Chewing the fat...

I'm sure you've seen this on tv. Hopefully, just in commercials, because, if not, you're watching stupid tv. Says the guy who, though he hates them, watches many a reality show. Anyway, there's been a rash lately of tv's women (read: skinny things with surgically enhanced bodies), donning the "fat suit" to walk around in for a day so they can understand what it's like to be morbidly obese. Invariably, the commercials refer to the heartbreaking mistreatment they face via the stares and rude comments. How sad for them.

Of course, as I discovered, there's at least a small amount of backlash from the Overweight Community. Actually, I don't think its a community so much as a group of people who know each other from the all-you-can-eat bar at Furr's (I kid!), but you get the idea.

That got me to thinking, though. Is this the modern equivalent to white actors putting on "black-face"? Will we look back at the fat suit thing as some sort of minstrel show? I really doubt it. I think that this will pass on before it becomes anything big (ie: the source of a set of reality shows where people are forced to wear a fat suit for x amount of time to win a million dollars or something). In fact, I think its a good thing. Stay with me on this. Who makes fun of fat people most? Fat people? I think not (excluding comedians and bullies). Its skinny people who have no clue what it's like to be mocked because of your shape (though it makes little sense to me that models that look like skeletal 12-year old boys are supposed to be the epitome of beauty). It's the people who don't have to go to special stores to buy clothing (they can just go to the kids' section, if need be). They always say the best way to solve the problem of prejudice is education, don't they?

Then again, at the end of the day, most Americans DON'T get to take off their fat suits...