Dissecting the Preface.

What is Fatropolis? Is it a condemnation of discrimination? A little bit. A humorous tale of fattitude? I hope so. Maybe it’s a collection of the amateur philosophical musings of a demented fat guy with a narcissist complex? Probably. I pondered this question many times during the not-so-quiet moments commuting into Chicago on a train every weekday morning and evening. When I started writing the book, I was angry, which seemed like a great reason to write. At the time I was sure of one fact: being fat sucked. Age and experience, no matter how much I hoped, couldn’t change this fact. From my earliest memories to my mid-thirties, it has remained constant. Don’t believe the hype. Big can be beautiful, but that doesn’t stop how much it sucks being a Fattie.

Yes, being fat sucks. To some of you Skinnies, this statement may seem a bit obvious, something you wish your fat friends would “get” without your not so gentle reminders, so they would stop being so damn fat. I understand you. You are just responding to your subconscious awareness of what medically we believe has now been firmly substantiated: hanging out with fat friends just makes you skinny people fatter. We Fatties are literally making your lives suck too. While scientifically true-ish, a second fact has remained constant in my experience: fatness or the medical term for really damn fat – obese – is an excuse for assholes to discriminate. And that conclusion started me on my road to writing about Fatropolis.

What initially came out of my burst of anger one morning back in 2005 has now been chopped up, edited, re-edited, improved, a bit watered down and some of it ended up as what I perceive to be the preface of Fatropolis.

Is this an effective Preface? I’d like to think it gives a useful glimpse into my personal Pathos about the topic of my life and obesity and what the reader can expect to find within. I’ve added a touch of my sense of humor, my anger, my sarcasm and my pessimism about the state of Fatness. Do I have a narcissist complex? I don’t think so. Hell, I have a hard time telling anyone I know that I’m blogging about the book; I have shared my writings with a few old friends over the years, but few have asked me anything more about it. Maybe that was a hint?

This second paragraph is my attempt to give the reader a clear understanding of what I mean when I say, “being fat sucks.” Does this increase or decrease your interest in Fatropolis? How can I improve the reader engagement through the Preface?

I included a reference to the study above because it speaks to the positive and negative side of what comes of research about obesity. Consider this finding in the study, “The answer, the researchers report, was that people were most likely to become obese when a friend became obese. That increased one’s chances of becoming obese by 57 percent.” While compelling and important, ideas like this will be used to further what I see as the belief that obesity is dangerous in the “catch a flu” kind of way. It becomes another reason for discrimination to be legitimized. Am I losing anyone by referring to people that discriminate against the Fat as “assholes”? Am I lashing out too early?

If a fat guy asks for commentary when no one is around, is he really asking for commentary?

I can’t think of a better way to begin my book nor a discussion of the damage obesity can do to the maleable soul of a young child along with the accompanying public and private scorn than by sharing a poem by Paul Dunbar. I have to thank my wife for pointing it out to me after she read a chapter I had written about the concept of Personality Masks and how I learned to live as a Fattie among Skinnies. When I read this poem, I couldn’t help but recognize that my experience was anything but unique. And I realized that Paul Dunbar explained it ever so more eloquently than I could hope to do.

We Wear the Mask

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

 – Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I wish I could speak to Paul. “With torn and bleeding hearts we smile.” It’s a perfect explanation for what I experienced, such an amazingly poignant verse. It speaks of a tortured guile, and in a most simple phrase it summarizes the way I felt for thirty plus years of my life. While Paul appears to me to be speaking more in general than to the specifics of what I felt as a Fattie in a world where I did not belong, each of those sentiments he succinctly illuminates in the above text. We wear the masks, indeed.

I started writing Fatropolis in 2005. One morning I awoke to a reality that I had pretended not to notice for many years, and I had to write it down: being fat sucks! It seems a bit obvious, but I could not get the thought out of my head. I was angry and I couldn’t give myself the luxury of denying this newfound truth with the amazing memory erasing powers of chocolate chocolate moose tracks. So I wrote it all down, not taking up more than five or ten pages of stream of consciousness. But my anger was summed up in those three words: being fat sucks. In fact, it was the original title and continues to be the title of the document that sits on my desktop. But the book changed and I changed and naturally the title changed.

Now, seven years later, I have yet to arrive at the end of that stream of consciousness. I don’t have a good excuse. I’ve come to hate the concept of an excuse. I stopped writing. I chose to spend my time elsewhere, but I’m determined to bring it to an end. And I’m hoping writing about it in this format will help ease the final chapters in my Pathway to Fatropolis.