[Leica] IMG: Florida Wildlife

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

On 3/5/07, Tina Manley <images@infoave.net> wrote:
> At 07:33 PM 3/5/2007, you wrote:
> >It's easy to make fun of these folks. Yes, walking would be good but I
> >have a feeling that they're in those motorized chairs because they
> >have lost mobility and CANNOT walk.
> >
> >Adam Bridge
>
> All of that is true, Adam, but I was very depressed by the number of
> people at Disney who were in these scooters because they can't walk
> and in spite of that they were in line to buy and eat funnel cakes
> and donuts and cotton candy.

People eat for MANY reasons. Speaking with specialists in obesity is
very instructive because there are so many paths to the condition and
it is so very difficult to break away from.

> I've seen many documentaries on obese
> people who manage with great will power to lose weight and then gain
> it all back.

The weightloss cycle works like any addiction cycle with one major
exception: unlike smoking, drugs or gambling you MUST eat. Life-long
lessons about what to eat, learned as a child, come home to haunt and
haunt and haunt. Desires for the "wrong" food, for too great a
quantity are extremely difficult to break.

>There has to be something in the American society today
> that is causing people to be so obsessed with food.  There were many
> other nationalities at Disney World.  I made it a point to seek them
> out.  None were as obese as the North Americans.  The Japanese were
> skinny - all of them.  All of the morbidly obese people in the
> motorized scooters were North Americans.  Why?

Because there are powerful economic interests built around selling us
the foods least good for us but which our brains are essentially
hard-wired to desire. (Well, many of us have it, some naturally do
not. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones.

> I hesitated to post
> these photos because I was sure somebody would respond the way you
> did, but I truly want to know what it is in our society that causes
> this.  They have to know that they are eating themselves to
> death.  It wasn't just these two. There were hundreds of people at
> Disney just like this.  One of the most depressing sights was a very
> obese woman in a motorized chair who had made room for her obese
> young son to stand in front of her and ride rather than walk.  To me
> it's very sad.  I'll admit I do not understand it.

Tina I question if it even remotely entered your head that you might
be offending someone. You had an easy shot and you took it. Oh wow -
what a great insight - fat people eat too much and LOOK just LOOK at
these lazy people who won't even WALK! They RIDE all the way to one of
the highest caloric stands in the park!

Yep - real insight there!

I'm fairly sure that you could do a similar hit piece on your Central
American friends but you refrain because you're not judging them in
the same way. You've placed yourself above these people and from your
lordly position you're making a judgement.

Well sorry Tina, I'm not letting it fly this time. There was nothing
in your images that was human or caring -- just nasty and without
sympathy. Well good on you if you're proud of that. Come back when
you've done a series that reflects their lives, the path that got them
there, some sympathy and understanding.

I'm incredibly disappointed and even shocked at your inability to see
the intimate human problem. It's certainly not Christian - although
it's certainly judgmental enough for the church I grew up in so I
guess it is.

I'm not letting this go because it's so EASY to go after us fat folks.
Great for Jay Leno to make his lard bucket jokes. But they HURT.
They're cruel. And they aren't needed.

Adam Bridge