Mary Poppins, where are you when we need you?

Earlier today, a friend of mine emailed me a link to a website, promising laughter and gaiety. Before getting into the horrors this website revealed, I should point out that, although my friend has lived the majority of her life in the United States, she was born and presently resides in Europe, conferring upon her a certain detachment when it comes to all things American. In short, whatever makes me ashamed to be an American makes her proud to be an American who emigrated.

The portion of the website of particular interest to my friend, and by proxy to me, was a gallery of photos taken at Wal-Marts across the U.S. I’ll level with you, and cop to not knowing a much about Wal-Mart. As the scion of a bleeding-heart, upper-middle-class family, odds are I’ve never set foot in one, which is probably for the best since all of their products have been crafted by Laotian infants, who, let’s face it, are useless when it comes to making sneakers. If the Laotian infant thing has been the prime factor keeping me out of Wal-Mart for 28 years, it’s been supplanted by a horror which defies reason: back tits.

Back fat is something we’ve all seen, and something many of us have experienced first hand. I for one am always concerned about arching my back in such a way as to create rolls, because back fat is, and I think there’s a general consensus on this, gross. Excess fat on the arms, legs, and even stomach is obviously not desirable, but it’s socially acceptable to a point, and there are enough excess butt fat enthusiasts that it doesn’t even deserve a mention. But back fat is just plain icky, and as icky as back fat is, back tits are so much worse. You may never have seen back tits. I’ve never seen them up close and personal, but this website displays a photo of some poor, unsuspecting Wal-Mart shopper, who had just stopped in looking for bargains on Twinkies and lard, sporting full-on back tits. I’m not super busty, but I am something of a fat person, and this lady’s back tits were at least twice as big as my front tits. No joke.

Now I’m sure someone who’s never seen me has no idea what it means when I say I’m something of a fat person. This is because over the past couple of decades, our notions of fatness have become demented. Back in the old days, fat people were extraordinary. These days, not so much. My BMI indicates that I’m borderline obese, but when I tell people that they’re shocked, not because I carry the weight well (I don’t) or know how to dress for my size (I can’t dress for any size) but because we’ve redefined the word “fat.” For the most part, if you’re below 200 lbs, you’re thin enough. You won’t break into showbiz, an industry in which everyone appears to summer in Ethiopia, but in regular life no one will give your weight a second thought. Not when you’re walking next to a 35-year olds who has to use a cane because his legs alone can’t support the 400 lbs he’s hauling around.

So what do we do? Well, first we should remove Laotian babies from factories and put in some 8 year olds or something. Second, we need a nanny state. Conservatives don’t like that idea, except as it applies to drugs or abortion, and that makes it by definition the way to go. Someone from above has to bar restaurants from serving appetizers that contain an entire day’s worth of calories. Someone has to outlaw the deep-frying of macaroni and cheese. Someone has to ban junk food advertisements, particularly those aimed at children. Someone has to save us from ourselves.

Here in New York, the government has tried to take some steps in the right direction. The estimated calorie counts of menu items in chain restaurants must be displayed, but your neighborhood mom and pop ice cream store, the one that’s busily serving you those delicious cones of diabetes, is exempt. Governor Paterson proposed a tax on all non-diet sodas, a good idea if I ever heard one, but the beverage lobbyists lost their shit and started airing commercials arguing that such a tax would put an undue burden on working families. I have yet to see a follow-up commercial reminding everyone that soda, being nothing but sugar water, is hardly a necessary component of the human diet, and stating in no uncertain terms that if an extra 10 cents puts Pepsi out of your price range, you have more important things to worry about. Having been on a personal mission to lose weight over the past 6 months, I’m now interested in forming a “Let’s stop being so fucking morbidly obese” lobby. I’m accepting applications.