Sashay Magazine / February 2010 / Secondhand Fat

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Secondhand Fat

“What in the world is secondhand fat?” I’m sure you’re all asking. We’ve all heard of secondhand smoke, the discovery of the dangers of which has significantly contributed to people kicking the habit in droves. By making workplaces, restaurants and even some of our erstwhile sacred bastions, like bowling alleys, smoke-free, it has become so inconvenient and socially unacceptable to pollute other people with smoke that many have finally just said, “To hell with it” and given up smoking.

All the campaigns to educate Americans about the health hazards of obesity have failed miserably. Been there, done that, no one cares, supersize my combo please. And appealing to our collective sense of vanity isn’t working either as we’ve obviously become naturally desensitized to overweight images since they are virtually ubiquitous. Dove, in its purported “Campaign for Real Beauty,” actively recruits and celebrates plus- size models. Are they genuinely and altruistically trying to counter the controversial custom of employing rail-thin models or simply caving in to their market to sell product? Also, a size eight (and all other sizes right on down the line) get bigger and bigger all the time. And overweight girls and women in bikinis at the beach, a rarity at one time, are practically the accepted norm.

I’m so concerned about my fellow Americans’ apathy that I will try anything to reverse the trend of our ever-increasing girth. That’s why I’m going to approach this issue from a novel perspective and rail against the onslaught of...secondhand fat. It’s a heavy-handed yet proven technique where basically overweight persons are put on notice that his or her weight is affecting someone else.

“Okay, so what is secondhand fat? Someone else’s fat can’t hurt another person. That’s ridiculous!” you say. Oh, is it? Allow me to explain:

1. Did you know that by simply being friends with an overweight person you increase your risk of overeating and gaining weight by 57%*? You’ll go to lunch and eat double your normal intake because you don’t want your friend to be “uncomfortable” while you sit there and eat a half sandwich and a plain salad. In fact, you may even eat more simply to avoid sarcastic comments such as “Are you anorexic?” “Is that all you’re going to eat?” Or, my personal favorite, “How you can eat that [plain salad, sandwich, etc.]?” the implication being I’m a freak for eating modestly.
2. Overweight people take up a lot of space. Ever take a seat next to an obese person on an amusement park ride, a bus or a plane? They’re encroaching on space that you paid for. And that’s okay? Yet, our social construct dictates that it’s impolite to draw attention to it (just as it used to be impolite to complain about smoke). What are you gonna do? Say, “Oh, Miss Flight Attendant, can you get my seat mate (literally, as you are now physically attached to that person) to stay on his (or her) own side? Right now, he (or she) is kinda sitting on my left hip and I’m losing feeling on that side.” No, you will “mind your manners” and sit there while quietly being sat upon.
3. They cost you money in other ways besides driving up the cost of health care. For example, I came downstairs one day to see that my favorite sofa had a noticeable depression in the front panel under the cushions. Someone had broken, (yes, broken!) the frame of my moderately expensive sofa. We had had several morbidly obese relatives at our party the night before and no one owned up to cracking my sofa in half. Who knows? Maybe the culprit didn’t even know he or she had done it. But now I had to absorb the expense of re-furnishing my family room.

So, wake up America, thin and fat, and join forces in the fight against secondhand fat! Seriously, now, before you start hating me and thinking “Who does this wiseass chick think she is talking so insensitively about my weight?” ask yourself: Do you want peer pressure at a restaurant? Do you want to be sat upon on a public conveyance? And honestly now, do you want your furniture demolished? Should your rights and personal space be subjugated in the name of “manners” gone perverted? Of course not. So, I implore you: Take the stand against secondhand fat. Obesity, in addition to being secondhand, has really gotten “out of hand” as well. Time for drastic, “think-out-of the- box” measures.

* abcnews.go.com/Study:Obese Friends Could Make You Fat, by Katharine Stoel Gammon

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Angela Bayley is a retired pharmacist who resides in Baltimore, Md. She's passionate about tennis, her two chihuahuas and the English language. In her column Keepin' It Real, Bayley strives to shed new light on controversial issues, to call the spade, talk about the white elephant--all with her own brand of sharp humor.