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The Fat Guy on the Plane

An online posting about a guy who supposedly had to suffer through a flight sitting next to an obese man has gone viral. Like many things that go viral online, it’s bullshit.

Mood music:

Rich Wisken blogged that he paid an extra £13.50 for an exit-row seat, expecting to travel from Perth to Sydney with plenty of room. But he found himself seated beside an obese man. Wisken said “Jabba the Hutt” smelled like old cheese and flight attendants paid him little mind when he requested another seat.

People ate his story up, because on the Internet rage trumps truth.

Tony Posnanski came forward, claiming to be the obese man Wisken sat beside. Posnanski wrote of how he used to weigh more than 400 pounds and how he used to buy two seats on flights. This flight, he was thrilled because he could fit in one seat after losing 200-plus pounds. He said he takes care not to be offensive, showering and applying deodorant copiously. Posanski said Wisken shouldn’t have been offended since “I bought him THREE drinks just to shut him up.” He said Wisken bragged about being a famous blogger who would write about the flight. “I always laugh when people say they are famous bloggers,” Posnanski wrote.

For all I know, he’s full of shit, too. I’m skeptical of just about everything online these days.

But this sordid tale hits me where I live, for two reasons:

  • I travel often enough to encounter people like Wisken on a regular basis. Guys like him annoy me more than the overweight people I am often seated beside. The sense of entitlement people of his ilk possess makes me want to puke.
  • I’m overweight.

There’s often the assumption that someone is fat because they don’t care about hygiene and lack self control. People like that surely exist, but there are many heavy people who struggle with weight for myriad reasons.

My weight has always gone up and down. I’m nowhere close to my heaviest weight, but I’m not at my lightest, either. Some of that is because of a life-long struggle with depression-fueled binge eating. Much of it is because as a kid I was sick with severe Crohn’s Disease and the amount of Prednisone I’ve had to ingest permanently damaged my metabolism.

I’m not sedentary. I’ve always been a vigorous walker. I’m hard-charging in my work and I’m a busy family man. I’m always on the move.

Except for a recent slip, I’ve spent six years avoiding flour and sugar and putting portions on a scale.

Still, I’m not thin, and I don’t lament it. I’m kind of proud of my broken body for surviving so much and still affording me a full life.

I don’t lift weights or run marathons. But I’m a survivor with my own brand of toughness.

If you sit next to me on a plane, you might be annoyed that I need more room than you do. You may steam internally about what a loser I must be to let myself go.

But you don’t know me. Just as Wisken didn’t know the man seated next to him.

Obese
The picture Wisken posted of the obese man he shared a flight with. According to Posnanski, that wasn’t him and the photo was faked.

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Was Overweight News Anchor Bullied?

Ever since I wrote that post on how people misuse the word bully I’ve been soul searching. I felt as though I had done the very thing I was being critical of, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what.

Then I found this post from 2012.

I was angry that someone told an overweight news anchor she’s a bad role model for children. As someone who has had a lifelong struggle with weight, I seethed. I praised the anchor, Jennifer Livingston, for standing up to the guy on air.

I still hold a lot of the same feelings. There are a variety of reasons people struggle with weight, and while there’s a lot of obesity fueled by laziness and bad behavior out there, I know many overweight people — myself included — who are anything but lazy. I also believe being a good role model to children is about a lot more than appearance.

Looking back at the on-air editorial Livingston made, the whole tirade is framed around her standing up to her bully. She talks about an “attack that’s not OK,” something that shouldn’t be allowed.

But while he attacked her and that was wrong, was he really being a bully?

Let’s look at some definitions:

  • American Heritage Dictionary: “To force one’s way aggressively or by intimidation”
  • Oxford Dictionaries Online: “Use superior strength or influence to intimidate (someone), typically to force him or her to do what one wants”
  • Merriam-Webster: “To intimidate by an overbearing swaggering demeanor or by threats”
  • Macmillan: “To frighten or hurt someone who is smaller or weaker than you”
  • Wikipedia: “The use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power.
  • Stopbullying.gov: “Unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. … Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.”

A lot of dictionaries note that to be a bully, you have to repeat these actions over time. The writer definitely insulted Livingston. His wording bordered on cruel. She’s not out of line to feel attacked.

But, as far as we know, the guy hasn’t repeatedly contacted her to keep the insults going, to get her to do what he wants, which is to lose weight or get off camera. He merely stated his opinion and moved on.

He wrote to Livingston:

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.

He makes narrow-minded judgements. But if we used that as a metric, we’d all be bullies.

If I were Livingston, I would have told him:

  • He doesn’t know me well enough to call my obesity a choice.
  • There’s more to being a role model than appearance. If appearance made the difference, Winston Churchill would have been denied his rightful, heroic place in history.
  • Overweight people often hate to see themselves on TV. Making a career in television despite appearance is a form of courage in itself.

