Bob
A thread I read linked me to this story on BBC about how Medicare now classify obesity as a disease. Out come the fatty-bashing sort, which the bully in me laughs along with. Still, search for a definition of disease. Most centre around ‘a departure from health’ or ‘disfunctional response’. Being lardy is ‘a bad thing’, regardless of what it is a symptom of (eg. cake gobbling, poor access to affordable and nutritious food, self-medicating to blot out the pointlessness of existence). Lay definitions of disease seem to include notions of blamelessness, and people do love to blame fatties for their predicament. Given levels obesity can be predicted by socio-economic and environmental factors, I think it still fits the lay definition, but that would spoil people’s enjoyment of poking fun at plumpers (eg. doesn’t Robert Smith look like both Joe Brand, and to a lesser extent, Lisa Riley).