Connie Primmer: The fat issue

It’s to be expected in January as everyone promises themselves they will fight the post-Christmas bulge or finally make use of their gym membership, for a few days at least, and if we can’t be bothered ourselves, watching other people work-out feels like a reasonable substitute.

These programmes are tapping into the national obsession du jour and I’ll admit I sat through a few to give me some motivation for the gym or to make me feel better about polishing off the last of the Marks & Spencers family box of biscuits.

However, one show I stumbled across a few nights ago left me absolutely enraged.

Entitled ‘F*** off I’m Fat’, it was an hour-long documentary about obese people moaning that the world does not cater to their ginormous needs.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It’s nice that the people featured are comfortable in their own skin and have made the decision not to worry about their health or appearance, and if they want to be left to their own devices (as the expletive title suggests), it is their right to make that choice.

However, to then expect the rest of society to adjust to their needs and to complain bitterly as if it’s some kind of breach of human rights when they don’t is just absurd.

Two obese teenage girls were encouraged by the show’s fat presenter to go shopping in Topshop, discover that the High Street chain doesn’t have many styles in plus size and then moan about how miserable that made them feel.

If it upsets them that much and they want to wear the same fashionable clothes as their peers, why not make a few changes to their diet and lifestyle so that they can?

It’s not down to Topshop to cater for overweight women, if their target market is teenagers and women of a standard size why should they spend thousands of pounds adjusting their stock for a small minority of women who choose to remain obese?

I felt sorry for the girls who were clearly unhappy, but surely the answer is not to force Topshop to make their clothes bigger, but to live a little healthier themselves? If one of the top retailers in the country doesn’t stock your clothing size, isn’t that a warning sign that perhaps you’re not a healthy or normal weight?

The programme then moved on to complain that public toilets aren’t big enough for obese people to use.

The presenter asked: “Toilets should be more spacious so we (fat people) can use them comfortably. But why should fat people be segregated? Why not make all public toilets bigger?”

He was talking as if this was tantamount to apartheid.

The show got even more ludicrous as it tackled the issue of cars being too small for obese people to drive.

The presenter, chomping down burgers as he was driven around a race track by a morbidly obese woman, put forward his demands that all vehicles should be large enough for the obese, and not only that, but should be fitted with interior video systems so that fat people don’t have to strain their poor, abused bodies by moving to look out of the window or in their mirrors.

If you’re so fat that you cannot even fit in a car, surely you’d realise something is wrong??

At this point I started to wonder if the ‘documentary’ was in fact a satire.

If the presenter had put the same amount of effort that he put into making the show into working out in the gym for a few days or researching nutrition, he would have been well on his way to a healthy size and wouldn’t have had to worry about not being able to fit into a toilet cubicle or find fashionable clothes.

It angered me that he felt instead of changing himself to solve his problems, the rest of the world should change to accommodate him. Laziness at its worst.

Being overweight is a lifestyle choice.

Some people have disabilities or illnesses which they cannot change, and for them, struggling to drive a car or manoeuvre around public areas is a serious issue which should be tackled.

Launching a campaign so that fatties can continue being fat without compromising their daily lives, when they could choose to better their condition if they wanted to, is just insulting to those people who cannot improve their situations.

I turned the programme off after a while as I found it so offensive.

If people want to abuse their bodies, put strain on their hearts and make their daily lives more difficult it’s entirely up to them, but to moan that the rest of society should make an effort to facilitate their frighteningly unhealthy lifestyles is just wrong.

The makers of this programme should take note of their own foul language and do one.