But after reading all these definitions, I wouldn’t have called him a bully.

Watch the video and judge for yourselves.

Buford gives Baljeet a wedgie

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Chris Christie’s Obesity Isn’t the Issue

This morning I caught MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which was looking at N.J. governor Chris Christie’s obesity and whether it makes him unqualified to be president someday.

Mood music:

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I’ve struggled with obesity in the past. Some of the struggle was the result of being on Prednisone, which stretched my appetite to horrific levels. I would work out to try to control the weight gain, but it wouldn’t last long. I have friends who are far more disciplined with their workout regimens than I could ever be. They tend to hold the belief that there are few legitimate excuses for being fat, that most of the typically given reasons are the talk of lazy people who need to grow a set of balls.

Most of my struggle, though, was because I was a binge eater who lusted after junk food as an alcoholic does vodka and whiskey. Eventually I had to quit flour and sugar to deal with the problem.

My personal experience makes me prickly toward those who criticize someone’s weight problem. I don’t see the subject as black and white. In my own case, there have been periods where my weight ballooned because I was simply stuffing myself with junk all the time. But there have been other times when the complications of Crohn’s Disease, a bad back and other maladies forced me to derail my fitness program.

Let’s look at the governor for a moment: That he’s obese is not debatable. Pictures of him standing next to a fit President Obama in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy are almost freakish looking, though when you put a fat person next to a thin one, the watcher’s perception is knocked off balance. Do I think he’d live longer if he lost weight? Sure.

But I don’t believe for a second that people should judge a candidate on his or her girth.

Being overweight comes with health risks, but so does being underweight. The diseased and incapacitated come in all shapes and sizes, as do the more sturdy among us. The dumbest and smartest among us are fat, thin and in-between.

We’ve had presidents who were obese. William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland come to mind. History has handed both men a mixed assessment. We’ve had physically fit presidents with mixed records, too. George W. Bush was and still is a fitness fanatic. JFK looked glamorous and healthy, but he was sick most of his life and landed on death’s doorstep more than once before he was president. Addison’s disease gave his skin an odd, bronze color that he managed to pass off as a healthy tan. Then there was Teddy Roosevelt, who was both an athlete and advocate of “the strenuous life” but was also a glutton with some serious girth. Despite his health problems, including the weight and serious childhood asthma, he managed to do pretty much everything and carved a lasting legacy.

The point is that a person’s physical appearance and imperfect health should not disqualify them from anything, including public service.

I admire and am inspired by friends who have lost weight after embracing intense workout regimens. They also happen to have razor-sharp minds. But I don’t know if I’d vote for them if they ran for the White House.

I’ve accomplished much during periods of obesity and have failed during times of top physical form, when I would walk four miles a day no matter how dangerous the weather was at the time. I’ve also had successes as a thinner guy and failures as a fat guy.

We tend to oversimplify things when the talk turns to weight. We do so at our peril.

Christie

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Was She Bullied, or Did the Truth Cut Too Deep?

A good friend disliked yesterday’s post, “The Fat Lady Sang, And It Was Beautiful.” His main criticism was that I centered it on my own weight battles, which I traced back to Crohn’s Disease, Prednisone and addiction.

Mood music:

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Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part:

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.

After reading the email she received, Livingston then took her critic apart, noting that he doesn’t know her well enough to pass judgement. She also accused him of bullying her. I applauded her for doing this because I felt her critic wrongly assumed she and other overweight people simply made a choice to be obese. My argument was that weight trouble can come from a variety of factors and that this guy was out of line.

My friend felt my response was based on assumptions and that framing my complaint in the context of my past issues with Prednisone and Crohn’s Disease didn’t jibe with the news woman’s situation. “Does the anchor woman share those same issues?” he asked. If she doesn’t and her obesity is simply a matter of her not taking care of herself, he said, my comments were off the mark.

“I also have issues with those that view the original comment as bullying,” my friend continued. “Some view things through the eyes of responsibility. Others just want to place blame and make excuses.”

For all we know, Jennifer Livingston falls into the latter camp, he said, concluding, “What you wrote is representative of not having all the facts.”

I agree that many people make excuses for being overweight and that their real problem is laziness and gluttony. There’s a joke making the rounds where a fat guy tells his doctor, “The problem is obesity runs in my family.” The doctor responds, “No, the problem is that no one in your family runs.”

When someone lets their body go to crap because they don’t feel like doing what’s good for them, they are being bad role models, especially when it comes to their children and how they’re allowed to develop the same bad habits. I took one such parent to task for that a while back in “When Parents Fail.”

Unfortunately, a lot of people who work hard to be good role models and take care of themselves end up overweight anyway. One friend of mine gained a lot of weight because he developed a foot infection that left him unable to do much physical activity.

