http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2004062402020

Thursday, June 24, 2004
America Bulks Up
By Timothy Mosso '06, Guest Columnist

Remember Fat Bastard? Of course you do. Remember when the nude,
grease-coated Austin Powers character offered fried chicken to Heather
Graham? Few movie scenes in history have inspired so many viewers to
abandon their seven-dollar popcorn buckets. It was enough to make Colonel
Sanders go vegan. Four years later, America seems to have lost its gag
reflex. And we have Frank to prove it.
Frank is the new Ballpark Franks spokes-lummox. Frank flaunts his gut like
an Armani fat suit. He talks to you while stuffing his face. He is
essentially Fat Bastard with a hotdog. Ballpark hopes that Frank strikes a
chord with a rather large demographic: fat people who own grills. He croons
the word "girthy" while the camera does a close-up of his Chris Farley
physique and concludes, "girthy is good." The audience seems to agree.

America's obesity epidemic has been old news for years. In the intervening
period, strangely enough, people decided that fat was fine. After all, the
Center for Disease Control estimates that 59 million Americans are
extremely overweight, and an outright majority of the population is
considered overweight. Between 1991 and the 1999 big-screen debut of Fat
Bastard, the number of overweight Americans increased by 71 percent. If the
numbers don't convince you, just look around you. So many people have never
been so fat. The will to fight is gone. Fat has become downright democratic
-- as American as Ballpark Franks.

Already the anti-anti-obesity backlash is building. Authors actually are
starting to make a living questioning the health consequences of obesity.
Books and newspaper articles are beginning to claim that excessive weight
isn't so bad after all. A food industry front group called the "Center for
Consumer Freedom" publishes a glut of such material in an effort to
drown-out the American Medical Association, the CDC and common sense.

The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance actively attempts to
debunk claims that obesity has serious health consequences, even for
individuals who weigh significantly more than twice what they should. The
organization's "Big Fat Blog" promotes links to conspiracy theorists,
including the "Center." NAAFA believes that dieting is dangerous and that
medical authorities claiming otherwise are prejudiced and ignorant. This
isn't a support group for people who struggle with weight; this is an
organization devoted to complacent disregard for medical facts.

It has never been easier to be fat in America. Don't believe critics who
try to tell you that an overbearing society pushes people to strive for
unachievable ideals, because it doesn't. If you go to a Chinese state
university and study for 15 hours a day, you can complain about impossible
ideals. When Frank is the best we can muster, excuses sound kind of hollow.

We can go to the beach and wear that bathing suit; our guts may hang out of
our shirts but they won't stick out in a crowd. Somehow, Roseanne has
become a Nick-at-Night classic. Companies as diverse as car manufacturers
and coffin makers are designing next-generation products for the fat
lifestyle. And I do mean fat; one company is designing a 63-inch-wide
casket for the plus-sized corpse.

Obesity is a sensitive social topic because awareness often requires a
person to be self-critical. The issue is tough to address because
acknowledging it creates the appearance of preaching. That isn't
politically correct. But we can't allow that unease to spiral into
indifference.

It's easy to pretend that fat can be fit in its own way. Being "fat and
happy" can be possible on a personal level, but not a societal one. Some
people really are burly -- just not 64 percent of the population. This
frequency of obesity seems to prove that indifference to fat has become a
cultural phenomenon.

While every person has the right to choose his own weight, the most
important part of a person's weight decision is making it himself or
herself. Unfortunately, this personal responsibility is being lost in a
social mudslide.