In our talk about despair, I thought it important to mention that despair can also happen after you’ve discovered that you’ve made a significant amount of progress down the wrong dang road.  Now not only is your time “wasted”, but you’ll have to back track all that way before you can move forward.

This is what’s so dangerous and depressing about our nation’s current obsession with thinness as a surrogate for health.  Because we, as a nation are sprinting down the wrong stupid road.  And sooner or later, when we each individually recognize it, we have a WHOOOOOLE lot of angry to cope with before we move forward.

Take Mrs. Obama’s current emphasis on the “obesity crisis”.  Firstly, all kids need to work on healthy habits, regardless of their current body size.  And finally, body size is not the point.   Eating well and exercising is the point.  By singling out fat kids, we simply heap more shame (as if parents and peers aren’t doing that enough already), setting them up for disordered eating and increasing stress levels which according to recent  seem to have at least as much impact on health as anything else related to body size.  Does Mr. Obama think it will improve his daughter’s health to refer to her in the national media as “a little chubby”?  Does Ms. Obama think that her very public discussion of her “obesity intervention” for her daughters will help them to grow up strong, healthy and well-adjusted?  If you want to talk about how you as a family have decided to spend more energy on healthy habits, okay then.  But maybe you should focus the media on your updated parenting skills rather than your poor kids’ pant sizes.

They, like so many in our country, are at the intersection, with that little orange baton waving the traffic down the wrong stupid road.  It’s almost enough to make you despair.  Almost.

However,  as I’ve said before, healthy is as healthy does.  And rather than despair, today I choose to rebel.  I’m going to eat my tomato soup, and shake my big bootie while I teach my aerobics class.  Take that, Michelle.

I’m here, waving you towards the road less traveled.  The one where you take care of yourself and your body not because you’re filled with panic and despair, but rather because you love yourself.  

Right this way…

Love,
The Fat Chick