As for Livingston, I don’t know why she’s overweight, and I don’t care. These days, a lot of people are hired to anchor news shows because they look like supermodels. That Livingston was able to break through that and succeed in the industry speaks volumes. TV media is a cut-throat field and you don’t succeed unless you work your ass off. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an example of a good role model.

Livingston is also a good role model for showing that you don’t have to be someone else’s idea of perfect to be on TV or to do a job. It’s not just men who come in all shapes and sizes. Society says that women must be skinny to an unhealthy degree and look perfect. She’s not perfect, but that doesn’t mean everything she does is wasted.

Actually, I don’t think perfect role models exist. People do big things and overcome obstacles in ways that inspire others to do better. But they make big mistakes along the way. It’s called being human.

Finally, let’s look at Livingston’s use of the word bully. That’s what she called Kenneth Krause, the man who sent her the email. To me, a bully taunts you with names, making sure everyone in the vicinity can hear it, and makes threats. Krause did none of these things. He called her a bad role model for being obese and called it a choice. Obviously, I disagree.

This guy was mean, superior, judgmental, disrespectful, and prejudiced. He doesn’t think fat people should be on the air.

Fuck that.

But was Krause a bully? He didn’t threaten her or call her names in earshot of others, which is how I picture the act of bullying. I don’t think he’s a bully per se. But consider these definitions Erin (my wife and editor) found:

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a bully as “a person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.”

The fact that Krause only wrote in once probably doesn’t fit, but he was cruel and overbearing, especially to someone he thought was weaker. And he never apologized, saying instead that she should follow his advice.

More important, though, to bully, says AHD, is “to treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner”; “to make (one’s way) aggressively.” Krause did treat her in an overbearing way and he was aggressive about trying to get his own way: that she lose weight.

No matter where Livingston’s weight problems come from, what Krause did was wrong.

Disagree if you wish. But that’s my position.

Jennifer Livingston

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The Fat Lady Sang, and It Was Beautiful

I just read about some asshole who told an overweight news anchor that she’s a bad role model for children. As someone who has had a lifelong struggle with weight, this hits me like a punch to the gut.

Mood music:

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Jennifer Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part: “Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.”

On air, she took this guy apart piece by piece. As someone who struggles with weight and self esteem over appearance, I applaud Livingston. Here’s the TV segment:

Is Livingston overweight? She says she is, and I guess appearance speaks for itself, though I feel like a shit for saying so. But when I look at her, I see nothing wrong. Here’s a woman who has succeeded on television despite the demand these days that women on TV be skinny everywhere but in the chest and behind. She’s got guts. She’s real and, in my estimation, a pretty good role model for kids.

Kids live in a particularly cruel world, where classmates call them names over weight and appearance, among other things. It’s always been this way and, I think, always will. I’ve lived it. Sometimes the name-calling stops once you hit high school; other times it gets worse. Either way, kids that age become obsessed about how they fit in, and  that’s where those who don’t feel like they fit in turn to drugs, alcohol and food to escape. Some, like me, survive it and find a way to thrive in the world. Others don’t, dying from their addictions and depression that become so overwhelming that they choose to end it.

What infuriated me most about the letter writer’s rebuke was how he called obesity “one of the worst choices a person can make.” That’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

Sure, we all make bad choices in life. We choose not to exercise and take on weight as a result. We make bad career and financial choices, which can lead to addictive behavior, including overeating. But nobody chooses to be fat. Nobody rationally decides to grow obese. The extra flesh is often the result of many things.

For me, it was a childhood of Prednisone intake for Crohn’s disease that drove the appetite into overdrive after periods of not being allowed any food at all. By adulthood, food had become the focus of my addictive impulses. I binged my way to 280-plus pounds, not because I made a choice to be fat, but because I couldn’t  back away from a binge. The more I ate, the more I felt like a filthy, sub-human slave.

A choice? Fuck you, pal.

There are plenty of fat people in history who became the ultimate role models. For me, Leslie West of the band Mountain, creator of some of the fattest, most powerful riffs ever, is one of mine. He has lost the weight in more recent years but has maintained his fat sound, which I mean as a compliment. There’s also Winston Churchill. His portly appearance didn’t matter to a country that needed his leadership in the face of Nazi aggression.

I’ve maintained a 65-pound weight loss for more than three years now by cutting flour and sugar from my diet and weighing out most of my meals. But I’ll never be thin. I continue to be what one of my kids described recently as “wide.” Sometimes I wish I were thinner, but I care less about that as I get older. What’s more important to me is mental clarity, and my food choices are driven by what’ll get me there, not what’ll get me to a 32-inch waistline.

As a weight-challenged person, I now have a new hero: Jennifer Livingston.