Gargantuan

So I've been reading about fat acceptance a lot. Most of the links in the sidebar will take you to appropriate sites if you want to read about it too.

I can see why people are on the defensive. It's hard not to feel attacked when phrases like 'war on obesity' and 'fighting fat' are everywhere, because the mind of the Very Fat Guy finds it difficult to distinguish between an attack on the person I am (as opposed to the weight I carry):

Those who seek to 'wage war' on a fatter society. Well-meaning people, all of them. How many actually understand what it's like to live this way?

Aren't they just reaffirming the separationist attitudes that are already entrenched in our culture? Do we risk making the 'war on obesity' a war on children who happen to be overweight?

As an adult, I have difficulty with the blurred message of fat disapproval. I'm not sure how I would deal with it had it been overt and government-sponsored when I was growing upwards and outwards. The ability to distinguish between attacks on lifestyle and attacks on self is even less developed as a child.

So am I an activist? Not the kind that champions fat as healthy, I'll say that to begin with. I hate being fat. I know just how much damage it can do, mental and physiological. The arguments in favour of being obese are, it seems, just as stretched and convoluted as those claiming that people who are overweight are lazy and ignorant.

I am an ACTIVE-ist, if you'll pardon the faux-self-help book butchering of the word, in the sense that I threw a large quantity of exercise into my life and am reaping the benefits. I want to lead by example. I want to be able to say to some of the kids I work with, "It's not hopeless. There are people who know what you're going through. Here's how you start."

I am an activist for people. The anti-fat and the fat brigades combined (what a lovely, squishy melange that would make!) I want to see us, as a people, indescriminately prosper. I want people to be able to live and be loved without fear. I want us to stop being reactionary, to drag ourselves out of the ambulance at the foot of the cliff mentality, to follow the trail back to the point where things started to get out of control, way before the cliff was even an issue.

I want to be happy. I'm an activist for happiness. Is that the most schmaltzy thing you ever read in your life?