The Truth About Fat Activism: Fat Satan, and Segways made of cake

I have a devastating reality to share with all of you. This will be painful, but we will get though it together.

It’s about fat acceptance. You know, all that bullshit about how diets don’t work, and self love, and intuitive eating, and being healthy regardless of weight? Yeah, it’s all an elaborate ruse. And I am here today to rip down the shimmering curtain hiding the truth and expose fat acceptance for what it really, really is.

In fact: fat acceptance is a masquerade, a blind for the true purpose of all fat activists – the purpose that rules us all, that finds us and brings us all and in the darkness… um. You get the general notion. Fat activism is, in reality, a secret fraternal organization of like-minded individuals with one unerring mission in life. I will rip apart the hideous web of lies surrounding this terrible secret and foist the reality upon the world even as it screams and blocks its ears and screws its eyes shut in horror!

The hidden true purpose of fat activism, the secret club to which we have all sworn a blood oath, is…

Scoring souls for Fat Satan.

That’s right. FAT SATAN.

“But Lesley,” I hear some of my readers sheepishly inquire, “I have never heard of this before. Who is Fat Satan?” Ah, it has been Fat Satan’s will that he should remain unknown to you until now. But I shall tell you. Fat Satan is the evil deity to whom all fat activists heartily pledge their undying loyalty. Fat Satan is bubbling gaily at the bottom of every glass of full-sugar soda being imbibed by an innocent child. Fat Satan smiles darkly every time a fat-punishing gym rat thinks, oh, I am so tired, I will skip Advanced Misery Thigh-Shredding Step Aerobics III today. Fat Satan lives in a castle made entirely of butter rendered from the fat that Oprah Winfrey has gained and lost over the years. Fat Satan’s beady eyes gleam with delight at improved plus-size shopping options, because – of course! – every new plus size clothing line makes it Totally And Universally Okay to be fat, and wipes away all existing cultural body standards with a majestic sweep of overpriced polyester hems.

You are dubious, dear readers. I know. I can sense your discomfort. You are worried that I’ve lost my mind. But Fat Satan is real. Fat Satan is the reason why Kentucky Fried Chicken tastes so good even when you know it will wreak holy havoc on your intestines the next day. Fat Satan is the voice in your head that whispers, “Take the elevator! Why disdain 150 years of hard work on the part of elevator engineers? Take the fucking elevator, you pulley-hating Luddite freak!” Fat Satan invented the hangover, and every time it’s 3 AM and you’re thinking, “Wow, a pizza would taste really fucking good right now,” Fat Satan is there with you. Fat Satan is why Judy from Accounting drops by your desk with a box of donut holes on Fridays. JUDY IS A TOOL OF FAT SATAN. All donut-lovers are. She knows you’ll take a donut hole or two even if you’d valiantly refuse a whole donut as Too Much, and sometimes we must focus on winning a battle rather than winning the war.

Fat Satan has a great plan for us, for all of us, and we, as his disciples, are willing agents; our objective is to secure the souls of once-thin people – of noble dieters and impassioned worker-outers! of committed butter-deniers and ardent carb-avoiders! – and turn them fat, such that we can deliver them to Fat Satan’s gaping, slobbering maw, liberally-oiled with the fat of those who have passed that way before. This is why we nod knowingly or shake our heads with barely-restrained smugness at the latest tale of failed weight loss (or successful weight gain, if you’re a glass-half-full sort of minion). When this happens, we are thinking, YES, FAT SATAN WILL BE PLEASED. (We get big points from Fat Satan for every soul turned. I’m saving up to trade mine in for a rocket-powered Segway made entirely of self-replicating cake.)

Our latest point in Fat Satan’s column: Kirstie Alley, who after a few years as a shill for Jenny Craig, is magically, remarkably – dare I say miraculously? – fat again. Evil laughter emanates from the flabby midsections of fat activists nationwide, because the souls of famous people who have become fat are the most precious of all. Famous gainers illustrate the inability of paid-for diets (and even “lifestyle changes”) to permanently recreate a thin body out of a fat one. The failure of weight-loss culture is writ large. Literally.

Oh Kirstie, we know why you went on Oprah’s show – because you both know what it is to have your newly-refatted soul in debt to Fat Satan. You knew Oprah would understand, even when no one else could. And I hope you both met up with Carnie Wilson afterward and all three of you had lunch together, an unholy trinity of the physical, palpable, jiggling evil that is… unrestrained fat people, eating.

Readers, I am sorry to foist this revelation on you with no warning or preparation. I didn’t even ask you if you were sitting down first (though you probably are, lazy fatties). But think about it. Think hard. Deep in your fat hearts, y’all had to know this all along, right? You knew Fat Satan was looking out for you. That in the times when there was only one set of fingerprints in the bowl of raw cookie dough, those were the times when Fat Satan was feeding you. That fat acceptance couldn’t possibly be about loving yourself for your own good, about treasuring the awesome machine that is your body and loving it and taking good care of it and listening to it, by nourishing it with delicious and healthful foods and by using it to do cool active things (as your physical ability permits) – fat acceptance could not possibly, in all seriousness, be making the case that all these things are worthwhile for their own sake, whether they result in weight loss or not. It couldn’t be that fat acceptance advises shedding self-hatred and disassociating body size and shape from morality and character because it’s the right thing to do, and because universalizing standards of bodies and health that discourage bodily diversity are harmful to every single person who has to confront them, no matter what that person may look like. It isn’t about respecting difference and body autonomy and trusting individual experience.

No. Of course not. Fat acceptance is about scoring souls for Fat Satan. Now you know.

ALL HAIL FAT SATAN.

(And an aside to Kirstie Alley: don’t you worry about Valerie Bertinelli. She can only slip out of Fat Satan’s clutches for so long. We’ll get her back. MWA HA HA.)

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