Slippery people
The fat, like the poor, will always be with us. They’re not going away any time soon – we and they have reached an accommodation with their existence.
Take the adverts for the anti-chafing cream currently gracing our television screens at the moment. Is it aimed at athletes for who chafing can be a hindrance to optimum performance?
No, it’s aimed at wobbling sad sacks who seemingly can’t waddle to the fridge without crying out in agony because their corpulent thighs and buttocks are creating enough friction to light a camp fire for Ray Mears. Hey fatty, now your parts can glide together like two greased pigs (you and your mother).
Don’t people realised that when they can’t move because their thighs and mudflaps look like burger meat it might, just might, be time for a lifestyle change? You have to hand it to the cream’s manufacturers. They’ve clearly identified that section of the obese population who’ve decided that, in the screaming crimson glow of their red-raw inner thighs and bum cakes, amelioration rather than cure is the answer. Why eat a salad when you can just slake yourself with goo?
Goo you say? Twelve economy-size pork pies and a case of Abrade-B-Gone please, Mr Costermonger.
(Philip has another breakthrough to help us stay on our well-lubricated arses)
Posted on August 22nd, 2008 at 5:47pm under Miscellaneous misanthropy
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• 14 Comments |
My thighs chafe in hot weather. I’m a size 14.
Go figure.
On come on Justin. Treat obesity like a personal failing and, yes, you might be able to wax all superior but it doesn’t solve the problem. Treating it like a public health issue might take away the opportunity to make jokes about burger meat, but it might just work.
Sorry Katherine, but I think it does demand personal responsibility – and that’s coming from someone who believes in a large welfare state. I’ve been like a house-end for the last couple of years. Nobody held my nose and poured the pork pies and Stella down my neck. It is a personal failing, if you ask me. It was my fault I was fat. I think trying to remove personal responsibility to whatever degree is dangerous.
You can’t expect public health bodies to make people un-obese. What are they suppose to do, patrol the cake aisles in supermarkets?. I got off my arse and made the changes of my own volition. Who else was going to do it for me? I’m not a child. It was far easier than I thought it would be. And you’re talking about one of the the laziest and unmotivated men on the planet.
There’s a lot more to being overweight than people stuffing pork pies into their face and there’s a lot more to the issue than the question of personal responsibility. You managed to sort out the problem yourself – well done. But for other people it may be a great deal more difficult and a great deal more complicated.
ejh’s latest blog post… But not today the struggle
But for other people it may be a great deal more difficult and a great deal more complicated.
How so?
It’s not an accident is it, that obesity is associated with poverty? Unless we’re going down the horrible road of labelling all those poor, fat people as lazy good-for-nothings who just need to get on their bike and find a diet, then you could perhaps argue that it may just be about food costs, education, availability…
Well, without going into detail or trying to sound like a ‘poor me’, I could have ticked the poverty box not so long ago. But you know what I’ve found? Eating healthily is unequivocally *not* expensive and it’s not all rabbit food. (John Band nailed it two years ago.) I didn’t need a degree to discover that, either.
And it’s not as if this isn’t a big issue in the public consciousness either – it’s not an obscure hidden killer we’re talking about and the remedies don’t cost a fortune. What education does it require other than to be told ‘go and have a chat with your GP, he or she can really help’?
Except substitute everything you are saying about “losing weight” and, say, “getting a job”, or “not being poor”, and perhaps you can start to see why you are sounding scarily like a right-wing talking head.
Yes, because being fat is just like being unemployed or poor, isn’t it? When I was poor and unemployed I went to the doctors. Did you even read my comment?
And anyway, what’s your solution, left-wing talking head?
Justin, there’s no need to call me names because I don’t agree with you in this instance.
I don’t know precisely where the solution lies, but the evidence does suggest that telling people that it’s their fault and they wouldn’t be fat if they’d just stop being so lazy isn’t really working. Treat it as a public health issue, with more encouragement to go to your doctor and support from the health services, say – that might help, as it clearly did help you.
And no, I don’t think being poor or unemployed is “just like” being fat, nor did I say that. If you read my comment above, then you’d see that I was making the entirely sane point that obesity is associated with poverty because of such things as price of food and education about nutrition.
I didn’t think there was anything terribly controversial there. I find it uncomfortable though when people I otherwise respect start using language about people and their behaviour which sounds uncomfortably like standard right-wing talking points about other areas of “personal responsibility”.
Erm, hello? My point was, chafing doesn’t mean you’re necessarily fat. And therefore I think your post was unnecessarily insulting.
No, you see, there you go again. You mentioned athletes.
40% Olympics free, at best, and with one day to go.
Oh, just admit it. You like watching the lady 400 m runners and you, um, celebrate the achievement represented in their toned bottoms.
Aw, it’s like a sore tooth – I just can’t leave it alone.