The whole weight issue is difficult for me.

First, I’m a diabetic. Too much weight puts a load on my pancreas and I start to feel sick. So there’s a sound medical reason for me to be concerned.

Second, I live in a society which is always trying to stuff me with junk and rarely providing me anything healthy to eat for a reasonable price. Good food costs more than junk. Go shopping if you don’t believe me.

Third, I’ve come to realize that while there are dietary decisions that I can make, I’m not fully in control of this issue due to other factors like my mental illness and my diabetes. I’ve lost a lot of weight in the last year and put only some of it back. The whole “it’s entirely your choice” business is just another way for some people to avoid realizing that they’ve contributed to the widening national sickness with their negative messages. Many obese people that I know have made repeated and honest efforts to take the damaging excess weight off. They don’t fail just because of decisions: they fail because of the lack of positive support and identity provided to them by others as well as medical complications.

Fourth, I was disturbed to learn that by current standards of “a decent weight”, Marilyn Monroe would be considered overweight. It seems to me that the line is being drawn way too low and that only draws more people into a collective misery where they are ripe for exploitation.

Here’s another interesting fact: in the days when the working class stuck to the fields, it was the fashion for the wealthy to stay indoors so that they could maintain a pale complexion.

With the rise of factories and the subsequent loss of the keynote brown of the farmers, the wealthy started appearing with tans they’d acquired in the South of France.