Yeah, I knew someone was going to come back with that, and those costs are no doubt insane (although, of course, one does not have to opt for the long, drawn-out death by chemo, surgery, etc. either). It's a complex question, but still, there are studies and scientific evidence that support the conclusion that…

Okay, well, if you can't see it, you can't see it, but the campaign to "normalize" obesity — the "new normal," if you will — is going on every day, and pretending that people who are in fact overweight are "not overweight" or "average" or "normal" is a big part of it.

"I just try to reserve my judgment and ire for the people who deserve it." Exactly. Like fat people who want to be admired and called "courageous" for being fat.

This is the biggest pile of bullshit I think I've ever read on here: "But a fat person can become active and eat well but remain fat." NO. If a person consumes more calories than he expends, he will gain weight. If he expends more calories than he consumes, he will lose weight. Period. It's simple physics. But I…

"Being fat is not a health issue." Okay, I gotta take the bait and ask: what on earth leads you to believe that (other than denial)? This should be good.

People who smoke cigarettes are actually cost-effective in the long run, as most of them die early and save us a lot of long term costs like Social Security.

Some people on the left actually care about public health issues as well, or so I've heard.

Exactly. IF the obese had to bear all of the costs of their poor choices — which are myriad, not just healthcare, and astronomical, billions and billions a year — then damn right, no one else's business. But since we all (well, at least all taxpayers and all people enrolled in the now-mandatory health insurance…

Anorexia is a real problem, no question. But for every single woman (or man) who has died from anorexia (or even been to the hospital), how many people do you think have died from causes rooted in obesity? It is orders of magnitude more. Praising and glorifying the overweight as "normal" is the last thing we need.

She has a pretty face, but she has rolls of fat around her belly, upper arms about the size of Stallone's, but fat not muscle, and thighs larger than a fit person's waist. A good idea of perfect? Her minus 20-30 lbs..

And here we see it, folks, all wrapped in one concise post: (1) straw-man argument (it's either grossly obese or rail-thin; since rail-thin must be bad, then obese must be good); and (2) no "body-shaming" of the obese allowed (even though gluttony and sloth ARE shameful), but anyone under X weight is fair game to be…

If I didn't have to help pay for all the expensive consequences of the poor lifestyle choices of the obese, THEN it would be none of my business.

I don't think so; the studies I've seen suggest that being slightly underweight (which, by today's American average, would be viewed as stick-thin) correlates with longevity.

How the fuck is it bullshit? We don't have an epidemic of slender, fit people in the U.S. (or even of anorexics), we have an obesity epidemic. It is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And it is about 98% preventable. This Newspeak concept of praising people for being fat is what's bullshit.

Well, yes, that plus socialized medicine (dentistry).

I'm just curious, no disrespect intended — does it ever cross your mind, as someone who can "only speak as a gay man" (whatever that means) — that you just might not be the best person to proclaim which women are "objectively [wtf?] gorgeous"? As they say, there's no accounting for taste, but I find Melissa McCarthy…

Exactly right. Yet your comment gets two upvotes, while the hooray-for-fatties-isn't-she-courageous-for-becoming-obese comments gets dozens if not hundreds.

We can see countless obese women (and men) at any mall in America for free — why the hell would anyone pay to see that in a movie?

No, people (in America at least) really have just become that much more obese in just 50 yrs. Shocking and hard to accept, I know, but absolutely true. (And the same goes for men's sizes too; I was a large or even extra large shirt size in the 80s and now even mediums are big on me.)

So, so false.