Personal Phil-osophies

Fat People: Enormous, FUPA sporting, sweaty manatees, most commonly seen in convenient stores with narrow aisles or losing their balance in a Youtube video. Found at the opposite end of the spectrum from skinny, whiny hipsters, fat people occupy a similar role of taking over cities to the point where politics, food, city planning and economics become involved, creating a sticky and sugary mess all over our fat little finger tips.

First, we have to look at the number of fat people we’ve got on our chubby hands. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, about 17% of us are self-reported to being obese. Apparently, our fat asses are also in denial, because the PHAC thinks the real number is closer to 25%. Even worse, if you’re an aboriginal kid, there’s a 36.2% chance that you’re the fat kid in school. If it makes you feel any better, basically everyone is fat (or will be soon), so don’t beat yourself up. Misery loves company.

I live in New Brunswick, which was the fattest province in Canada until 2005. Luckily, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland sobered up and realized what horrible places they were living in, and ate us under the table, making New Brunswick only the 3^rd fattest province at this point. The cities are learning to cope, however: Champlain Mall in Moncton, New Brunswick recently widened almost all doors in the mall because they were apparently not big enough for their husky clientele.

What’s causing the increase? Pretty much everything. Consider this: We live in the suburbs, which are far away from cities, forcing us to drive everywhere. We’re busy people on the road, so, naturally, we go through drive-thru’s a lot. We usually drop our fat children off at school, where gym is just an option and our government considers pizza and french fries as servings of vegetables. They go through this lifestyle for their entire childhood, and we’ve suddenly developed a generation of Jabba The Hutts.

Sadly, he wasn’t even the last kid picked in gym class.

And, yes, pizza and french fries are legally recognized by American Congress as servings of vegetables (to be fair, tomatoes are a fruit, but I’ll let that one slide for now). This is probably the biggest blow to Americans since the Reagan administration tried to lobby that ketchup should be considered a vegetable.

Or perhaps this is the result of a diminishing amount of parents that are enrolling (or literally rolling) their kids into sports. Once again, the government is hell-bent on fattening kids up like diabetic sea-lions. Last month, a Toronto school principal decided to ban any hard balls from his elementary school. Yup, kids aren’t allowed to bring soccer balls, footballs or basketballs to play with. Hell, even tennis balls were banned because they’re considered too dangerous. What’s worse than a fat kid? A fat panzy.

Some people think we should slap an ‘unhealthy’ tax on our junk food since obesity has become such a burden on our health system. Cigarettes, for example, are taxed heavily since non-smokers shouldn’t be responsible for paying into the healthcare system. Likewise, why should slim, healthy hipsters have to pay for Fat Joe’s quadruple bypass?

I brought this up in a university lecture on the same topic last year. Of course, the only fat guy in the class challenged me. With sweat pouring down his three chins, his arms flailing like water balloons ready to burst and his chubby cheeks turning pink with rage, he told me “this is different from smoking.” How, I wasn’t exactly sure, because him, nor anyone else in the class, could explain it to me.

Therefore, I’ll break it down for you, lard-asses. Statistically, eating unhealthy is worse for you than smoking. Consider this: According to Statistics Canada, Circulatory and Heart Disease are the top killers in the country, wiping out 235 217 Canadians a year, accounting for 51% of deaths. Stroke comes in third, with respiratory disease coming in at a weak fourth place. I live by these statistics, which is why I smoke a pack a day, and eat all of my vegetables. On days that I don’t smoke, I’ll eat a cheeseburger. Everything in balance, people.

Despite all these salty and fatty statistics, the trends continue to move in an upward slope, eventually becoming too steep for our fat asses to climb. We keep getting type II diabetes (Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick are the most prevalent. Surprised?), we keep making sports less available to young people, we take away their healthy school lunch options, and we’re creating a generation of kids with shorter life expectancies than our own. Basically, death by chocolate has never been taken so literally.

So, kids, if you take away anything from this, remember: eat your vegetables, play with your friends, and smoke lots of cigarettes.

Stats on Fat-asses can be found here.

Food governance issues can be found here.

Story of the principal with no balls can be found here.

Diabetes facts can be found here.

Jabba The Hutt was stolen from here.

Hipsters: The arrogant, yet well-educated, 20-somethings that plague our trendy bars, cafés and shops that we wish we could go to, but can’t in fear of becoming associated with the spacey, self-absorbed free-thinkers. Similar to the most popular girl in high school, their self-conceded and hypocritical attitudes have become the butt of all jokes across the mediums, yet they continue to dominate every social circle in the city. From music to food, politics and education, the hipster is a force to be reckoned with, and we should all be fearing for our lives.

Hipsters, in academic terms, are the “Creative Class”, a class of independent, young, well-educated, sustainable and all-around annoyingly good citizens. They’re environmentally conscience, have a deep appreciation for the arts, have lots of money, and make up a scary proportion of the economy: Richard Florida, Professor of Business and Creativity at the University of Toronto, says that the Creative Class accounts for 1/3 of North America’s economy. What the fuck? Over 30% of our economy is the result of these organic, “you’ve-probably-never-heard-of-them” saying assholes?

He has his doubters, but Richard Florida has basically become an international hipster advocate, stating that if cities don’t get on the hipster bandwagon, they’ll go the way of Detroit (or PEI, for us Canadians). He thinks cities need to start catering to the creative class by investing more money into arts and culture, support local bands, restaurants, and start acting more like these neo-hippies. Although its a pretty new idea, it’s catching on: hundreds of dying, industrial-based cities are paying this man 5-figures per lecture to listen to him talk about how this culture of narcissistic bastards is going to save our cities from falling apart. He also acts as a consultant for cities (for a retarded amount of money) and tells them exactly what their particular city needs to do in order to get hipsters swarming.

And it doesn’t end at hipsters. Richard Florida is known for his questionable data sources, and has developed something called “The Bohemian Index”, a way to look at the amount of artistic talent in a city and compare it to economic prosperity. His findings basically said that the more gay people there are in a city, the more technology, more highly educated people and an all-around better economy, not to mention an abundance of super fabulous shoes and cute dogs.

The numbers all match up and mean one thing: The hipsters are coming. They’re tired of bands going mainstream, they’re bored of your views on existentialism philosophy (you’ve probably never heard of it) and they’re tired of your social constructs. They knew the economy was cool before anyone else did, and they did so very ironically.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. 

But, to be fair, it doesn’t seem that bad. A strengthened economy, more art, culture, advanced technology, tolerance for all, small businesses being supported with local and organic standards in all aspects of life. It… It almost makes you…like the hipsters, doesn’t it?

…No. Fuckin’ hipsters. 

Richard Florida’s article, Cities and the Creative Class, can be found here.
Picture of the bloodsucking monsters (hipsters) was taken from here.