Reading this elsewhere amused me.

it's a rebellion! I'm fat because of bitches like blowhan and the olsen twins!!!! Graaaaagh.

Also, I don't think it's just GIRLS that are getting fatter.

I don't think it's just girls either - it's just the nature of the lazy beast...

HAHAHAHA.

i'd imagine weight is getting to be more of a bimodal distribution, in both genders.

Nam, it has to do with a change in dietary habits and lifestyle among the american population in the past 50 years. from the explosion of fast food in the american culture, to the decrease in recess and PE from the grade school curriculum.

also, the definition of fat and skinny has changed a lot. it's been mentioned a lot in these sorts of discussions, but marilyn monroe, by today's standards, is a bigger girl, a size 12 if i remember right.

@C&M: That wasn't quite what I was asking. I get why people are getting fatter, although I still hold people accountable for their own bodies. I was asking why le_sacre thought it was become a bimodal distribution. As in, the population is dividing into two clusters. A cluster of skinny/normal people, and a group of super fatassas, without much of a distribution in between.

I think I'm pretty inbetween, although I'd love to get thinner, because I FELT better when I was thin and I like the way clothes fit on a thinner body. It's just more pleasing to me and I tend to hold other people to the same standards I do myself.

I did make my boyfriend pretty fat though. The guy is pushing 200 pounds, was about 160 when I first got a hold of him.

@C&M: AAAAAH. More sociological excuses. Is there anything a sociologist with enough time on his hands can't remove personal responsibility from?

or, are you arguing that if they pull their bootstraps up their food would inherently be healthier because of their bootstraps being in the up position?

Ha, the more money I make, the fatter I get.

I guess more specifically, I can't deny that it's cheaper to put 1000 calories of utter shit into your body than it is to put 500 calories of ok stuff, or 250 awesome calories.

But seriously? I've been too poor to eat before. Not super poverty poor, by my income was about 8k, before taxes. And I chose the 500 ok calories as opposed to the 1000 gut buster calories. I lost a lot of weight, I had about 1 meal a day, but you know what, it happens?

I guess my bottom line, is that with even rudimentary nutritional knowledge, you'd realize that the fewer, more expensive calories actually do more for you than the cheaper, less expensive calories. You spend the same amount, and you don't end up a fatass.

Which makes me ask, who the FUCK has kids they can't afford to feed. Perhaps they should become wards of the state.

@Namrok:  i think bimodality arises from increasing and opposing influences:  media imagery and scientific/pop research on fitness pushing people towards diet and exercise on one hand, and the saturation of society by cheap processed calories and the rise of car/couch culture on the other.  i actually have no idea whether the distribution is truly bimodal, but i would guess at the very least that it's gotten a lot wider.

it's readily demonstrable that the "worst" calories in the grocery store are the cheapest, not to mention that having to work multiple jobs means that many of the poor don't have the spare time that many of us can afford to research, shop for, and prepare unprocessed meals (to say nothing of the educational gaps that might keep them from learning the importance of nutrition and teasing apart solid research from marketing claims).

i don't believe in "free will," so it's hard for me to discuss personal responsibility from anything other than a consequentialist standpoint (regardless of whether people are "responsible" for an action, how can we best improve quality of life for the greatest number of people?).  but there's a lot of research documenting how difficult it is for even highly motivated people to lose weight.  i think it's pretty easy for most of us who *don't* have these miscalibrated brain signals compelling us to eat too much to say, "well, golly, just don't eat so much!"  but some of the same circuits subserving appetite and desire for food are the ones underlying drug addiction--and psychologists have been documenting for decades how "choices" that would appear (or be claimed to be) voluntary are anything but.  i forget the guy's name, but there's a prominent psychologist who's conducted a lot of studies of eating and satiation behavior while controlling environmental variables, and seemingly trivial things like portion size have huge effects on consumption levels and self-reported hunger/satiety.  the purveyors of manufactured food have been aware of these effects for some time.

When my parents first got married, they were SUPER poor, and all they could afford was boxes of store-brand macaroni & cheese, butter, and milk. They ate that shit EVERY SINGLE DAY and they were never skinnier than during that time.

I disagree that poor people can't afford to eat healthily.

Bread, rice, fruits, vegetables, etc are generally cheaper than fast food(per meal).

I think more of the direct cause of obesity is laziness and/or "overworking". If someone has an incredibly busy schedule, it's harder for them to prepare their own food, simply because they don't have time to do so. Or, if they do have time, they don't have the energy to do so.

"People who have children they can't afford to feed:

Religious people who don't believe in birth control or abortion

People who were on birth control, had an accident, and are unwilling to abort or put the kid up for adoption."

These people are all STUPID and I have no sympathy for them. If you are so religious you don't believe in birth control or abortion, what the fuck are you doing having sex in the first place? You don't get to just pick and choose at your convenience.

The oops? Once again, they are unwilling to make a tough decision. The have options, they just don't want to take them.

As for the rest, we already have programs for most of those. I know plenty of people who are on foodstamps. Argue whether those programs are enough or not all you want.

But you still haven't gotten at my point that with just basic nutritional knowledge you'd realize that you do more harm than good by putting 1000 calories of shit into your body than the equivalently priced 500 ok calories. Which is the crux of why I think its not JUST because people are poor.

When I lived in Disney World I was too poor to afford anything other than LOADS of Spinach, bread, and Kraft American singles. And Vodka.

Once a week we'd go to cici's pizza and throw down $5 and shove our faces full of pizza enough to last us starving for the rest of the week. I lost like 20 lbs when I was there. It was AWESOME.

Purl, I thank you for your last remark.

Lord knows I do.