You're Kidding, Right?

Yesterday, as you either read already, or can read by simply scrolling down a little bit, I wrote about the warm weather and all that. I was trying to find a good example of someone to use for a sweaty celebrity to complete my simile. Those of you who are Simpsons nerdy as myself may remember the episode where Homer fell in love with his co-worker Mindy, and tried to write an eloquently stated breakup talk on his hand before confronting her, but got sweaty palms due to nervousness and said "Jeez, I'm sweating like Roger Ebert here." Normally, I would have just recycled that line, but given Ebert's recent medical issues and his downright inspiring fight with thyroid cancer, I don't really think it's anyone's place to poke fun at him anymore. But allow me to get off my soapbox for a second.

So, in the hopes of finding a good, and possibly embarrassingly sweaty picture of some celebrity I just typed in "fat guy celebrity" thinking I could turn up a funny image of some guy that we all know and love who had a healthy glow of well-earned perspiration. I didn't find that, but I think the Gandolfini picture I chose at least works on some level, as he looks kind of big and miserable.

However, in this search, I couldn't help but notice a link towards the top of the page for "FatGuyShirts.com" and being a man of generous carriage who prides himself as having a keen eye for interesting, fun, or entertaining t-shirts, I thought I'd give it a look. What I found was not only borderline offensive, it was kind of worrisome.

First, here's the link, see for yourself: http://www.fatguyshirts.com/

Now, hopefully you scanned at least most of those, but I personally, as a guy who is carrying more weight than he'd like, finds this sight nauseating. Obesity has a nasty habit of killing people, and here in the U.S. we have a distorted view of caloric intake and portion sizes. Yes, I enjoy "extreme foods" as much as the next guy. Yeah, I'd probably try the hamburger made out of grilled cheese sandwiches once, just to say I did, if we had a Friendly's around here. However, as much as I'll defend eating good (yeah, another recent blog tie-in, so sue me), I also think there is a limit to what is funny. When you're trying to convince someone to buy a shirt celebrating the fact that they can't see their toes or bringing up the slogan "Eat Now, Think Later" I kind of want to punch whoever thinks these shirts are funny or appropriate in the face. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that these shirts are available in sizes up to 6XL. I mean, I know it's kind of an extreme example, but to my eyes, this would be no different than someone marketing a line of extra-small t-shirts to people with Anorexia with slogans like "Does my ribcage make me look fat?" on them. Yes, that's a horrible thing to say, but you get my point. I mean, just look at where we are as a country: obesity is gaining on smoking at an alarming rate as the leading cause of death according to the New York times.

Sorry to sound preachy here; you know I usually keep things light here, but this one really got to me for some reason. Still, there is a very, very fine line between being comfortable in your own skin and denying medical knowledge. This may be a bit of my own insecurity speaking here, but I don't want to celebrate the fact that we as a society are pushing towards morbidly obese at an alarming speed. (I was going to make a joke about it being the fastest that overweight people have moved for anything recently there, but it seemed out of place. Thoughts?)

There should be some grandiose closing to this rant of mine, but I kind of feel like I hit all the bullet points I needed to. So to ease the tension, I'll close with one of my favorite "fat guy" jokes:

Two fat guys are drinking together in a bar, and one friend turns to his buddy and says 'your round'. His buddy says 'So are you, you fat bastard.'