"Oh I’m so fat"

Julianna Backer, a journalism student at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, wrote an unusually perceptive article on the war on fat for the Pine Log, the student newspaper. She dedicated her article to young women who are finding it hard to be happy with their weight in this country. As she concluded, “one day, we’ll all look at ourselves and worry about something other than how fat we are.”

It takes courage to speak out on this issue today, especially with such compassion and understanding. This deserves a read.

Confidence and weight: a proportional relation

People are fat...There are a lot of reasons for obesity, and this isn't the place to even try to delve into that controversy. Look to the doctors for that, not to your local student newspaper. Suffice it to say, some people are never going to be skinny. They can starve, work out, diet, everything the doctors are telling them to do, and they're not going to lose an inch off their bellies. Some people were 'built big,' which sounds like a politically correct phrase (probably because it is,) but it's true nonetheless....

That's the crux of the weight controversy. It's hard to be happy with your weight in this country, especially if you're a member of the female gender (sorry for the stereotyping, guys.) There's an epidemic of attractive, skinny girls informing each other of how fat they are in an effort to elicit sympathy and responses of the same kind....

There's a secret to weight though, and it isn't working out or eating right or being fit and active, although all of those things are things we should do more of. And it isn't throwing up or starving yourself or taking diet pills-things the country needs to cut out and the vicious flip side of the obesity controversy.

It's confidence…

[Rest here.]