FatLand and Public Celebrations

When FatLand was new, people were so busy trying to build it up and plan it that things like weddings and anniversaries were celebrated in people's homes without a lot of fanfare.

When it became a little older and a little more settled, some of its inhabitants grew interested in building things like Wedding halls and catering establishments.

The tourists from the Other Side who came to see FatLand in the easing and then repeal of the Pro-Health and Diet Laws were extremely disappointed to see FatLand inhabitants celebrating weddings and anniversaries just as they did on the Other Side.

What their guide had to explain to them was that the FatLand celebrations of personal and life cycle events were remarkable not in their originality or departure from Other Side customs, but precisely because they were conducted so similarly to those of the Other Side. Their remarkable nature, the guide said, lay in the fact that FatLanders felt secure enough to conduct them in public because in FatLand, they were secure from harassment and public abuse.

For so many years, the guide continued, on the Other Side, mostly very brave fat people held their life cycle celebrations in public, and this despite the fact that they were sure to be harassed, embarrassed and shamed by bullies (of all ages). Many fat people learned the hard way that the Other Side/USA frowned on public happiness for fat people. Of course when the Pro-Health and Diet Laws went into effect, fat people did not hold public celebrations for fear of being spotted by the Pro-Health and Diet admins and being sent to Reeducation Centers.

And that, the guide explained, was another obstacle negotiated by FatLanders when they started holding personal and life cycle celebrations in public. They had to power past their fear that someone would inform on them and land them in a Center, even though such thing never had existed and never would exist in FatLand.

So, the guide concluded, what you may see and view as a simple celebration was actually the work of the untangling of many fears and many years of having to hide from probable public harassment and abuse. The FatLand celebrations themselves, the guide concluded, were triumphs of determination over bigotry and hatred from years past and over the place that once encouraged such hatred.

A possible lesson might be that hatred never wins forever. True? Many of us hope so.