NwhyC

folks, it’s official: I’m moving to New York. I agreed to sign a lease at 148 Degraw, Brooklyn, NY starting June 1. Wish me some huge-ass luck.

Good article by Paul Campos over at the Guardian regarding the ‘obesity epidemic’, or whatever they’re calling it these days.

The disgust the thin upper classes feel for the fat lower classes has nothing to do with mortality statistics and everything to do with feelings of moral superiority. Precisely because Americans are so repressed about class issues, the disgust the (relatively) poor engender in the (relatively) rich must be projected on to some other distinguishing characteristic.

His emphasis on his facts of fat-related health issues is a bit off - anti-fat rhetoric is fucked up and bigoted regardless of the health effects of fat - but the general sentiment of this article is dead on. Campos’s assertion that the current popluar obsession with fat is a reflection of our collective guilt as a hyper-consumerist nation opens up a number of other questions: Are the anti-corporate (anti-corruption) and anti-fat obsessions two sides of the same national guilt, projected onto the public and the personal, respectively? Or are we somehow turning inwards for control when we as citizens feel less and less in control ‘out there’, whether that be as a result of terrorism within our borders or the (apparent) disconnect between the ‘will of the people’ and the choices of our government?