You Don't Know What You're Doing (Or Why You're Still Fat)

[RobertLevin]

(NOTE: PEOPLE WITH INTRACTABLE WEIGHT PROBLEMS THAT ARE CAUSED BY REAL ILLNESSES OR GENUINE CONGENITAL ABNORMALITIES ARE EXEMPTED FROM THE FOLLOWING DISCUSSION.)

Awhile back I wrote a short humor piece in which I poked fun at a grossly overweight woman.

The piece was called "Peggie" and it elicited a fair share of irate mail from women who identified with the title character.

"I hate you," went a typical response. "How could you write such hurtful trash? Do you have any idea what it's like to struggle all your life with an obesity problem? Do you know what it is to be forced to endure incessant jokes and insults, to torture yourself with one failed diet after another and to live with a constant sense of guilt and shame? How could you be so cruel and insensitive?"

Okay. I'll admit to bad taste (and, as several other readers felt the need to point out, to committing less than deathless prose as well), but I have to say that I remain unmoved by the suffering I'm accused of inflicting.

Why? Because the "obesity problem" of which my correspondents speak (and I'm including all of the emotional woes that attend it) is actually their solution to a deeper and more urgent problem. What's more, it's a solution that, to judge by their obvious absorption in it, is working very well for them.

Now in order to grasp what I'm driving at it is first necessary to acknowledge something about guilt and shame. To feel guilt and shame is built into our essence—it's a natural consequence of being mortal. Not only must we have done some nasty stuff to be in so much trouble but, unable to come up with a way to alter our situation, to change the given, we're incompetent where it matters most.

It's also necessary to remind ourselves that our natural feelings of guilt and shame, accompanied as they are by the sheer terror the fact of being mortal causes us, constitute an intolerable burden that must be relieved if we are to function in the world with even a modest degree of equanimity.

Finally, it's necessary to recognize the very last thing we ever want to recognize, since to recognize it undermines what we're trying to achieve: virtually everything we do is, in one way or another, designed to mollify our existential dread and anxiety. It is, in fact, precisely this need that makes the world go around.

Bearing such truths in mind, I'm saying that people with perpetual obesity issues are playing a game with themselves.

Look. One of the ways we accomplish the mitigation of our natural guilt and shame is by finding, and becoming obsessed with, other things to feel guilty and ashamed about, things that (to assure them an authentic gravity) are culturally certified as real and legitimate faults or deficiencies and which, at the same time, are POTENTIALLY REDEEMABLE, that are within our capacity to overcome or transcend. What we do is make THEM what is essentially wrong with us—indeed, we make them, in our minds, the very reason for the death sentence we've been handed. Implicitly, these acquired problems also embody a way to achieve our salvation. If they are what is fundamentally wrong with us, by defeating them we will be absolved of what is fundamentally wrong with us. If we still must die we will survive our death in heaven.

But here's the thing. If we succeed in beating the problem we've concocted for ourselves we're returned to where we began. Once the flush of victory wanes we discover that our underlying dilemma is still there, that we're left to nakedly confront our existential horrors once again.

So what do we do?

Well, if (and indulging, of course, an innate predilection) we've made weight our problem, and if, with dieting and exercise, we've managed to overcome this problem, what we do is find a reason to quit exercising, to go off our diet. Then what we do is renew our struggle and when the process has run its course again we repeat it.

We hold, that is, any permanent resolution of our weight problem in abeyance.

Yes, each time we gain weight again the pain and humiliation we experience is nothing short of devastating. But the degree of our anguish serves to validate the size and authenticity of our manufactured problem. In order to make it feel real and significant enough to work its purpose we need to experience real torment. Finally, however, for all of the misery it causes us, our weight problem functions as the anodyne for a larger misery. The more we flagellate ourselves with it the more we suppress our fundamental dread and anxiety and the more we achieve a measure of peace on the level that matters most to us.

Say all that to say that, whether or not I intended it as such, I think fat people should regard my story as a gift.

