Freak shows

Have you ever had the feeling that your country/home is so extreme in some way to be considered unique? Or, have you ever had the feeling that the world is staring at you with their jaw dropped, voice aghast at the 'freaks' residing across the ocean? I have. It happened last night.

In between flossing and brushing my teeth, I happened to catch a glimpse of an extremely obese man lying in bed, whining. He needed surgery, or his life would be over; his organs were slowly being crushed under the massive rolls and flaps of fat that had accumulated over seven years of being sedentary and eating unhealthily.

I'm not going to lie; the spot for the upcoming 'documentary' caught my eye, so I hurriedly sat on the couch and waited. The show opened with a picture of America, distorted as if there was a looking glass on the screen running back and forth over the map of America, making some states look bigger. In the background, I heard a thunderous sound like that of a bullfrog, only a few octaves lower. It then cut to a shot of the American flag fluttering gently in a soft breeze, all the while, panning onto the sidewalk giving us a flattering glimpse of obese thighs, butts and stomachs, but never heads; they never show the faces.

Next was the narrator:

"This is America: The fattest nation on earth and home to the world's most obese man."

Ahh, makes me feel good to be a "Yank"!

For the next hour and half I was witness to video clips: hospitals, American flags, fast food, fat people, stomach by-pass of a 1,000 pound person. The cycle continued, although sometimes a little varied: fast-food shot, fat teenager, baby eating a hamburger, 1,000 pound man trying to walk, 800 pound teenager, crying mothers, hospitals. Oh yeah, and the American Flag.

I always wondered where foreigners got crazy stereotypes about the lifestyles of most Americans; impressions usually swing in between the idea that were all INCREDIBLY rich, or were all INCREDIBLY obese. I think I now know why. The show last night was shown on basic Czech television at 9:00 o'clock at night. This means that it was a 'hot' slot and I'm sure it garnered a few million viewers. It was chalk full of statistics, generalizations about the way Americans eat and live, pictures to back up the theories and a whole lot of jiggling guts and legs. For the uninformed viewer, the idea that all of America struggles to get out of bed due to fat tumors hanging off the back of hamstrings would not be a difficult conclusion to make.

My stomach was rolling in the thought that this is what we as a nation have come to represent to the world: gluttony and consumerism gone completely wrong.

An undercurrent throughout the whole broadcast was the documentarian's probing of feelings from the 'skinny' side of the USA. He found that while many average/healthy Americans were shocked and dismayed at the fact that the obesity issue can have such extreme cases (like that of a 1,000 pound man); the over-all reaction was one of pity and remorse for those who suffer in such situations. It was pretty obvious, to the documentarian, that the acquiescence of main-stream, non-obese American culture into apathetically accepting the lifestyle (lack of physical activity; pure ignorance as to healthy eating; a dependence on fast food; pie-in-the-sky surgeries) of their unhealthy neighbors and family members was just as crazy and warped as the fact that there is a 1,000 pound person on this earth. This was best illustrated by the fact that it was the man's own family who kept feeding him FIVE cheeseburgers a day even past the point of immobility, and that NOBODY in the surrounding town spoke out about his lifestyle in the hope of SAVING HIS LIFE, not insulting him as a 'fat' person.

This issue is one that I've been struggling with since I've been here in the Czech Republic. Living here has forced me to view American living with fresh eyes from an outside perspective. While I know that the truth of the matter is that NOT all Americans are obese and that there are some of us who really do struggle with weight for both emotional and genetic reasons, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the fact that our American, fast-paced life style oils the engine upon which this obesity epidemic turns. As long as we continue to live in a cycle that treats time and career as more important than family; that chooses self-aggrandizement over communal responsibility; that lets town centers die; splits itself at the seams over pointless cultural battles over 'right' and 'left'; ignores the fact that our eyes have blinded by blinking fast food and box-chain signs beckoning us to buy more garbage; and that judges the worth of humans not on the fact that are people, but in how much they can consume, then we will always be stuck in an American Nightmare.

My point is to not make all of you reading this feel bad. I am speaking because I'm saddened by the fact that this is who 'we' as Americans have become to the rest of the world. I guess for many of you, what I'm writing will be hard to understand because you've never had the chance to see our culture and our nation from the outside. But I have, and these are reflections that I've been dealing with. To say that I don't like the American style of living would be about accurate. I look forward to being home for the people, but I could do without the constant bombardment of chemically-concocted food, 20 gallon 'fizzinators' and commercialism gone wild. (When I can't even watch a football game anymore without having to sit through 2 minutes of advertisements EVERY 3O SECONDS, it has gotten a little out of hand)

Oh, not to mention the fact that we can't even fathom how to fix our 'Health Care Crisis' until we take seriously the call to live and eat responsibility in our individual lives. But, that is for another conversation.