Where Have You Gone, Robert Earl Hughes?
Tim Cavanaugh | August 26, 2005, 3:04pm
Californians are fatter than ever, says a new study. Americans overall are even fatter than that, says another new study citing a 24.5 percent increase in the national average rate of obesity. While fat detectives look for the root causes, the obvious solution to this problem is simply to define fatness upwards. But more interesting than what's happening in the center of the bell curve is what this may portend for the outliers.
Simply put: Are we getting within range of producing a one-ton person? The goal may be nearer than you think. According to this list of fattest people in history, the current chart-topper, Flint, MI's Carol Yager (1960 - 1994), broke the scale at a peak weight of 1600 lbs. That's a mere 400 lbs. shy of the brass ring. With a larger and more receptive operating environment, more calorie-rich foods, and some cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs, is it possible for a motivated fatso to become history's first Ton of Fun?
Of course, this is just the short ton. You'll recall Austin Powers' description of Fat Bastard—'"He weighs a metric tonne"—a figure that, at 2,204+ lbs., is still beyond our reach. Nor should we forget H.G. Wells' warning against using "weight" as a euphemism for "fat" in his classic story "The Truth About Pyecraft." (I'm also a little skeptical of the above estimate for Carol Yager.) But what is America if not the land where everybody can dream big?
The real, anagrammatic, meaning of Robert Earl Hughes' name here.
Jennifer | August 27, 2005, 9:57am | #
How much contempt do you feel for other mentally ill people?
That depends. Is it something completely uncontrollable, like chemically-induced schizophrenia? At my last job I had a friend who was utterly miserable--she was in her fifties, and once upon a time had had a great, fulfilling job with an impressive salary, but she had been downsized over and over again until she was now stuck working at that underpaid hellhole of a place. And she had no family and few friends in Connecticut--what she really wanted to do was go to central Pennsylvania where her family and old friends were.
But get this: for all her low salary and nonexistant savings account she could have easily afforded to do so, thanks to the Connecticut housing bubble--her small, unremarkable house was worth something like $850,000, whereas in the part of PA where she wanted to live houses are still only $100,000.
"Sell your house!" I told her. "Sell your house, pay off the mortgage, pay the capital gains taxes, and you'll still have enough money left to buy four or five houses in Pennsylvania--live in one and rent out the others. Or hell, buy ONE house, put the rest of the money in the bank and live off the two-percent interest you'll get. You won't have a mortgage payment to worry about, after all." But she claimed she couldn't. Why not? Well, because her husband didn't want to move. And her husband hadn't had a job in umpty-squat years because, you see, he was just too depressed to go out and find one.
I don't and didn't buy that at all. The reason he was able to get away with being too depressed to do anything was because he had someone who made it possible for him to do nothing. I told her that I'd read about some director in Hollywood--I think David Lynch--who claimed he absolutely could NOT abide the smell of food, so he built his kitchen in a building separate from his house. Now, he has enough money to indulge this quirk, so more power to him--but if he suddenly lost his career and all his money and had to make do with one of our salaries, I think he'd discover that perhaps he COULD stand to be in a house where food is cooking, especially if the only alternative were starvation.
So when you're talking about people who are prone to weight gain, and who are blue enough that the only real pleasure they find in life comes from eating--yeah, I can sympathize. But even these people don't get fat to the point of immobility--the acts of going to their jobs, or going to the kitchen for food, or walking to the bathroom to take care of business, burns off at least a few calories. They'll still be fat, but they can get around. But to decide to do NOTHING but lie in bed and let somebody else do EVERYTHING for you--that's your own damned fault.
That thing I read about Walter Hudson said that one reason he was able to lose hundreds of pounds once he started trying was very simple--he started eating roughage, which stimulated more frequent bowel movements. Before that, he average one BM every six
months. The fecal matter in this guy's intestine, the day before a bathroom activity, probably weighed twice as much as I do. No
wonder he couldn't move--I'd find it hard to get around too, if my lower belly were weighed down with over 200 pounds of pure shit.
jimmyboy | August 27, 2005, 1:02pm | #
I wonder if it has occurred to some of you that there may well be a physical cause (e.g a bacterium) for the malady that expresses itself as obesity and diabetes. Twenty-five years ago people with ulcers were advised to make all sorts of dietetic and behavioral changes to alleviate their condition, and, to varying degrees, were held to be responsible for their condition. We now know that most ulcers are caused by bacteria, the principle exception being gastric ulcers caused by NSAID's, itself a physical (i.e. measurable, observable) cause.
Suppose in 20 years, we have discovered that diabetes and obesity--the endocrinological syndrome--is similarly caused. The best we can do right now is treat the symptoms, but treating the symptoms can undermine the process of discovery of the true causes of a disease.
Of course we don't know what the cause of obesity and diabetes is. But since most people find it disagreeable to look at a fat person, the tendency to moralize about the causes undesirable weight gain is hard to fight. This attitude reenforces the intellectual lethargy that inhibits researchers from even conceiving that it might be worthwhile to look for a physical cause.
You can dismiss this idea as merely a hunch, but here is why I believe this hunch to be worth serious consideration: first it is a matter of belief for me that everything that we experience can be explained physically. Behavior (such as why I would choose to watch a baseball today) is so complex that it is not worth the effort to study it. If you want to invoke the idea of "personal responsibility" for chiding me for watching he game and avoiding housecleaning or a hundred other socially approved ways of spending my time, go right ahead. But the functioning of my pancreas and the apparently related disorders in metabolism and resistance of cell membranes to the effects of insulin seem way way down on the hierarchy, at a level sufficiently fundamental that at least the possibility of some underlying biological or environmental cause ought to be investigated.
I speak from experience on this because I have watched my body decay out from under me as I have aged. Every attempt I make to lose weight and to control my glucose levels seems to elicit a response from my body that moves the goal further away. The doctors shrug the shoulders in resignation: "well, it is a degenerative disease", but go on to remind me in what often seems to be thinly veiled contempt, that I have brought this all upon myself, and that I am not doing enough. When a disease is characterized by its symptoms, and the symptoms are cast in behavioral terms, then you are caught in a circle. Because your symptoms are still there and because the symptoms are themselves the cause, by not alleviating the symptoms you have not cured yourself and you are therefore morally responsible for your disease. Though you may have tried hard, the outcomes are insufficient. End of discussion.
Combined with the obvious social disdain and moralizing about fat people, it can make for a very unpleasant life. But, to pound the horse again, it gives people a psychological investment in resisting the idea that obesity might actually, in point of fact, be a disease, and thereby undermines any serious attempt to examine the truth of this hypothesis.
