A Hug for the Fat Lady

A long time ago, in a small Western town crowded tight against a mountain, a country amusement park had a laughing fat lady as an attraction. 

Mechanical though she was, she was an over-sized puppet, swinging side to side, her painted face and rosy cheeks ever framing her jolly smile. She had a loud and piercing laugh that could be heard blocks away in the small farming town that was her home. 

In those days, half a century away, many generational wars ago, she was meant to symbolize the rollicking fun everyone could have in this quaint old-time way of having family fun in the Fun House she stood in front of. Admission just ten cents. 

You see, the Fun House fat lady was always jolly because it infected everyone else with fun. Her laughter, ever present, was the first machine turned on before the park opened, and the last turned off when the tired guests left in the wee hours of those Summer nights. 

Fat. Jolly. Woman. What young kids learned from her, among the bumper cars, wooden roller coaster, and painted merry-go-round horses, was what...exactly?

Was it aspiration? Mirror? Or just grand fun, visual in her billowing pink polkadot skirt, loudly audible with her "ha-ha-ha,” smack dab in the central intersection of the amusement park midway? 

What the kids never saw was the forced hurt smiles of the overweight moms walking quickly past her with their strollers and over-stuffed picnic baskets. 

We have come a long ways since then. We no longer think of overweight women as jolly. We no longer feel it proper to point fingers and giggle. We no longer allow kids to say someone is fat...at least not loudly. 

Yet we resist sharing our humanity with those much larger than us. 

We still are slow to invite them into our homes. We have never gotten over the prejudice that somehow these women (and men) who struggle with obesity, have somehow brought it upon themselves due to imagined character flaws. 

We have a lot to learn about the common compassion we all expect as fellow travelers on this earth. We have so much work to do to see obese people as humans who want lives of beauty for themselves, and incredible success for their children — just like the rest of us. 

Strip away the weight, are they really that different from ourselves? Is the cultural difference we feel in their presence any different than what we feel for people of different colors, of obviously different religions?

Excess weight is not a difference in character, nor a difference in life dreams. Our needs are all the same.

Would it help you feel that reality better if you knew obesity is a disease — a disease not well enough understood by science to say they know its causes? Or its cure? But science does know it’s a runaway disease. 

Make no mistake about it, the individuals who struggle with obesity every day are not jolly objects upon which to project laughter nor shame. And you don’t need to hug the Fun House fat lady to show your lack of prejudice. 

Meet them as they are — people. Help them blossom. 

Join them as the race of people who exist under the same sky, rejoice in the same Summer warmth, and love under the same Autumn moon. They are one and the same as you. 

The UnDiet Project ? 2016 Boyd Jentzsch. All Rights Reserved.

PS: Some BODY IMAGE Resources of Note and Value:

The Fear of Fat - The Real Elephant in the Room | Kelli Jean Drinkwater | TEDxSydney

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXGwJevjOfs

Living without shame: How we can empower ourselves | Whitney Thore | TEDxGreensboro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaXBYcfVYZM

I Am Fat - How to Be Confident and Love Your Body at Any Size | Victoria Welsby | TEDxStanleyPark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Ml3yr32bU

Body Positivity or Body Obsession? Learning to See More & Be More | Lindsay Kite | TEDxSaltLakeCity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDowwh0EU4w