Things that piss me off:
The LAP-BAND phone number, 1-800-GET-THIN.
Get thin? But the LAP-BAND, which involves a fairly major surgery, isn’t for people who want to slim down for bikini season or fit into those super sexy skinny jeans they wore in high school. It’s for people who are dangerously obese and need to take drastic measures to return to a weight at which they can be healthy. It definitely should not be about getting thin. Most people who are dangerously obese now will never be “thin,” LAP-BAND or no LAP-BAND.
This is just another example of how we’ve come to see obesity as an embarrassing situation that can be avoided by self-control, rather than as an epidemic that needs to be cured. And it doesn’t need to be cured so that we can live in a society of thin, generically attractive people. It needs to be cured because it’s dangerous and self-perpetuating.
