The Bitch Chews Fat!

Well Darlings,

Another week, another article, and (I'm afraid) another one of my many locutions: "When we could laugh at fat people, we found we hardly had any. Since those days political correctness has created a nation of them." However, you may need to be as old as I am to appreciate all the horrendous truth within that statement.

When I attended infants' school (in the late forties), there was not one child in my class (of about thirty) who was overweight. In junior school there was just one in my class, and on entering secondary school only one who was a little chubby and one who we made no bones at all about declaring fat. Nevertheless, before we left our secondary education, the strenuous physical education and sensible school meals we enjoyed (read: hated!) saw the fat one lose weight considerably, until he was no longer a subject of fun. Compare those statistics, which were pretty average for the time, to what we see around us today when one in three children is considered overweight or obese.

Now before going on, I probably need to rectify any politically correct (brainwashed!) reader's misconceptions. Though I mentioned the fat kid in our class was the subject of fun, he was never the subject of ridicule. He was unusual in being overweight, and that in itself we found strange-funny, but at the same time he was OUR fat kid, and as such he was a popular guy. Everyone loved him, and would help him in anything he found challenging because of his weight. He in turn accepted the way we saw him, and happily went along with it, frequently joking about our differences - like, during our swimming lessons, reminding us just how easily fat people could float, compared to us "bag of bones" kids.

Since those halcyon days, political correctness has emerged, and grown alarmingly in strength. Today we have to live in a pretend world of one size fits all. It's a world where everyone has to be considered equal, any differences between us not seen or mentioned, and even healthy competition is not encouraged because we must all be winners. This "cushioning" of society is a great idea - except for one very important fact: it doesn't work! Sorry, another one of my sayings here: "Provide a cradle, and the people will jump into it in their millions. Remove it, and they will return to being sensible."

Too often instead of tackling a problem head-on on, by providing that cradle, political correctness attempts to hide it - and frequently, as with our growing number of fat people, it makes matters worse by creating even more problems, which in turn require concealing. For far too long, being fat has been okay - not to be mentioned unless favourably - and even then only in politically correct cushioned terms - while hidden behind all that concealed truth: school playing fields were sold off, school dinners turned into little more than health risks, and public parks, recreation grounds, sports centres and swimming pools closed down and sold as uneconomical to maintain. Only now, because money is tight and so many fat people are a drain on the resources of our NHS, are we re-looking at the problem.

It might be time to call a spade a spade again, to get rid of all political correctness, and for us to return to accepting the truth and tackling our problems and differences head-on, instead of trying to hide them. In the days when we could say whatever we thought, and people had a great deal more freedom from the state and political correctness, school bullying was never a case for suicide. It just didn't happen. Compare that to today, with adolescent suicides now commonplace. When unwanted teenage pregnancies were frowned upon, instead of being a passport to claiming state benefits, including accommodation, they were a rarity - I knew of only one case in my teens - and yet, I promise you, as youngsters all those years ago, we still enjoyed plenty of sex. However, having to be responsible because then there was no cushion, we made darned sure we were careful!

Because there were no "across the board" cushions provided, and we were forced to behave responsibly, they were rarely needed. In the rare cases they were needed, provision was made for the person as an exception. It was a system that worked well, gave us a better quality of life, and cost little.

Political correctness, and the subsequent state control, is responsible for so much that is wrong in society today. We have always had, and we always will have, paedophiles, some fat people, rebellious teenagers (you should have seen us!), smokers, alcoholics, racists, homophobes, drugs on our streets and in our entertainment venues, teenage pregnancies, burglars, thieves, muggers, and countless other undesirable people - but only since political correctness took hold has any of them ever become a major problem, until now we have many people frightened to leave the becoming precarious safety of their homes.

Political correctness conceals things, and hidden in that way they can and do turn evil, when really all that needs hiding is political correctness itself. That deserves a damn good hiding!

The Bitch! (27/08/10)