Yep. Those diseases are actually named after Venus, the goddess, so it was kind of inevitable.

Well, I'm not sure I accept your premise, seeing as there are many causes of fatness and weight gain. But let's say the cause in case A was overeating; you still don't know anything about why it might be hard for that person to lose the weight, if he or she wanted to. If part of what makes fat so appalling to you is…

The shape of a person's body is morally neutral, like hair color.

— to shame people like that, not anyone, ever, for any reason. Shaming people for what their bodies are like is wrong. That's all.

Neither do I. Depression is common out there. For some people, it can make it hard to eat at all. For others, it can contribute to overeating. (Still others have no symptoms related to food, of course.) I bring it up as something else that is common, can contribute to disordered eating, and that is certainly itself…

But plenty have depression. Being shamed can easily make that worse.

YES. YES YES YES YES.

The first rule of the patriarchy is that when you DO tell people you are in Rape Club, a shocking percentage of people won't care, and some of them will want in.

And this is the sealion version of the dog eating the ice cream scoop off the little kid's cone.

And I get worked up over the ablist crap that happens in and around them. Urrrrrrr

I'm agreeing with you! I'm just worked up and doing some table pounding. Ahem.

Good heavens, folks. Being slim and fit isn't healthy "forever." We are all going to die. Life, even fit healthy long life, is fatal. And expensive.

True enough. I don't know how to do the math, but I've never seen anyone try it.

Somehow I never hear the calculation of how much 10, 20, 30 additional years of being alive will cost for those who don't die prematurely of obesity-related illnesses. That's a lot of check ups, flu, dental appointments, and geriatric care!

Aaaargh. Glad to hear she's okay. Been there, and it's horrible.

MY GOD, YOU'RE RIGHT. Combined with the Oxbridge Stutter, it's redeemable for a Nobel Prize.

See also "Valley Girl" talk ... which is as much Surfer Dude as anything else. The minute adolescent girls pick something up, it's suddenly the Most Annoying Thing and deadly to your credibility. One day, 16-yr-old girls are going to bust out with Shakespearean English and people will complain that they've ruined the…

I hear you, and yet the annoyance at this phenomenon annoys me.

It's not the choice of words or the rhythm of speech, but the "growliness" that results from discontinuous airflow. You might have it waking up, really tired, while whining, or when imitating a goat. You know, if you imitate goats ever.