Friday 7 August 2009

Are thin people really so cheap to society?

In all this talk of what fat people cost their societies, has anybody bothered to calculate what slim people cost? Not that it sounds any less irrational than the other if fact it plays up just how weird the concept of grouping people by their weight is without cover of fatness. Even if I had much faith in the health estimates regarding fatties, I have to say that health costs are not the only costs. What about social costs?

I very much doubt slim people cost less on that score. Most of the drug addicts, alcoholics and others who cost money like criminals, seem to be disproportionately slim. Not that it keeps me aware at night.

What about mitigation, in the sense that if more fat people became slim and they developed more of the habits of the slim and proportionate rates, what effect would that have in costs to society overall?

It's not that fat people are nicer or better behaved I just think we are more repressed as a whole and more used to taking orders from authority regularly, therefore it takes more personal energy to exceed behavioural boundaries.

I've often felt this is one of the many reasons why we are so objectionable to the usual professional do gooding types like social workers, psychologists and others connected to mental health etc., We have been cast in a mode of miscreant that simply is the opposite of what we are hence the endless disappointment of not fulfilling that promise. Many of them are attracted to working with those close to the edge and here we are rather mainstream and obedient, that is annoying to many as they do not get the genuine danger of thrill from working with those who are often quite 'edgy'.

No wonder they don't voice their usual objections to stigma being used as a tool to keep us in line. A wholly different mindset is attracted towards fat people. Those who perhaps would be displaced from more progressive climbs, finger waggers, tut tutters, bullies and the kind of reductive small minded conservatism that even some people on the right fear.

I wonder why this hasn't been noticed though, perhaps it's about time ordinary people got a taste of the medicine they tend to dole out to-or is doled out in our name- to those who do not fit for some reason?

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