Big Fat Bribe (Thanks Pepsi!)

Pepsi owns Quaker Oats

Just about everyday I get an offer from online diet programs or supplements to become an affiliate on www.myfatspouse.com.

Getting with the right affiliate pays much better than text ads. But having an affiliate places this site in the position of being an advocate of certain product(s). None of the affiliate offers I have received are from companies that I agree that strongly with.

I know that unsavory text ads show up, but somehow becoming an affiliate with them feels like a stamp of approval for their products where as text ads don’t. Albeit text ads pay a paltry amount.

I certainly wouldn’t accept any kind of direct compensation from a fast food company or a processed food giant, like Pepsi!

Huh…Pepsi? What about Pepsi?

Ask Mopie of the www.bfdblog.com. She recently accepted an expense paid trip to Chicago for special bloggers, promoted by Quaker Oats.

Big Oat Deal

You see a few years ago Quaker Oats was purchased and is owned by Pepsico. Not because Pepsi digs oats. Quaker Oats happened to manufacture Gatorade.

Coca Cola has spent billions over the years trying to compete with Gatorade with their product “Poweraid”, with pitiful success. Pepsi decided that an easier route would be just to buy Quaker Oats instead. I can’t imagine Pepsi would own an oatmeal company any other way.

I don’t have to tell you that Pepsico is a HUGE food company that has made a fortune off of High Fructose Corn Syrup sweetened water. Oh yes and through Frito Lay they make all you favorite Chips like Cheetos, Doritos, and Lays, just to name a few.

But the fun doesn’t end there. Pepsi founded and spun off YUM foods, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Long John Silvers. They still have a relationship with these places. Try getting a Coke product at one of these joints.

So much for the big bad diet industry conspiracy. For the record the “diet industry” that FA complains about, reaped 35 billion dollars in sales in 2005. While Pepsico made nearly 33 billion, the same year.

Talk about a big fat hypocrite!

Anti Fat Acceptance Posters

We’ve had a long running thread over at www.myfatspouse.com which includes the attachments of “motivational” posters, ridiculing various FA tenets.  They vary from the profound, to the truly tasteless.  I thought I would post a few here that are relevant.

Anorexia vs. Healthy

Strawmen Do Exist

Kitty Workout

Hate Speech

McDonalds Setpoint

Booga Booga

Freak of Nature

Thermodynamics

Real Women

Butt Wand

Check This Thread at www.myfatspouse.com

If you enjoyed these you can find more  like this at www.myfatspouse.com.

Fat Acceptance Splits Over Politics

Fat Acceptance fractures along political lines

How “Fat Acceptance” plays second fiddle in Kate Harding & friends agenda!

Adherents to Fat Acceptance may have not voted for her, but Kate Harding is undoubtedly the undeniable leader of the movement.  It is questionable if FA has any influence outside of the internet.  But in the Fatosphere, Kate Harding’s blog has become the voice of record for Size Acceptance.   By Techorati anointment, her highness Queen Kate,  has demonstrated that all FA adherents should bow down to her monarchy.  She is a potentate who is less than benevolent, and certainly is not open minded.

Kate Harding accepts all the hard core tenants of Fat Acceptance in fascist fashion.

• No diet talk allowed
• Weight loss surgery is an abomination
• Fat has nothing to do with disease
• The diet industry is behind “obesity epidemic” hype
• Doctors are biased against fat patients
• The media perpetuates myths against fat people
• Anorexia and Bulimia are the only real eating disorders
• All diets fail
• Eating healthy and exercising rarely result in weight loss

To Kate Harding, and those who parrot her ideas, these aren’t just beliefs, they are absolute religious axioms which SHALL NOT be disagreed with.  Even the slightest difference in opinion or even the being perceived as being in disagreement, results in an IMMEDIATE thrashing!  This eventually ends with the commenter being labeled as a “Troll”, then extradited from the Kate Harding’s presence.  Of course it is her blog, and it is as popular as ever.  Her arrogance and self importance has not run many away.  Kate Harding’s message and behavior still have a lot of appeal.

