Fat Tax ~ An Excerpt from Fat Girl

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!