CannonBall!

When I was a, moderately smaller wee monster, on family summer outings to the community swimming pool, one of my favorite moves was a staple of fat boys at pools everywhere. The infamous Cannonball. Get as much air as you can off the deck, grab your knees, and everyone in the immediate vicinity gets wet on impact. Good Times. In that vein here's a random splash of hits that have caught my attention recently. 

There's been a lot of excellent word smithing going on in the 'Spere of late. The kind that has you nodding your head as you read it, shouting 'Yes!' at the machine sitting in front of you, or on the verge of breaking-down with it's heart breaking sadness or the rage inducing pointlessness of societal attitudes that make it necessary. 

Case in point; The, ever excellent, Lesely at Fatshionista sends up a post about what it means to be an obese child. As is common with 'Obesity Epidemic' rhetoric, the medical community, media concerns, politicians -basically anyone on the street with an opinion and the compulsion to express it- tend to talk about fat people as if we weren't in the room. As if adults being discussed, like children, have no input in a conversation about them. Again, these are adults writing their recollections of childhood. How much worse is it for actual children. Or, perhaps more accurately, how much worse does it promise to be if certain initiatives prove unable to disentangle morality from body weight / body weight from health. How positive and lasting will their experiences be when how they feel about what's being done TOO them is deemed completely irrelevant. The common sentiment? They're kids, they don't know what's good for them. 

And that's kind of odd when you consider it's coming from a generation practically pathological about not being anything like their own parents. A generation who can tell you exactly how the trauma's of their own 'draconian childhoods' have deprived them of complete and whole 'functionality'. They're now so myopically focused on being 'buds' with their children that whole generations have grown up, virtually, without parents. Now, of course, they just have to 'engage'. It's an epidemic after all. So they must be sure, by any means necessary, that The Children (tm) don't end up like those Fatty-fatty Boomba's on TV. 'Cause that'll kill 'um quiq. Erybody says so. Even teh Doktor who's been tellin' us th same ting fr yers. And it's Helthy. So Jus Do It (tm). Mmmkay?'

Previous to Lesley's missive pointing out what should be obvious, Living~400 came in with what some in Fat Health Skepticism might call unimaginable. That would be the positive aspects of being fat (Now begins the screaming, the tooth gnashing. . .) and the fact that Fat ≠ Diabetic (. . . The taring out of hair). It's really strange to me how people can acknowledge or accept that being differently abled can empower or impel some people to advancement. How being blond, smart, charismatic, shorter than average, or even not beautiful by societies standards, in some people, can impart advantage. But fat? No. Not ever. Yeah, now tell me about how 'that doesn't mean you don't like fat people. After all, some of your best friends are fat (Which, of course, means that every 5Lb. loss on their part is celebrated with trumpets and flights of dayglo-white doves. 'Cause it's so inspiring. Non-weight loss 'centric achievements? Yeah, that's nice, wev).   

Huffpo fronts an article on binge eating disorder and the lack of respect it gets as, yah know, an actual  eating disorder. TimeMag grudgingly hints at the possibility that calories in - might not equal calories out for some because, *gobsmacked-amazement*, people are different and, *stunned-incredulity*, digestion is a, strangely complex, process. Alert the. . . Press. . . Wait. 

Meanwhile, at the NYTimes, we get a fascinating pictorial [VERY SFW and NON-triggering, but still weird] on what people will do to themselves in the name of 'Beauty'. Or was that acceptability? Maybe improvement. . . Competition? Anyway, the Author / Photographer says that he conceived the project when he noticed that people around the world where starting to appear homogenized. That 'Beautiful people' in various countries are starting to look the same as those anywhere else. In other words 'Beauty' is becoming 'Common'. Makes you wonder what the next 'beauty' trend will be and how much surgical intervention will be required to achieve it.  

What strange creatures these humans be.  

Muzak Therapy: 

NIN / The Good Soldier