When The Thin Man Escapes
Obesity, Prejudice and Possibility

Shirt collars loosened, like hand cuffs that no longer chaff the skin.
Hope doesn’t set in yet. After so long, the prison cell feels like home. You’d been sentenced for a life term. At least that’s what it felt like as days turned into weeks, and then into years.
Then the cuffs slide off. Suddenly the thought begins conquering parts of your mind. Escape. Escape from the fat body.
In retrospect, I still ended up falling for the stereotypes. My school life, thankfully, never suffered from the rigid social hierarchies and norms that dominate High School in American movies.
The terms Jock, Goth, Nerd weren’t assigned to groups. But that didn’t stop me from picking a side. It wasn’t out of peer pressure or due to a need for an identity. It was out of relief.
Some people just know they’re not athletic. Its not the failed free kicks or rebounding shots that tip them off. It’s an innate feeling. Some people just know that they’re skilled creatively. Perhaps after strumming a song on guitar, while the rest of the class is familiarizing themselves with the pick.
And some people, when such occurances happen close together, decide to lean into the identity that can best compliment them.
When I decided I wanted to be a writer, I also, subconsciously atleast, began erasing myself from imagined scenarios of athleticism.
Friends hit the gym, but by them I’d reasoned that a bulked up body wouldn’t suit me. Implying what? That a writer shouldn’t be ripped? Or that the friend in the gym wasn’t the 'creative' type?
Passing on invites to football matches was normal, even expected. After all, I’d rather take a stroll, musing about ideas. For the ideas are ripe; not because walking is easy...or because I can’t find my football boots.
Most people who are obese will, if asked nicely, be able to point out a reason. An accident that left them immobile for a while, medication that had side effects, emotional trauma. Any one of those reasons mask the follow up I suffered from.
If medication was a hit movie, laziness was it’s big budget sequel.
I don’t want to insert myself into the group of men and women who suffer from debilitating obesity. I don’t deserve the sympathy, and stating that it’s a disease disregards my colossal grocery budget, AND dilutes the gravity of the situation.
I let a slip up turn into a slide down the mountain. Cans of Pringles were deployed to quell thoughts of discontent. A burgeoning waist line made me ambidextrous; carrying two plates at once was better than walking twice.
This is perhaps the point in the movie where the background score begins to swell. Cue montage. But today isn’t about flattery, however well intentioned and earnest.
Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I thought about ordering a custom T-shirt. To someone who wears formal shirts everyday, even to the grocery store, such is not a trivial thought.
That’s when I understood about the prison. About the thin man stuck in a fat body.
It is said that if you took a frog and tossed it into boiling water, it would leap out. But if you placed it in tepid water, it will keep adjusting it’s body temperature as the water slowly heats up. It will eventually die, without ever having thought of escape.
When you see an obese person, you might, understandably, wonder why they didn’t want to fix the problem. That’s because you’re comparing it to if you were forcefully chained right now to a 20 kilogram steel ball. No one imprisons themselves in a fat body. They merely follow the crumbs on the floor, little by little, getting closer to a life sentence.
Over the past few years, I’ve read, heard, watched and talked about topics relating to racism, prejudice, bias and so on.
It’s terrible when you are prejudiced against someone.
It's simply sad when you're prejudiced against your self.
As I thought about the custom T-shirt, one perhaps with the quote from V For Vendetta that contains over fifty words starting with V, I chastised myself.
I can’t wear a T-shirt, especially not one without a collar! If I wear a collar, doesn’t that mean I need to wear a pair of jeans? But I hate jeans. Not because they make it impossible to walk. It’s a matter of style.
I'd been stereotyping myself. As though the casting director and brown actor were inside my head. And every time, without protest, the role of taxi driver was accepted. Every time. Until now.
Now, it’s Spring, and there are revolutions fomenting. Why can’t my hair be cut differently! Two and a half decades of apathy and mismanagement must stop! No more silencing free speech. For too long, every word was carefully chosen, and seldom shared. No more isolation! Lift sanctions on travel, open the borders, allow estranged friends to connect!
As the thin man runs, his mind is split. Between joy in freedom, and fear in recapture. Like fugitives say:
"I'm never going back. No matter what!"
