Being Fat and Happy? Wait, It Can be Dangerous.

Okay, first thing first, I am not impressed by supermodel's body or biased media conception about beauty. I am against it and to some extreme it is horrible. But following that, I am in a position of seriously thinking how the counter-movement illustrated in this picture, telling big people that they are deserve to be happy despite of their size, contains a dangerous fallacy.

There are some ways to interpret this illustration, and the more positive one says "Stop being so stressed out of the body image! The standard of beauty created by media are so hyper-real and they have used so many wrong perception in our innocent eyes. Don't let yourself obsessed with what media says about beauty or size!"

But it can also be read as saying: "That's the way Whitney! You love ice cream and cakes and all those mass-produced sugary thing and you eat a lot because that's the way you grow up and you have no idea how to eat less and the society (I mean food corporations) does not let you to have any other perception, besides they have turn to be the things that you love! And you love to stay in home, being lazy and watch TV all day and hate workout and that's fine!"

What I'm gonna write is for the second interpretation. I cannot claim myself as neutral in responding this image, since I have no idea how it feels to be obese and how difficult it is to start the habit those healthy people normally do. But I know how it feels to have more fatty flesh compared to your country's girl medium size, despite how much you think you have put diet attempts. But hey, is diet attempts ever necessary if your daily habit is good enough to let your body do its normal, humane mechanism of calories balancing? No. Hell no.

I grow up believing that our living system have been so altered to what our body naturally designed. Some parents spoiled their children with too much sugar: excessive milk, chocolate and candies, many cakes, so much proteins, and much more. When they grow up, a cup of frappucino slipped in their habit, altogether with alcohol and beers and so many unnecessary, but available, dishes you will find in meetings. And hey, there are way too many ways how the market dictating people's behavior to be physically lazier without realizing it. We work on office, no longer using your body as the typical jobs decades ago. We drive or biking in motorcycle, or using public transport, losing our opportunity to move when transporting. And that's the reason why people starts going to gym and put extra efforts to work out - to keep their body demand to release calories reasonable.

And especially in North America, some 'designed eating habits' really scare me. Ice creams are sold in huge baskets with really cheap price. The cheapest foods you can find are fast food or hamburger or processed meats (sausage, nuggets, etc). Mutated vegetables are everywhere, and people's standard over good fruits or vegetables are the huge ones - yes, like the huge, flawless orange pumpkin for Halloween. If I compare to the tropical, naturally grown fruits from Indonesia, despite the fact that those natural fruits taste way more better, it looks much uglier. And that's the way natural things looks like: smaller and not flawless. Same things happen to poultry or meat products. The strict rule of animal slaughter in the US has been so tricky that small-scale farms are hardly exist, because those slaughterhouse prefer huge industries. And Americans rarely understand that those huge meat/poultry producers have manipulated the animals so badly with way too much antibiotics and hormones. What they know, as what's been propagated by the industries, that chickens are huge and small chickens are strange. Even when I taste the eggs and the milk, I don't think they taste like normal eggs or milk - it tastes like it contains too much drugs. And guess what the answer? Food labeling and veganism! Organic foods are labeled and sold in a much higher price, and there are many laws passed for the 'humane treatment of animal'.

Isn't it an irony that what the earth gave has been modified so badly, changing the human perception until they have no idea which ones are natural, and then reintroduced again as a 'solution' but with a much higher price?

Yes, Whitney, that might be one of the answer of your weight problem. And it's the nation's problem, not only yours, but I let you know so you might realize it. You absolutely can choose to be happy with your current lifestyle because the alternative might be a revolution against the whole system. It might be pricey, full of difficult efforts - because the evil has been rooted so deep in your perception of 'culture' which promoted by the market system.

But for other nations who still have choice to reject this kind of system in their home, please do so. I can see these kind of things arise in Jakarta and other big cities in developing nations. Realize this, you need to have some good role in eating habit - definitely not the US. However, I live in Portland, OR, and what they're doing with veganism, strong local market, food carts, other healthy stuffs, and sporty-outdoor habits sounds like a revolution against the system for me - a post-modern society inside the States itself. The result? Oregonians are typically slim.

Overweight is not normal and choosing to be happy without any effort to reduce such abnormality sounds like nothing more than hopelessness and denial. But it's up to you in the end.