Fat Marmot Week : a rant

I learned this morning that it is officially Fat Marmot Week.

And let’s be honest - these chonkers are adorable!

And this is a take-off on Fat Bear Week, an annual event in Katmai National Park, Alaska. According to the website:

Brown bears get fat to survive and Fat Bear Week is an annual tournament celebrating their success in preparation for winter hibernation.

I’m a fan!

Stephen Colbert is a fan! There’s even a bear who is named after Colbert (Col-bear?)

This weekend I spent time with a friend who has an older cat named Maisie, and we were all admiring her very rotund shape.

But it begs the question … why do we do this ⬆️ with animals, and this ⬇️ with people?

That’s a real comment a reader left on something I published (using the word “reader” extremely loosely here - and no, I’m not redacting his name. He chose to post it that way publicly. Fuck him.)

This guy isn’t alone. Any time I publish something in a prominent outlet, I get comments like this.

Any time a woman larger than a size 8 posts a photo of herself on social media, she gets trolled by men telling her that she’s disgusting. In extreme (but not unusual) cases, she’s told to kill herself.

Why do we exclaim over the cuteness of round animals, but revile women who dare to carry a few extra pounds?

I know the answer people usually come back with — it’s some version of “I’m just worried about your health.” Which is an absolute, flat-out lie.

If everyone were as worried about people’s health as they say they are, we’d be advocating for fresh foods to be more affordable. We’d be advocating for a better social safety net where it’s not seen as a moral failure to get subsidies for food, housing, and health care. We’d even be advocating for age appropriate comprehensive sex education.

But instead we vilify individuals for their “poor decisions” and support corporations who make it nearly impossible to make better ones.

Every sector of the food industry has lobbyists. I recently learned on my favorite podcast Maintenance Phase that there is even a Big Salt. The Salt Institute was arguing against guidelines for sodium in our food. (Yes, I know salt is a vital element and that those of us with hypermobility and POTS actually need to increase our sodium. But that doesn’t mean that we need a lobbying organization advocating for salt.)

People who are fat (and I use that word in its neutral form, as used in the fat liberation movement) tend to get less healthcare because doctors are likely to attribute their earache or sprained elbow to their weight, rather than doing the work to diagnose the actual ailment. Several years ago a woman I follow on Instagram (@mandapaints) went viral because she was having debilitating symptoms but her doctor refused to do any tests until she lost weight. Turns out, she had colon cancer.

One of my partner’s family members was refused surgery for breast cancer until she lost weight.

If we are refusing healthcare to people who are fat, but also telling them that all we care about is their health, there is something terribly wrong.

Meanwhile, I get messages from men asking if there is something wrong with them because they’re attracted to larger women. As if attraction is only allowed for people within certain weight limits.

I don’t have any great thesis or conclusion here.

I was just got really fvcking angry in the car when I heard about Fat Marmot Week. Because as adorable as they are, I don’t understand why we celebrate them and revile our next door neighbor.

It just doesn’t make a goddamn (salt) lick of sense.