There’s been a bit of recent attention focused on our little community in the mainstream media (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see articles here and here). And some fellow bloggers and I were recently contacted by a producer for Nightline about a segment they’re working on about gaining and gainers.
Some this coverage has been rather fair and balanced (in the real sense of that phrase, not the FoxNews sense), but certainly a lot of it was filled with misinformation. There were even some bits that were downright absurd (for a psychologist to assume all fetishists need therapy to overcome their “addictions” is beyond pale).
In fact, seeing as much of the attention gaining gets in world news is rather ridiculous, it seemed the only appropriate commentary would be through satire.
And so I give you the latest journalistic foray into the gainerverse, straight from our biased reporter friends at The Stuffington Post:
A GROWING THREAT
Are “Gainers” Targeting Your Children?
Steven Bauch wants to get fat.
Not “Oh, Matt Damon got fat for The Informant!” fat. He wants to get fat-fat.
“I just want to get bigger,” said Bauch over coffee one warm July afternoon in San Francisco, CA. “I’ve always wanted it, ever since I was a kid, so now I’m starting to pursue it in a responsible, healthy way. I’m basically eating what a body-builder would eat, I’m just not turning it into muscle.”
Ew.
Bauch, a reasonably attractive 20-something with a successful career is what he calls a “gainer”—someone who wants to become the fattest human ever, according to a definition I just made up.
And he’s not alone. Dozens of people online share his desire, in what has become known as the gaining movement, an offshoot of the fat acceptance movement, the animal suffrage movement and the movement for ethical trade with developing countries.
Bauch and other gainers claim to pack on the pounds in a reasonably healthy way. But can gaining weight actually be healthy? Or will he and his friends weigh down our overburdened healthcare system like Cameron Manheim on a teeter-totter?
We spoke with Chad Maigre, who runs a weightloss center in Miami, Florida for an unbiased opinion.
“Gaining is unhealthy, pure and simple,” said Maigre, who has a degree in modeling from the Barbizon School. “Everyone knows fat people die all the time. But thin people? We live forever. That’s science.”
Maigre says that gainers would be healthier if they ate more like him: Five highly processed protein bars a day, plus a small steak for dinner.
“I’ve managed to remove four of the six food groups from my diet,” he managed to sputter out before losing consciousness and tipping over in his chair. After coming to, he added that he passes out frequently, “a small side-effect of the uber-healthy lifestyle I lead.”
Maigre went as far to say that gaining could hurt the economic recovery.
“In this economy, we simply can’t afford to let “gaining” become the next fad. 95 percent of diets fail. That 95-percent return rate is what keeps the billion-dollar diet and fitness industry afloat. If all those failed dieters realized they could get fat and be both happy and sexy, thousands of model-thin, attractive, white and vaguely-Latin personal trainers and dieticians would be out of a job.”
Maigre added that numerous scientific studies proved that fat is gross and not “hot right now.”
Cynthia Gorgeman, head of Fat Acceptance Trans-American Service Society (FAT-ASS), has a different take.
“The body fascists in Hollywood and South Beach just can’t accept that an obese woman like myself can be sexy and happy,” Gorgeman said, emphatically tossing six doughnouts in her gaping mouth-hole as she spoke.
“FAT-ASS is about reclaiming America for fat people, the way our founding fathers intended. Michele Obama, that skinny b****, wants to tell me to eat salads? Barack, if you get tired of poking that board, come my way for some real cushion.”
Ms. Gorgeman continued in her solicitation of the President, however we cannot print the entirety of her comments due to their graphic nature and her repeated use of the phrase “fat-roll f***ing.”
Dr. Cristina Malaciencia, head psychologist at the Freud Institute for Reaching Premature Conclusions about Human Nature with Little or No Evidence, says that people like Bauch and Gorgeman are actually mentally ill.
“While I have no empirical data and I’ve never met the two people I’m about to diagnose, it’s clear from hearsay and my personal prejudice that they are, what we call at the Freud Institute, “f***in nutters.”
“Once I was at a Red Lobster and there was an obese woman crying in the restroom. She was clearly distraught by her disgusting fatness and I believe that such is the case with these so-called gainers.”
There is hope, says Dr. Malaciencia.
“We have a treatment to cure people who suffer from sexual fetishes. I once had a patient who wanted to have sex with his wife more than once a week. That’s more than 50 times per year! Can you imagine? Her vagina could have fallen off. Thanks to treatment, they now have sex once a month and for the other 29 days he masturbates in the shower while sobbing. Its success stories like that that keep me motivated in what I’m doing.”
For extra perspectives, we went on the street in Boston, Massachusetts, to find out what Joe Plumber thinks about gaining.
We received a wide range of feedback from people, ranging from “disgusting” to “wicked disgusting.”
One man on the street, Carlos deCalle, seemed irritated at being asked for his opinion.
“Are you kidding me? Why should I care what two consenting adults do behind closed doors? It’s none of my business. You wanna get fat, get fat. You wanna be tied up, go for it. It’s really none of business. This is America. Just let them be. Best of luck to them all.”