[glatt]

This one has only been posted 4 times at other forums, unlike your last post.

For your next post, which I assume will be in 2007 or 2008, give us something original.

[Undertoad]

Dude posted the original story here, and at 409 other places as well.

[glatt]

The real Robert Levin. He appears to actually get his stuff printed.

[Trilby]

Well, it worked. I went to the site and read Peggie.

He's educated, literate, a writer (and, therefore, a talker, hopefully unnecessarily verbose), an elitist, probably Jewish and definitely mean-spirited with a side order of HugeEgo that no one can explain. I want him for my boyfriend.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by Brianna

I want him for my boyfriend.

What do you expect your boyfriend to do with him?

Well, I DIDN'T go to any of the sites and read "Peggy." The dude turned me off in a major fashion by jumping on this board and whining about the responses to something that he had posted elsewhere (410 elsewheres, apparently). Why doesn't he go post his explanation at the scene of his crimes? Did he get banned from these other sites? And what makes him such an expert on why people have trouble with their weight? Is HE a 400 pound lunker who struggles with yo-yo dieting? Is he a psychologist or something?

Frankly, I couldn't care less why he felt the need to write "Peggy," and if there actually is a real Peggy, I hope she steps on him and squashes him like the insect he appears to be.

Welcome to the cellar, blubberpuss.

[fargon]

I think he can, KISS MY BIG FAT A$$

Save the whales, harpoon a fat chick

[Kagen4o4]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA what a loser!!! no one will listen to what he says unless he posts it in every forum he can. rekon he actually checks all the replies too??


HEY ROBERT! GET A DOG UP YA! :SPAM1

[lumberjim]

i don't have any problem with is posting unexclusively. as long as it's his stuff.....writers need feedback. what's the problem? i think it's kind of cool that he takes the time to 'self publish' in this manner.

on the topc of what he writes, i think he's got a very good point. i think i must admit to doing almost exactly what he describes. it's a straw man of a sort. overeating is an escape. as is playing video games, reading books obsessively, vegging out in front of the tv, etc. i do at least two of the things i listed. i am overweight. it comes down to basic disciplne. if i was really on top of my life, i'd take care of the things i put off, handle problems immediatley, and just maybe, i wouldnt sabotage my ego by being a big fat guy. It feels to me like the laundry piling up, the cat box that i need to change, the basement i need to clean out, gutters that need love, yard upkeep, a sagging fence that needs to be replaced and all of that other shit lives in the same place in my head.

As for his 'peggie' post being a favor to fat people, i disagree. that was just humor at the expense of fat chicks, and irrelevant at the end of the day. this post is much better, and brings focus to the issue some fatties have. I've spent a fair amount of minutes in my life wondering why i do carry the extra weight. is it stress? depression? low self esteem? none of these sound right. It makes more sense that i need to have a visible flaw to obscure the potential of deeper issues. Other than being chubby, i'm actually pretty well off.

I am respected and appreciated at work, people like me in general(i'm nowhere near as cocky and obnoxious in real life....at least you can see me smiling when i'm poking fun, so people don't get bent like they do on here) i take good care of my family, and i enjoy life. BUT. i'm genetically predisposed to being heavy, and i run with it. now, i'm not REALLY obese, i can run, and am active....but i could easily stand to lose 80 pounds.

i'm not saying this guy;s post is going to change my life, but I DO find it to be helpful. thanks, robertL

[RobertLevin]

Thank YOU, Lumberjim. I'd like to point out, if it isn't clear, that I described the story as a "gift" to fat people precisely because by making them feel bad it shores up the "legitimacy" of their weight problem and serves, thereby, to help them keep their deeper issues remote.

[lumberjim]

oh, right. gotcha.

by the way, what's your damage? ( not being rude, just wondering. seems like this wouldn't be on your mind if you hadn't experienced a bit of self discovery along these lines)

[mrnoodle]

[Kagen4o4]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

nice use of emoticon