I'm so sorry, Scottsmom, I wasn't implying that you were having a pity party. I just mean that it's easy to fall into pity party mode and not face our responsibilities. I had a 15 year pity party. I spent alot of time being mad at people who were insensitive. I also spent alot of time being mad at my husband for wanting me to be a better, more healthy person. I was actually mad at myself, but as long as I had someone else to focus anger on, I could avoid the truth about me.
I do agree that there are genetic tendencies toward obesity, but I don't believe that obesity can be compared to diseases that we have no power over. We can assure our cure with behavior modification. Thus, society sees the overweight person as undisciplined. How can we deny that? Most of us are undisciplined. So we are targets for ridicule and jokes by insensitive people. Maddening? You bet, but will it change? Probably not in our lifetime, unless we form a powerful lobby and give lots of money to a bunch of politicians who will then take us seriously and know that they need to keep us happy to get our votes so they will pass a law making it illegal to snicker at us and then it will be politically incorrect to make fat jokes......ok, sorry, I'm just getting silly now.