Her blog’s online popularity rankings remain steady (not growing), while other Fat Acceptance blogs are slipping off into obscurity, as far as readership goes. Rachael’s “F-word” seems to be the only exception to this trend.

Kate is a FA advocate second and a liberal feminist first

Fat Acceptance isn’t where Kate’s blogging career began.  Her original blogging was along the feminist and left wing political front.  Kate is a college campus feminist, and a progressive/left winger.  This isn’t a personal criticism of her politics.  But, she whole heartedly inserts these beliefs into her FA blog in addition to her college campus speech codes.  This dictatorial behavior has alienated those who would otherwise agree with her.  Kate Harding is a Liberal and a Feminist FIRST before being a Fat Acceptance advocate.  She has no compunction about alienating people for disagreeing with her politics or even violating her narrow use of PC language.

A small group of bloggers, who are a bit more open minded, have broken away from Kate Harding’s fold, and have been blogging on a slightly independent angle.  A blogger named Big Liberty has begun an independent feed called “The Fat Liberation Feed”, which is a departure from the traditional “Notes from the Fatosphere Feed” which is loyal to Harding type FA bloggers.  A quick note: RSS feeds are the way those topics from other similar blogs are displayed on the side columns of websites and blogs like this one. Big Liberty’s main difference with Kate seems to be a political one.

Libertarian bloggers chose to disagree with Kate Harding

Big Liberty is a Libertarian.  Libertarians think that the government doesn’t have the right to meddle in people’s personal business, and the government should be as small as possible.   This is a more intellectually honest stance for a Fat Acceptance blogger, so long as they don’t desire assistance government paid medical help and anti fat discrimination laws.

It remains to be seen if the “Fat Liberation” sect will start to peck away at Kate Harding’s following.  Right now they occupy the remote fringe both in the number of blogs and readership.  Certainly however there seems to be some resentment by some FA bloggers who are tired of being marginalized by someone who pretends to speak for all of Fat Acceptance.

Additionally Liberals in America are not exactly leaping at the chance to bring FA into its’ big tent.  Many progressives view obesity as a challenge to implementing the goal of socialized medicine; while politically active greens view obesity as a manifestation of the over consumption that threatens the earth’s environment.

Admittedly, I read Kate’s blog on occasion and see the comments sections as very telling lately.  I’ve noticed a distinct up tick in the thought policing and the language of the comments.  Is the Shapely Prose really experiencing an up tick in the number of “trolls” or is it simply becoming more and more close minded?

The “fat liberation” blogs aren’t exactly free speech zones either but at least they do allow a disagreeing thought now and without obligatory censorship.  Your not goint to convince anyone of your point but as long as you respectful they will at least listen, for a little while.

How to FORCE yourself to find fat attractive

For some time we here at unfatblog, and www.myfatspouse.com have made the contention that it is not realistic to FORCE people to find someone attractive, even through the force of political correctness.

I believe that WE are the origin of this argument.

Fat Acceptance blogs have many authors, who are masters in the art of rhetoric, although science seems to elude them. Language is their playground. This makes sense, considering how many are academics in the liberal arts fields.

It was just a matter of time until same people that believe that eating what ever the heck you want, and that fat has nothing to do with health, would make yet another preposterous assertion that humans can FORCE themselves to find different types of people attractive.

“My Wife Isn’t Sexy Anymore” and What You Can Do About It

Fat Acceptance Poll Tampering

Kate Harding is trying to manipulate the results of a Parade.com’s poll. The Poll is about SouthWest Airline’s policy of making very fat passengers pay for an extra seat.

I think we should feel free to even up the odds a bit.

Paying Extra For Being Fat

Lexicon of Fat Acceptance Terms

According to an Sarcastic Antifat Acceptance Blogger

Anorexia: A very common condition that results in the deaths of MILLIONS of women each year. The primary cause is skinny models, and Hollywood waifs.

Bing Eating: A term that is used to describe a non existent condition.

Comment Section: A section of a blog where adherents post loud praise for the fat acceptance blog author’s post .

Dan Savage: The most evil man alive!

