can sum up in such a short interview my complete belief system this man has done it.

What Defines Us?

I often sit up at night and think about this question, I actually sit up and think about far more trivial things, but the idea of what makes me a good person vs. a bad person is something that I am not quite sure about. Does my life as a whole define me? Or is it the small pieces of my life where I do good things make me a “good” person?

I was sitting in my friend's living room last night watching a movie, two of my friends on a couch to my right, another friend laying against me while we watched the movie and I looked around being content with my surroundings and I thought about this. Every person in the room has their flaws but in all they are good people. For me I think what defines us as people to others are the attributes that we show on a continual basis, but what defines us to our self are the life experiences that we hold inside.

It’s often pretty hard to make me speechless, but just last week I was greeting a table of four 50-year-old men, when one of them asked me to “tell me who you are in 20 words or less.” I stared at him for a second before asking him to explain to me what he wanted to know, since most people want to make sure that I am actually going to do something else with my life other than work at a bar. He wouldn’t budge, so I was left telling him my age, where I go to school, the degree I’m getting and what I want to do out of school. All of the purely factual information that any normal human being can pull out of their ass in 10 seconds.

I left that interaction knowing everything I told him was not who I am, but part of this very complex person that I am. What actually defines me as a person has so much more to do with my past, the thoughts that go through my head every night have to do with all of the what ifs.

What if my mom didn’t go into therapy until I was 13 instead of 12? The verbal and physical abuse would have continued for an extra year but would my path through life have been more like that of my brothers? Or was it my personality that made me able to keep going strait instead of getting lost in his spiral drugs, self-mutilation and depression.

Would I be a completely different person if I were born thin? The answer to that is yes, but I wonder if the compassion I have for others is rooted in my own pain and in my own experiences with being ostracized.

I still have defining moments of my life that are still around the corner, but I cannot help but look back and wonder about all of those little things that made me who I am. What would be different, what would still be the same?

Most importantly would I gain those things that I feel I lack as a person now?