No Fat People Allowed?

Dear Mississippi: Kindly Keep Your Shit-Ass Laws Out of My Digestive Tract. Love, Meowser:

So really, I shouldn’t have been as shocked to my foundations as I was to read Sandy Szwarc’s article on Junkfood Science the other day about a new bill, HB 282, proposed by a trio of Mississippi legislators (two Republicans, W.T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and one Democrat, Bobby Shows) that would keep “obese” people (as defined by state law) from being served food in all restaurants with five seats or more.

Yeah, that’s right — since they can’t legally keep people with dark skin out of their eateries down there anymore, they’ll do the next best thing, which is to keep people with a lot of skin out of them. Who often, coincidentally, have…dark skin also. Yeah. Coincidentally. Even I didn’t smell that one approaching, and I have a nose like a cat. (I do not know for sure that the sponsors of this bill had racial overtones consciously in mind, but they had to expect that someone would notice them.)

This sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. Someone is proposing an actual segregation law. For real. And it didn’t get laughed out of committee. Because fatties are hated that much, even by themselves. (Take a look at John Read’s picture, and tell me self-loathing isn’t involved in this one.)

This is one of the most preposterous things I have ever heard of.

Banning fat people from restaurants, banquets, and restricting room service.

And who determines who’s fat and who’s not?

And, what is the point when the same fat person can be banned from sitting down at a Pizza Hut, for instance, but they can just as easily pick up the phone and order pizza from the same restaurant, to be delivered to their private home?

What politician thinks it’s a good idea to ban fat people from eating out in public, the way the South used to ban black people from eating out in public?

What about fat employees who currently work in restaurants?

The twist is that this bill was proposed by a couple of Republicans. You know, the supposed party of “small government”. How does setting up the “Fat Police” make government smaller. What business is it of theirs where fat people eat?

The fat woman in me and the Libertarian in me are pretty much mentally kicking the morons who thought this bill was a good idea.

This is what’s happening in one state. How long before laws like this start popping up in other states?

Mississippi basically has declared war on fat people. This is a fight that everyone should take up. Because I know from personal experience and from watching the experiences of people around me that many thinner people among of us are one pregnancy or one major illness away from being declared a “fatty”. Even if you are skinny, today, and free to go wherever you wish, if you get fat tomorrow, you, too, could face the same disgusting discrimination faced by fat people all across the country.

Racism is wrong. Fatism is wrong, too.

(cross-posting is sugar-free)