Fortunately, we were able to find a community member who didn’t mind sharing her incredibly narrow views in detail. Sharon Busybody, a morbidly-obese mother of three from Brighton said gaining worries her.
“I’m a big woman. But I’m fat because I’m a lonely, depressed person who eats her emotions. To gain weight on purpose just seems unhealthy. The only health way to be fat and healthy is to be completely out of control, like me.”
When asked if she was being hypocritical, Busybody said she didn’t think so.
“This is America, and what could be more American than the self-righteous judgment of others?”
“I have three young children,” she added, gesturing to the three rotund butterballs of flesh behind her, who were making their way through an extra-large pizza each. “What if these sickos tried to come and fatten them up? These people should be locked up!”
We couldn’t agree more.
LOL at the idea that gaining might “weigh down our overburdened healthcare system like Cameron Manheim on a teeter-totter.” I think that’s the best line here.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, I know there’s been a lot of controversy about the recent gaining articles in the mainstream media, and the inevitable negative comments they generated. As much as I’d love to see a truly fair article or segment about the subject, I’m not sure it’s possible.
As a former journalist myself, I understand where the reporters are coming from. Unfortunately, (1) they’re on deadline, so they don’t research it as thoroughly as they ought to, (2) they enter the subject with preconceived notions about the angle they’re going to take, and (3) they are obligated to seek comment from a different point of view. The result is that they inevitably spin the story into a public health issue, a psychological issue, or both. It is almost always NOT reported to be what it almost always actually is: a sexual fetish, pure and simple.
Granted, this fetish (or paraphilia, etc.) DOES potentially have health consequences that other kinks do not, but for better or for worse, that’s never been the primary focus of the community. Well-meaning and understandably freaked-out journalists always confuse the issue by lumping it in with the only two subjects they know anything about: obesity in general, or some sort of mental disorder. The so-called obesity epidemic gives them the perfect “news peg”—an excuse to write the story in the first place.
In a way, I don’t fault them for that—realistically, we should expect nothing less from the media or from the general public. We have to accept, on some level, that our particular kink is abnormal, and that most of the world will never truly understand it, and will therefore think that it is weird at best, destructive and harmful at worst. However, if we can somehow focus the conversation on the fetish/kink aspect of it, perhaps it will lead to some better understanding over time.
OK, enough rambling. Great job on the parody!
-trin
Quick rant, hopefully I spell everything correctly.
ReplyDeleteTwo things that I find really interesting in all this news coverage of gainers: The absence of the community, and the complete desexualizing of it.
I don't know if I'm only saying this because I am a gay male in the community, but it's my impression that if a civilian were to randomly do some research trying to find gainers, they would mostly come across sites involving gay men. And further research would show that these men converse, know, and encourage one another. You know, when not starting flame wars. I understand the need to present the story with a heteronormative spin, but these reports rarely discuss the fact that gainers actually KNOW other gainers. Instead the information is presented more like a circus sideshow: 'Look at the fatty! He wants to be bigger! oOOO Ahhhh'. Perhaps it would be too threatening to show that these people have friends, and lives? For example, I think a great piece could be written based on your birthday party. Maybe I should write that, since I'm secretly a reporter and everything.
But what really bugs me is the presentation of gaining as not being a sexual act. Gaining is a life choice that STEMS from a sexual fetish. I simply don't get how NONE of these reports are mentioning it in the forefront, and if they do it's as a side note. I believe one that I read said something along the lines of, "these people see weight gain as the fulfillment of a desire to be powerful, in control, and may even have sexual connotations." As if it is just a reverse anorexia, and maybe sometimes there's sexual pleasure from it. Like somewhere around 300 pounds a fatboy's like, "hm...I'm actually growing fond of the way my belly feels as it now hangs so low it doth press against my loins. How STRANGE! My corpulence arouses me! Suddenly this gaining of 250 pounds is worth it, as before it was just for funsies."
As for as I know, Anorexics don't get turned on by thinspiration and whatnot, and I think that all the sexuality is taken out of gaining SO the comparison can be made to anorexia, and therefore mental problems. Not that that can't be done by openly discussing it as a component of a sexual fetish, but then you actually have to report on something interesting, and complex, like sexuality, and not just go the easy route and talk about it like a hip new eating disorder.
Wonderful post, yeti. I laughed the whole way through.
-Mike
I liked this line: "Maigre says that gainers would be healthier if they ate more like him: Five highly processed protein bars a day, plus a small steak for dinner."
ReplyDeleteThat about says it all. Its funny when you think about all the criticism this community has been dealt, when pretty much every diet concocted has been criticized as nutritionally-deficient and perhaps even harmful to the body. Our bodies were designed to easily and efficiently store fat. Its interesting how often we forget that.
Most humorous blog post. Thanks for writing that!
~Fatnesse
hilarious. and incorporating the french verb Maigrir (to lose weight for non french speakers) with Maigre was very funny and worked well with his input.
ReplyDeleteoverrall, a very accurate take on what mainstream media perceives gaining to be.