Theodore Roosevelt, the third Face on Mt. Rushmore, sits a lot further back than the other faces on the mountain. There is only 30 feet from the front of his face to the canyon behind the mountain carving, which gave the sculptor some moments of anxiety, should an accident occur while carving the face.
How carefully the carvers delineated the steel rimmed glasses of this monumental figure, who in life was repeatedly scorned for his poor vision, ridiculed by friends and family for his “personal weakness’. If he were alive today, how would he react to the admissions of many of us Americans to our weakness, and how we are confronted by others?
We’re fat.
Yup, we’re real porkers. Obese, plump, pigeon breasted, big hipped, bubble butted just shy of Jobba the Hutt F-A-T!
Oh, we worked at it, hard. In trying to eat right, we consumed mass quantities of pasta (the Mediterranean diet), chocolate (for the anti-oxidants) good carbs, and protein shakes that are as tasty as library paste.Now, we could model for Peter Paul Reubens, if it were only the 1600’s.
In the olden days (about 20 years ago) fat people were thought of as “jolly”. A woman said,”Odd, I don’t remember being funny when I weighed 127 lbs…I do remember being popular, but I thought it was my youth and long, blonde hair.”Now, she’s “jolly”, too.
That was in the days before “The Standard”: the “standard” by which we are all judged. Who does this “judging”? Is it some snotty prig, like on “American Idol”?. No, it’s THEM: the unseen, unknown ones who determine our life styles, looks manners and morals.
Not long ago, there was a letter to the editor of a small town college paper from a male student, bitterly denouncing the fat girls on campus. He inferred they should go somewhere else, maybe to another school, to end the eye pollution from their presence in his world.
It would make a great Robin Williams movie…”Fat Reservation…Where Murder is OK, but Fat Gets You Life Without Parole!” Robin could play a fat convict, with padding of course…he’s already funny. Kathy Bates could play the evil female fatty. Dressed in a burkah, she is as guilty as Charlie Manson of not living up to “The Standard”. The guards in charge would live in fear of catching “fat cooties” shed by the inmates. The dialog would be hilarious, and could result in a Standard –size Oscar.
Even First Lady Michelle Obama is buying into The Standard. She supports fighting childhood obesity, a worthy cause, to be sure. But when the teachers get out their lesson plans, and the phrase “Obese child” comes up, the offenders in every classroom will be singled out, stared down, pointed at and bullied with the merciless cruelty children are so skilled at…check out the child suicide statistics for verification. There they will stand, hit by the glaring light of Presidential disapproval.
A proposition: suppose “The Standard” be imposed on the Standard Bearers. Your weight and cholesterol levels are normal, fine, but, are you kind? You wear a size -0-, and the only food you ate was a lettuce leaf last Tuesday, great, but have you helped your fellow man on the road of life? NO??? Off to exile on the Island of Hate for you, bucky.
You are what you eat? Have a big glass of the Milk of Human Kindness.
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