Flight into Fantasy

For one of my classes–the requisite health class I need to complete in order to finish my associate’s degree at the community college I attend–we’ve started watching Super Size Me, the 2004 documentary in which the filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock, ate at McDonald’s for 30 days. I have not been enjoying this piece of cinematography, to put it mildly, not enjoying it so much so that I almost walked out of class today, something that, nerd that I am, I just don’t do.

I’m a big girl. I’ve always been a big girl. My family is composed of big people, and we make up part of Spurlock’s 60 percent of Americans who are either overweight or obese. And before we get any further, I would like to admit that, yes, my diet and exercise need improvement. I realize that spending the majority of my time sitting in front of a computer does not a healthy person make, and I really am trying to adopt better habits. But having said that, having a self-righteous, pompous asshole like Spurlock sit in judgment of me? Not going to help. In fact, my first impulse, after I got out of class, would have been to go out and eat a whole box of super sized fries just out of spite. If only I hadn’t had toi go directly to another class, and if only there had been an actual McDonald’s on my way to anywhere I had to go today, I would have done so.

The part of the movie that really killed me was when Spurlock interviewed one guy who basically said that now it’s become socially acceptable to hector smokers for their bad habits, so when, oh when, will pop culture embrace criticizing fat people for their habits? He seemed genuinely sad that he couldn’t just walk up to, say, me, and be all, “I notice that’s not a diet soda you’re drinking. Have you checked your cholesterol lately?” Because, yeah. Shame and humiliation are really going to solve that problem.

And that’s not even getting to the fact that I don’t know anyone who actually eats every single meal at McDonald’s every day. Maybe those people are out there. Maybe they are the same people who buy snuggies. I don’t know. I do know that the whole premise of the experiment is highly flawed and thus, I can’t take it seriously. It seems like the filmmakers keep trotting out these absolutely mind-bogglingly horrible statistics for the shock value. “Oh, noes, you fat cows. By following this diet, you will be consuming over 30 pounds of sugar and 12 pounds of icky, gross fat. Now don’t you want a salad?”

It doesn’t help that the overweight people he has talked to aren’t the kind of people I want on my side. We stopped the video after a teenager whined that she couldn’t follow Jared Fogle’s infamous Subway diet because she couldn’t afford to eat at Subway every day. Well, sweetheart, you can probably just make yourself your own turkey sub sandwich at home and pay much less to do it, so that isn’t an excuse.

I’m not sure, because I’m not a health expert, what needs to be done to get Americans to eat smarter. I am, however, fairly sure that, like smoking cigarettes and other perfectly legal but horrible things a person can do for their health, that grown-up fucking adults can decide for themselves what kind of stuff they want to put in their own bodies. People should eat right because it’s a healthy thing to do, because not eating right can lead to serious health complications, not because they got shocked and shamed into doing so by a fucking douchebag with a camera crew.

We have more of this video to watch on Thursday. I imagine Thursday night I’ll manage to squeeze in some more vitriol on this subject.