I Am Human Too

As far back as I can remember, I have always been obese and psychologically destroyed because of it. Being what I am, I have never found acceptance anywhere and my mind has been obliterated by a powerful media campaign and an accepted hatred of fat people as normal and morally proper. It is for our own good they like to claim but from where I am, it seems like pure socially condoned bullying. Subconsciously, I have even begun to hate myself, my body and, sadly, others like myself as well. From a young age, I realized that in this dystopic world being obese was a life sentence of ostracization and misery. I would place a wager that even you, the reader, have probably already developed a dislike for me and my statements here. Think about that for a second, think about how you hate me for no other reason other than that I am physically deformed. Ask yourself, why? While western society has endeavored to make many forms of discrimination into taboos, obese people are still openly mocked and ridiculed in ways that if done to people with other problems would be considered immoral and in terrible taste. However, to mock people like me is considered right and proper. It would be considered immoral for corporations to avoid hiring minorities, women, short people or any person possessing arbitrary human distinctions. It would be considered vile to charge taller people more for airline tickets. But when done to obese people, everyone cheers. Hatred of us is considered normal and even moral. The reasoning being, that if we are mentally tortured, we are more likely to shape up and become beautiful and normal like the rest of you. I have even witnessed socalled progressives expressing antipathy towards me and my kind. Being an obese person, I am already categorized upon being seen as lazy, unintelligent, indulgent and anything else negative you can imagine. Even though this is often done unfairly, it doesn't matter because I am fat and it is my fault for not losing weight, becoming beautiful, healthy and accepted by society. A civilization should be judged by how it treats its outcasts and from my position, our civilization seems pretty darn terrible. In a world of violence and misery, where politicians routinely lie to us and ruin our lives by the millions, the media still finds time to constantly put articles about how fat people are inferior and disgusting. I am treated like an animal. Why? Do I not have feelings? Do I not have a soul? When I am treated like a monster, does it not matter that I feel sad? Do you feel better about yourselves when you mock us? Is your life so devoid of substance that you must ridicule us to feel good? Some people have a genetic predisposition to being obese as numerous studies have shown. My parents are obese and most of my relatives have problems with obesity. Contrary to what you surely think, I don't spend all day eating and stuffing my face. Hating people because of their skin color, gender, height, eye color, accent or ethnicity are wrong. However, hating people for being obese is acceptable. The BBC even had an article recently claiming that obese people are the source for the whole world's problems. I am not even kidding. Is this not ridiculous? Obese people are causing the world's problems? I am sorry, I thought it was an out-of-touch elite, massive inequality, poverty, ignorance and injustice that was the cause of the world's problems. I have tried everything to join your society by becoming normal with no success. I tried diets and the gym with no success. Nothing matters though, because I am fat and it must be because I am a terrible person, a waste of life, lazy spending all day feeding like some kind of animal. Polite people won't usually say it in exactly those words but your actions and attitude towards me and my kind show it. It is what normal beautiful people all think of us. However, how could anyone in our society not think in this fashion. The television is constantly filled

with beautiful people, extolling their virtues and superiority by constantly showing them. Celebrity news has become a major fraction of all news. In media, fat people are always portrayed as stupid and unworthy of anything. There are so many examples that I would need to write a book to describe all of them. A study that was conducted to see how obese people were portrayed in media revealed that it was overwhelmingly negative. Thousands of television programs were analyzed, obese people were rarer on television than in real life. They were portrayed as hideous, loveless and rarely displaying affection. Overweight and obese males rarely had romantic partners and friends and were usually shown eating. When confronted about this persecution, experts usually claim that by stigmatizing us it propels us away from our unhealthy lifestyles. That is a lie. Many things in our world are unhealthy but aren't stigmatized to such a huge degree. No one mocks athletes, who destroy their bones and muscles during intense games and often have medical problems as a result. No one mocks people who do extreme sports placing their lives at risk. Even hard drug users are portrayed more positively in the media than obese people who never harmed anybody. However, I am sure that no matter what I say you will, most likely, hate me simply because my body is deformed and I am not beautiful. Doctors do not help obese people either. They are fueled by a billion-dollar diet industry and thus stress the horrors of obesity constantly without really providing any sort of substantial assistance. If they did have a way to end obesity, there would be few obese people because no one wants to be a social pariah, trust me. However, fake cures are allowed to be advertised on television while fake cures for diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other ailments would never be allowed to shameless peddled in such an open way. Some of us try to get better but just can't and we shouldn't be treated like evil monsters. In a way, being considered a pariah and a monster have made me a better person. All my extra time from not having much of a social life, with only a few really good friends, has allowed me to read and learn much about the world. I have read about the ecological devastation as our species rapes the planet, the poverty of most of the world and the injustices that happen constantly. I have seen human misery on a massive scale while most human beings are numb and unable to comprehend or care that our planet has turned into a hell. Some people even claim to care but mostly are so self-involved and egotistical that it their concern is really just words. I have grown tired and sad from being in this world. It is a hellish nightmare of contempt, cruelty and hypocrisy. When finally I leave it, I will depart with no regrets just joy at finally being free from the hatred of my species. I hope you all enjoy the hell you have all created either through action or inaction.

