Remember Fat Bastard? Of course you do. Remember when the nude, grease-coated Austin Powers character offered fried chicken to Heather Graham? Few movie scenes in history have inspired so many viewers to abandon their seven-dollar popcorn buckets. It was enough to make Colonel Sanders go vegan. Four years later, America seems to have lost its gag reflex. And we have Frank to prove it.
Frank is the new Ballpark Franks spokes-lummox. Frank flaunts his gut like an Armani fat suit. He talks to you while stuffing his face. He is essentially Fat Bastard with a hotdog. Ballpark hopes that Frank strikes a chord with a rather large demographic: fat people who own grills. He croons the word "girthy" while the camera does a close-up of his Chris Farley physique and concludes, "girthy is good." The audience seems to agree.
America's obesity epidemic has been old news for years. In the intervening period, strangely enough, people decided that fat was fine. After all, the Center for Disease Control estimates that 59 million Americans are extremely overweight, and an outright majority of the population is considered overweight. Between 1991 and the 1999 big-screen debut of Fat Bastard, the number of overweight Americans increased by 71 percent. If the numbers don't convince you, just look around you. So many people have never been so fat. The will to fight is gone. Fat has become downright democratic -- as American as Ballpark Franks.
Already the anti-anti-obesity backlash is building. Authors actually are starting to make a living questioning the health consequences of obesity. Books and newspaper articles are beginning to claim that excessive weight isn't so bad after all. A food industry front group called the "Center for Consumer Freedom" publishes a glut of such material in an effort to drown-out the American Medical Association, the CDC and common sense.
The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance actively attempts to debunk claims that obesity has serious health consequences, even for individuals who weigh significantly more than twice what they should. The organization's "Big Fat Blog" promotes links to conspiracy theorists, including the "Center." NAAFA believes that dieting is dangerous and that medical authorities claiming otherwise are prejudiced and ignorant. This isn't a support group for people who struggle with weight; this is an organization devoted to complacent disregard for medical facts.
It has never been easier to be fat in America. Don't believe critics who try to tell you that an overbearing society pushes people to strive for unachievable ideals, because it doesn't. If you go to a Chinese state university and study for 15 hours a day, you can complain about impossible ideals. When Frank is the best we can muster, excuses sound kind of hollow.
We can go to the beach and wear that bathing suit; our guts may hang out of our shirts but they won't stick out in a crowd. Somehow, Roseanne has become a Nick-at-Night classic. Companies as diverse as car manufacturers and coffin makers are designing next-generation products for the fat lifestyle. And I do mean fat; one company is designing a 63-inch-wide casket for the plus-sized corpse.
Obesity is a sensitive social topic because awareness often requires a person to be self-critical. The issue is tough to address because acknowledging it creates the appearance of preaching. That isn't politically correct. But we can't allow that unease to spiral into indifference.
It's easy to pretend that fat can be fit in its own way. Being "fat and happy" can be possible on a personal level, but not a societal one. Some people really are burly -- just not 64 percent of the population. This frequency of obesity seems to prove that indifference to fat has become a cultural phenomenon.
While every person has the right to choose his own weight, the most important part of a person's weight decision is making it himself or herself. Unfortunately, this personal responsibility is being lost in a social mudslide.