Diet: An extreme form of calorie restriction that occasionally results in temporary weight loss. This activity poses a high risk or causing anorexia.

Diet Industry: An evil Cabal of Jews, Trilaterialists, and late night infomercial advertisers who are attempting to dominate the world through manipulating health studies to encourage the sale of hoodia, and frozen meal entrees.

Douchehound: An intellectual term that Kate Harding uses to describe those who she particularly disagrees with.

Exercise: Strenuous physical activity, often engaged in by fat acceptance types, for example: playing with Cats. However, exercise has not been shown to result in weight loss. In fact many Fat Acceptance adherents exercised 2 hours a day with no results while eating nothing but lettuce, and found that no weight loss occurred.

Two Faces of Fat Acceptance

The Fat Acceptance movement has two faces. The public face it shows to open audiences when at a TV interview or interacting with the world outside of the fat o sphere, and then there is the true face, that we only see on size acceptance blogs, especially in the comments sections. From what I can tell, this isn’t done purposely or consciously. When Fat Acceptance steps out on the public forum it sounds completely reasonable and justified. However when a Fat Blogger makes it back home to her blog, she turns into something quite different.

FA’s public message is one of “acceptance” of fat people. “Acceptance,” by FA’s definition means discouraging name calling, and stopping fatty bashing. More importantly they want to challenge prejudices against fat people, like the presumption that the obese are gluttonous and lazy. The public face of fat acceptance is hard to disagree with. The “Fat but Fit” message is stretching it, but with the majority of Americans sporting some extra lard it isn’t hard to sell.

The Fat Gene isn’t all that FAT

Everyone has heard about the obesity gene. The old hotness was the FTO gene. Now the new hotness, thanks to a collaboration between 77 institutions from the UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Sweden, has discovered the MC4R gene.

New DNA Variants Found That Can Help To Pile On The Pounds

According to this article,

The variants map close to a gene called MC4R: mutations in this gene are the most common genetic cause of severe familial obesity.

So, how much weight on average does this gene “pack” on you? Oh…about 3.3 pounds , but when combined with the “old” obesity gene we are talking a whopping 8.5 pounds. Oh my! I never realized that the folks in the electric carts at Wal-Mart were only 8.5 lbs overweight!

Fat Acceptance Wants Censorship

When I speak about Fat Acceptance I can not pretend that I am speaking for each and every person who takes “Health At Every Size” to heart. I am sure there are exceptions. Discussions about Fat Acceptance have to be done in general terms. My generalizations come from my years of reading fat acceptance blogs, and the experiences of others who had the misfortune of dealing with this angry internet mob. Anyone who has had an intellectual “run in” with fat bloggers will tell you that they absolutely positively can not tolerate differing opinions.

On their own turf, the FA blogs, the thought police are always on patrol, in a fashion that Stalin would be proud of. It begins with name calling and public humiliation. Kate Harding is an expert at creating new derivatives of foul words to insult those that would dare to disagree with her. Her favorites seem to be “Fucktard” and “douchehound“. Wow, how creative, I see she is putting her graduate degree to good use. After the public verbal thrashing she bans them. Fat bloggers have no use for someone that might have an independent thought once in a while. The comment sections are for loud “AMENS” only. Please look at Kate Harding’s rules for comments, this has to be the most Byzantine set of rules for blog comments EVER!

What is a Real Woman?

Since the world found out that Chloe Marshall would be a candidate in the Miss England beauty competition there has been quite a stir. For those of you who don’t know, Chloe is a 17 year old plus sized model who is 5′ 10″ and weighs a 176 lbs. None are prouder and more defensive of her success than the members of the Fat Acceptance crowd. With Miss Marshall’s pictures in the news the Fatosphere has once again begun crowing about the virtues of Real Women.

This Real Woman nomenclature begs a whole host of questions. First what exactly is a Real Woman? Does this make all other women inferior? Finally, if there are Real Women, what is a Real Man? Even though the answers can’t be found spelled out concisely in thousands and thousands of Fat Acceptance Blogs some hints can be found. Reading them, as I dreadfully have to do, some clues can be found in subtle innuendo, and others through intentional omission.