You see those old photographs sometimes. Seal Beach, 1960. A bunch of people laid out on the sand, and every last one of them looks like they just finished a CrossFit class. You see pictures of New York from the same time. Not a single fat person in the whole goddamn crowd.
How the hell is that possible?
The establishment, the smiling sheep, they’ve got their answer ready. “We have more available now,” they bleat. “Your generation is lazy. Take responsibility for your eating habits.” That old American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” bullshit. It’s your fault you’re fat. It’s your fault you’ve got the diabetes.
Fuck that.
What they don’t tell you is that our grandparents weren’t mainlining processed food with every meal. Their food wasn’t pumped full of high-fructose corn syrup, Yellow Dye #5, and fluoride in the goddamn drinking water for reasons nobody can explain without lying. I’m sucking down enough microplastics in a year to shit out a new credit card. There are PFAS “forever chemicals” in every drop of water we drink. And our kids? They’re getting mentally retarded from it all. And so are the parents. You think that McDonald’s burger is still made from a real cow, and not some pink paste squeezed out of a factory tube?
So is this really us? Or is it the people in charge? The corporations who market this poison to us, who make it cheap and easy and addictive, while the real food costs a goddamn fortune?
You can’t live a normal life like the past generation. You can’t just “pull your bootstraps up.” The whole goddamn system is rigged against you.
You can do your yoga every morning. You can eat like a goddamn rabbit. And you’ll still get cancer from the air you breathe. You can jog for miles every day, and you’ll still find that lump growing on your neck. No matter what you do, you’re swimming in the same poisoned pool as the rest of the fat people.
You just look better when you’re dying.
And the government, the corporations, the hospitals, the insurance companies… you think they don’t know about this? They know. We all know. We all see it. We’re just a bunch of frogs in a pot of water that’s slowly, quietly being brought to a boil.
So yeah, I’m fat and frantic. Because the corporations and my own goddamn government want me that way. They want me sick, tired, and just desperate enough to keep buying their cheap food and their expensive pills.
Welcome to the American Dream. Hope you’re hungry.