I would like to lodge a complaint. It is pertaining to the article titled, Can a common virus make you fat?. For the most part, the article is factual and informative but the tone of the article is demeaning to obese folks. I've noticed this before in other articles that have obesity as a topic, but this is the straw that broke the camel's back as they say.

In particular, I found this quote to be disgusting and demeaning, "So if we want to remain slim, should we be shunning fat people?" Who is this "we", that the author of the article is referring to? Could she not have written, "If thin people want to remain slim, should they shun fat people?". That would have been more neutral and less biased. It is odd that in a journalistic piece, the author seems to display an implicit assumption that only thin people, those who wish to remain slim, read the article. I guess fat people don't read the news, in the popular mind we are too busy eating and being fat, so the "we" excludes us. I guess it is preposterous that an obese person might actually be interested in current events. Apparently, the author can't imagine a single obese person reading the news. I've noticed a number of articles written by the BBC that paint people like me with weight problems in a negative light. An example is, not too long ago the BBC had an article claiming that obese people are the source for the whole world's problems. Cleverly, the BBC covered itself from accusations of hatred for obese people by including one little paragraph at the end with a counter-argument to the premise that obese people cause all the world's ills. However, the whole article basically blamed fat people like me for everything that is wrong with the world and one little paragraph at the end is unlikely to change the reader's mind after he or she has read a number of paragraphs where experts blame obese people for everything that is wrong. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7404268.stm is the exact article I am referring to. Congratulations BBC, you printed anti-obesity hate propaganda. Isn't it nice that obese people are still an easy target for elites to dehumanize? Now that most groups have effectively demanded their rights who else can elites pick on to feel good about themselves? It would be unthinkable to mock people with other diseases and ailments but obesity is supposedly solely a "willpower" thing. How about we make fun of AIDS victims? They could have chosen not to have unprotected sex, right? Even drug addicts, are not hated as much as obese people are. Furthermore, many studies have shown that obesity is not always solely a "willpower" issue but that is always conveniently ignored. It is easier to paint obese people as subhuman disgusting constantly feeding monsters. Thanks BBC, as if society hasn't dehumanized me enough, thank goodness the media is around to stoke the flames of hatred and exacerbate the exclusion of fat people from society. I can't even leave my house and walk outside without constantly feeling worthless and hideous. This isn't anything new though, in media, fat people are always portrayed as stupid and unworthy of anything. There are so many examples that I would need to write a book to describe all of them. A study that was conducted to see how obese people were portrayed in media revealed that it was overwhelmingly negative. Thousands of television programs were analyzed, obese people were much less prevalent on television than in real life. They were portrayed as hideous, loveless and rarely displaying affection. Overweight and obese males rarely had romantic partners or friends and were usually shown eating. I have a question, if you hate us so much where will it end? One day, are people like me going to be put in concentration camps and starved or killed because we are not beautiful? I don't care, put us obese folk out of our misery because our world has become a nightmare. I have been conditioned by the media with its constant negative portrayals of people like me to subconsciously hate myself and others with my deformity. Obese people like me are shunned. We encounter discrimination when looking for jobs, we are excluded from society, we are mocked and treated like losers. But then again, how dare I even speak out, fat people like me don't have souls, feelings or thoughts, all we do is eat, right? The only thing we are good for apparently is fueling a billion-dollar diet industry where charlatans and liars try to convince us inferiors that their bogus products will make us better and so many poor souls fall for it

because they desperately want to be normal and loved in a world where everyone coldly blames them for being ugly. Governments would never allow bogus diabetes medicine to be sold, or fake cures for cancer or AIDS but fake cures for obesity are allowed because fats aren't worth having justice and dignity. Fats are inferior, ugly and contemptible in your eyes. How about writing an article about how we are human too and how we have feelings and have to suffer a lot for something that often we don't have control over? I doubt that will happen, you will continue to mock and denigrate us but at least I said my opinion. Sincerely, Theo xxxxxxxxx New York, USA