The fat wars

Deja Pseu's thoughtful, informative comment on my last post inspired me to start a new thread, which I've been thinking about all day, between reading and responding to comments here.

Deja asks why it's so much easier for people to accept the realities of a fast metabolism than a slow one. Good question. I think it's like the "career women" (in quotes because that was how they were known at the time) of the 1950s and 60s, at a time when most women didn't have careers outside the home. They were the women who made it by playing hardball with the boys, by becoming one of the boys. They paid dearly for their corporate successes, and they were considered freakish by the cultural norms of the time.

Those women were harder on the next generation of striving career women than any men. Their attitude was, "I had to suffer, sister, and by God, so do you."

And that's what Deja's question, and the whole notion of fat wars, reminds me of. In a culture where thinness confers status, and fatness confers untouchability, of course those who have it, who are thin, will hang on to their notions about it forever. To acknowledge that fat and thin are largely functions of genetics would be to give up that special status. And if you're not a naturally thin person, and you've practically killed yourself getting and staying thin, well, it's human nature to want others to suffer right along with you, isn't it?

Depressing thought.