The Coalition of the Swilling

"Fat studies"? "Scholars of fat"? Who do they think they're kidding and why does the American college system perpetuate this pretentious bullsh*t? I'm still agog at the concepts in this article. And, quite honestly, absolutely mesmerized by the people who inhabit a bubble world where such things are feted, entertained, discussed and researched as if it were quantum particle theory and had ANY bearing on the real world at all.

To the Times' credit, there are voices of sanity represented, to which I could only say aloud "*yeah, no shit!"

...Others argue, though, that a movement does not make a scholarly pursuit and that this is simply a way to institutionalize victimhood.

“In one field after another, passion and venting have come to define the nature of what academics do,” said Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, a group of university professors and academics who have a more traditional view of higher education. “Ethnic studies, women’s studies, queer studies — they’re all about vindicating the grievances of some particular group. That’s not what the academy should be about.

“Obviously in the classroom you can look at issues of right and wrong and justice and injustice,” he added, “But if the purpose is to vindicate fatness, to make fatness seem better in the eyes of society, then that purpose begs a fundamental intellectual question.”

Or as Big Arm Woman, a blogger, wrote: “I don’t care if people are fat or thin. I do, however, care that universities are spending money on scholarship about the ‘politics of fatness’ when half of the freshman class can’t read or write at the college level*.”

...Whether activism is an appropriate goal for academia is a controversial notion. Joseph B. Juhasz, a social psychologist who teaches at the University of Colorado, said the possibilities are endless.

“Certainly we have not reached a point where we can do away with queer studies or race studies or women’s studies,” Professor Juhasz said. “But where do you draw the line? Is there going to be a department of man-boy-love studies? Do we need polygamy studies? At which point do you say, enough already*?”

Bad enough they live the dream, but students PAY to take these classes! They're exposed to such a twisted sense of being, that I don't doubt some impressionable, waif-like 18 year old will be marching to free her fat sisters from...ack...whatever they need liberating from. (And you can bet the overweight, beer swilling fella we all know and love would be MOST UNwelcome in these introspective, angry, feminine fat fests.)

...Elena Escalera, an assistant professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., vehemently disagrees with the idea that fat studies perpetuates a victim’s mentality.

“This is not about victimhood, but about becoming empowered,” she said. “Did Martin Luther King and Malcolm X espouse victimhood? Did Susan B. Anthony? It’s really easy for people to feel that fat people are trying to find an excuse.”

These fat people/scholars compare their 'struggle' to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Susan B. Anthony?! 'STRUGGLE'? Hello? What struggle? I know it's tough to lose weight, I KNOW it's discouraging ~ I'm so there my sisters! BUT. Just because it's hard for you to walk a mile a day (or not eat the whole bag of chips or remind yourself that just because it's 'fat-free' doesn't mean you can eat the whole box), YOU, by virtue of your GIRTH, do NOT have the right to make someone else's life miserable. DO NOT. And that's what these courses are doing. They are rationalizing the 200 boxes of SnackWells on your hips into a reason NOT to be sorry that you've squashed the poor person stuck in the airline seat next to you into a wallie. Or twisted his body over the armrest on the aisle so badly that he needs to have broken ribs reset. Martin Luther King tried to make things better for OTHERS. Malcolm X tried to make things better for OTHERS. Susan B....you get my drift. Dear fat lesbian scholarly chicks. You are only trying to make things better for yourselves. And people will glom onto these excuses like a glazed Krispy Kreme ~ giving them the tacit approval to be offensively rude and foist their own lack of willpower off on society. Because it's your neighbor's tough luck if he doesn't understand.

THAT is unconscionable self indulgence.

Am I condoning being mean to large folks? No. I don't condone being rude to anyone, ever. There's enough meaness in this world without me adding to it. But obesity is probably the one thing in this world that affects your life that you can take ahold of yourself. You voluntarily got yourself that way. You can voluntarily un-get yourself that way. Which also means that my sympathy meter at your victimhood is pretty well pegged. When my clothes don't fit, I look in the mirror and I look to me. I don't check to see how the world is looking at me.