Michelle Obama = Your Crazy Aunt

It's one thing for the creepy lady in your office, your annoying neighbor, or your conspiracy theorist family member to harp on about childhood obesity, and how it reflects a decline in our moral vaues as a society AND is very harmful healthwise, economy-wise etc. etc. But when the first lady makes a big deal out of it, and spews out a bunch of scary ass statistics you might expect that the things she's discussing not be complete fucking horseshit.

I mean, your neighbor or your cooky aunt can't be expected to do more than read headlines in the latest issue of O Magazine, or the pick up a few of the key words that scroll across the news ticker during the Today Show, but the first lady? Surely she has access to all the actual scientific data; surely she has staff people who can boil this down and give her the facts; surely she could consult with actual scientists and doctors who know what the fuck is up. But apparently not.

It's not that the first lady shouldn't care about making fat kids less fat, or that being fat isn't, generally and vaguely speaking, a potential contributor to health problems. But the problem lies in scaring people by talking about terrible diseases and death, and throwing around the word "epidemic." That's just dishonest, and it can be costly.

One recent study shows that the higher a patient’s body mass, the less respect doctors express for that patient. And the less respect a doctor has for a patient, says Dr. Mary Huizinga, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the less time the doctor spends with the patient and the less information he or she offers.

On the flipside of the health problems fatness actually creates is the stigma that fat people and parents of fat children have to live with. When we act as though fat people have a fucking problem, or are actually costing us money and time and resources, then we're making ourselves into a shittier society in general. And for what? Some might argue that social pressure is good and it's easy to imagine that it might be in some situations, but it also might have the exact opposite effect, by causing people to feel worse, and therefore eat more ice cream or avoid the gym or the doctor.

Fear-mongering over the effects of obesity - combined with liberally applying that term to people that do not fit within conventional or colloquial meanings of it - is not unlike the lies told about the safety of tobacco products: just because you can find someone who smokes 2 packs a day and lived to be 99 years old doesn't prove cigarettes are healthy. People deserve to have accurate information regardless, and inflating, conflating, twisting and spinning of facts shouldn't become acceptable because it's source is an apolitical national figure with wonderful intentions, instead of an industry baron looking to profit off your illness.

If being fat is a matter of personal responsibility - and it is - then that also, by definition, means it's none of your (or the government's) fucking business.