This fat bitch didn’t even know what a fudge round was
And rich men south of Richmond are no better
Yesterday while suffering a particularly brutal vestibular migraine, I was made aware that right wing populism has a new anthem from an artist who was a complete unknown until he discovered the profit potential behind attacking poor people and fat shaming. This man, whose initials are OA and has two first names, is a member of the working class who turned to playing country music in his efforts towards sobriety, which I applaud. It is too bad he couldn’t make money off of his previously released songs that champion getting sober and living simply, but virtue doesn’t turn a profit the way vitriol does. I totally get the frustration over working long hours in a factory for shitty pay, but that is a problem that is neither caused nor cured by government. In fact, any effort to address income inequality in any real way is shot down by the very people celebrating OA’s song.
You know, if OA could have just stayed on message about the plight of the working class, I would have been right on board with praising his song, but that is not what made it a right wing anthem. It was this line about someone who is “obese,” who is 5’3” and 300 pounds buying something called Fudge Rounds with her SNAP benefits (there is no welfare, but there still is what used to be called Food Stamps). I say “her” because the height kind of gives it away. Yes, this man wouldn’t have the top selling song on iTunes without the sexism and fat shaming.
I am currently reading the book Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann, and I feel inspired to keep it real about body size in my writing. I am a hair under 5’4” tall. I usually measure 5’ 3.75”…close enough that any medical staff enter my height as 5’4” tall. At my heaviest, I weighed just under 290 pounds. The precise weight was 289.6 pounds. I currently weigh in at 258 pounds. I was at my heaviest when I was still working and taking prednisone for stretches of six months at a time despite how it damaged my body because it was the only thing keeping me functional enough to work. I had likely had multiple sclerosis for nine years at that point, but was still five years away from a diagnosis. This was more than three years before I stopped working to go on disability.
In all of my time being on government benefits, I have never returned to my heaviest weight. Taking care of myself is my full time job. It is far from my dream job. I wish I could work with any kind of reliability, but my body is not that functional despite having some tremendous recent success health-wise. In 2017, I had stage 4 chronic kidney disease. I was hospitalized and put on fluids because my GFR (glomerular filtration rate) was 25%. After quitting Metformin (and my job as the Operations Manager for a soup kitchen) my prognosis improved and I was then considered to have stage 3 CKD. After adopting a mostly plant-based diet five years ago, my GFR kept improving, and is now at 70%, meaning I am now considered to have stage 2 CKD and will likely never require dialysis. It is such a remarkable turn around, that I am the subject of a study. It is attention that I don’t necessarily want, but if I can help others turn around their kidney health, I am happy to help.
Back to the government benefits. I paid into Social Security when I worked at various jobs. Despite earning a degree, not all my jobs were plushy office gigs. I’ve done factory work, which is honestly plushy compared with working on a farm, which I have also done. I have been fat my entire life minus a span of approximately one year (a few months following my birth, and I got down to 136 pounds during a time when I limited my caloric intake to between 300 and 700 calories per day and walked an average of
10 miles each day… something I will never put my body through again!)
I embody the person OA mentions in his song, except I spend the $23 me and my significant other (who has been disabled since birth) receive as SNAP benefits each month to buy vegetables at the farmers market, which I get to via peddling my recumbent tricycle. I had given up driving due to my numerous neurological conditions, all of which are more plausibly linked to viruses and pollution than to lifestyle. I had to actually look up what a fudge round is. Apparently, it is some kind of snack cake. I don’t eat stuff like that. It is not that I have never put anything resembling junk food in my mouth. Four times a year, my partner and I will eat French fries from Culver’s. But most of the time, what we are eating is what people like to imagine thin, wealthy people eat. There are a lot of whole grains, fruit, vegetables, nuts. When there isn’t a farmers market, I often use SNAP benefits to support my gardening habit, as SNAP recipients can purchase seed to grow food from retailers who also sell a lot of food (which basically means Amazon and a local health food store called Family Natural Foods). I get more bang out of my 23 bucks that way.
Gardening is therapeutic on multiple levels, and would be the number one thing I would recommend for anyone looking at improving both their physical and mental well-being. I have done a lot of work for poor people, and have worked to help enhance the health of our community. But that reality doesn’t jibe with the stereotypes people hold about fat people. In fact, if OA knew someone like me, maybe he wouldn’t have included that dumb line in his grievance song. His “Ain’t Got A Dollar” song could describe my life (except I don’t drink any alcohol or smoke anything). But you know, maybe that is what people like him might actually mean when they talk about poor people on the street versus people who know how to work the system. In a lot of states, a poor person doesn’t qualify for government benefits or even help from charitable organizations if they are not sober. I know there are homeless people, even if they are largely unseen. Most of these people would qualify for assistance if they got sober or got the mental healthcare they need, but it is left up to them to make those decisions due to a Reagan era policy, one that prevented people from being institutionalized against their wishes. That is the price of freedom, and the price of assistance is following the rules, or as OA’s ilk likes to say, “working the system.”
My compassion isn’t limited to the sober. The only time I turned people away from the soup kitchen I managed was when they were posing a threat to other people. After I left, the soup kitchen had to find someone to work security to keep patrons safe because someone who doesn’t carry a gun but is brave enough to tell someone behaving badly that they must leave is a rarity. Although maybe these unruly sorts were afraid that I might sit my fat ass on them if they failed to comply. People seem to fear fat women more than anything else, which I think us fat chicks should use to our advantage!
Before signing off, I just want to address the miners/minors thing. So, we are not supposed to care about the victims of a pedophile? I mean, I do care about miners, which is precisely why I want to see men and women working in the dangerous fossil fuel industry get better paying, less dangerous jobs in the renewable energy industry. But I also care about the victims of pedophiles. I am a victim of pedophilia, and I will never be able to get justice. I have a lot more to complain about than some able-bodied white man who is not only getting one hell of a second chance after battling addiction, but will get rich on stoking hatred. I am all for second chances, but if your salvation is built on a foundation of hatred, I only hope that it all collapses to the ground. My anthem will always be one of unity, not division.
Thank you so much for these truths, we have much in common in our journey this life, including never getting justice from crimes committed against in our youth, health complications created by delayed diagnosis as adults and not knowing what a fudge round was. Proud of your progress and strength and wish you the best going forward.