An Excerpt from Fat Girl, available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Girl-K-L-Montgomery-ebook/dp/B00UUMA1MK/
April
17, 2014
The
Reinvention by Claire Sterling
Did everyone celebrate the National Holiday this week? Hmmm,
everyone is suddenly scrambling to check her calendar to figure what in the
world I’m talking about. Now you’re all looking at me like I have two heads.
Um, do you remember this past Tuesday? It was Tax Day! April 15th?
Ringing a bell with anyone? It may not be a holiday for you
and me, but it sure is for the Internal Revenue Service. I see them doing a New
Year’s Eve style countdown with party hats and noisemakers. Probably confetti
too.
I had the obligatory Tax Day Fight with my Soon To Be
Ex-Husband the other day, followed by an entire bottle of wine, so I certainly
feel like my festivities were complete. To commemorate the occasion, I was
thinking about that famous quote from Benjamin Franklin: “In this world nothing
can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” You know, I believe old Ben
Franklin and I would have gotten on just fine. We both seem to be a just a wee bit
cynical. However, I submit that there is one more thing that could be added to
his List of Sure Things: Fat Girls.
Nothing is certain in this world except death, taxes, and
fat girls.
Of course, Fat Men are also fairly prevalent, but they don’t
typically attract much attention. They’re sort of relegated to the background
of beer commercials and sit coms, unless, of course, they happen to be
particularly amusing or jolly, for example: John Candy, Chris Farley, Kevin
James, or Santa Claus. When we talk about Fat Shaming and the Atrocities of
Obesity, much of the time we’re thinking about women. Plus, if a fat man
happens to have moobs due to excess estrogen, we sort of treat them like Fat
Girls anyway. So we’re basically talking about what’s become an Epidemic of Fat
Girls.
So, if Fat Girls are such a sure thing, why hasn’t our
government figured out how to tax us? Can you imagine how much money there is
to be made off of fat people? Look at the diet industry, for example. They’re
raking in a staggering $61 BILLION a year; that’s with a “B,” folks! Why can’t
good ole Uncle Sam figure out a way to capitalize on this kind of Epic Moolah
-- and not by just taxing the hell out of the weight loss industry? There has
to be a way to cut out the middle man and get those greedy red, white, and blue
hands all over that green!
There’s been a few methods proposed by our infinitely wise
(*snicker*) lawmakers about how to accomplish this task. One method is to raise
health insurance premiums for the obese. Shouldn’t fat people pay more to carry
health insurance than average people do? I mean, it stands to reason we’re more
at risk for medical issues and premature death, so shouldn’t we pay more? By
that argument, naturally we’d also have to charge more for smokers, drinkers,
roller coaster riders, bullfighters, skydivers, people dumb enough to travel to
the Middle East, and Black Friday Shoppers.
Method #2 is to tax unhealthy food. Like a Twinkie Tax, a
tax on soft drinks, or maybe Ben and Jerry’s. They say that taxing cigarettes
has helped to curb smoking-related deaths, but I am ever hopeful that people
just got so disgusted by the idea of coating their lungs with tar that it lost
its appeal. Sadly, that is almost certainly not the case. While cigarettes are
exorbitantly expensive and addictive, new smokers are still born every day. I’m
not sure why they think this method would work with unhealthy food items. After
all, the idea of coating your arteries with thick, yellow plaque is
exponentially more appealing than the tar thing. Plus, fried stuff just tastes
a hell of a lot better!
Unfortunately, the simple fact is that as much as obesity
costs the country in medical expenses, it also makes corporations and
entrepreneurs a lot of money. Someone is making millions off all these new
flavors of Oreos I see every damn time I go to the grocery store. And who do
you think is buying all those Oreos? Um, Fat Girls, that’s who.
And what about the plus-sized clothing; bigger, sturdier
chairs and beds; larger, roomier cars and trucks; and even wider coffins
required for our burgeoning populace? Those industries are capitalizing on our
expanding waistlines in a Very Big Way, pardon the pun. Not to mention the fact
that diabetes supplies, cholesterol drugs, CPAP machines, and all manners of
weight loss aids are flying off shelves. Fat Girls pour billions of dollars
into the economy, plus we don’t live as long off our pensions and social
security. I think you could make the argument that Fat Girls help the economy,
not hurt it.
So remind me again why we have such a thing as Fat Shaming?
Yeah, that’s right: muffin tops and cottage-cheese thighs are pretty unpleasant
to look at. Maybe we should just tax unsightly body parts instead. I guess this
year as I suck it up and file my taxes like a dutiful citizen, I should at
least be grateful to not be paying a tax for my fat ass and thunder thighs.
God bless America!
