Stumbling Through Adulthood

The recent campaign against fat people borrows two concepts that are usually embodied by the Republicans:

1. The cruelty is the point.

2. I'm ok living under a bridge as long as the Black guy over there also lives under a bridge, and that my bridge is nicer than his.

Not saying the slagging on the fatties is the same as racism, only that the people doing it just want to make sure there is someone more miserable, hungry, and despised than they are.

Some background, using a few examples from the last few years to set the stage.

1. Diet soda. The constant whine of lies that are "based" on tortured data. From "aspartame is toxic" to "even though there is no sugar, the body reacts as if there were", and the best one, imo: the data a few years ago that showed a small but significant increase in strokes in women who drank diet soda. OMG, diet soda is gonna give you a stroke... but if you read the study, you'd see a slightly larger and significant rate of strokes in women who drank... regular soda. But the diet soda angle was the only one all over the media. It's not about keeping fat people safe from the evils of aspartame. It's about demonizing one of the very rare things a fat person can have without diet-busting consequences, guilt-free. Taking away a small pleasure and making it somehow bad and evil. I mean, these are the same people who will have parties offering four or five alcoholic drinks, several kinds of high end sugared soda, and not a single diet offering, beyond water. Or, if they're feeling particularly generous, one of those revolting flavored fizzy waters.

2. The OMG, fat people are so slobbish, look at those clothes they're choosing to wear... I mean, who needs sequins to make their fat bellies look even bigger? And why do they always wear polyester? Cheap slobs.... but also... OMG, some company is actually making stylish clothes for fatties, without sequins and in natural fabrics?! No, stop it, that's going to encourage the fatties to stay fat!

3. The constant drone of gastric bypass -removing 90% of a healthy organ- is the "easy way out".

I won't go into the whole "shame them thin" people, the mocking people, the ones who barely hide their disgust, the only who don't bother to hide their disgust, the ones who dehumanize and demean. What I'm trying to point out is that... fat people can't win, and must always, because we're self-indulgent slobs who've pre-eaten all our calories, be denied anything that tastes good, even if it's diet soda.

And now... well now there appears to be several medications that might actually help fat people lose some weight. The meds are expensive but appear to work. The side effects are minimal.

One who think that all the "health trollers", the "I don't hate fat people, I'm just concerned about their health" would welcome such a development. Nope, NSM. That's when it becomes clear that the cruelty is, in fact, the point here too, and that making sure some other group of people is unhappy is part of their agenda.

Just in the past few months as the data is becoming more clear and more people are getting access to these drugs three major lines of attack have emerged, the most recent just this past week.

1. That these are DRUGS OMG THAT YOU HAVE TO TAKE YOUR WHOLE LIFE OR THE WEIGHT COMES BACK. Umm, duh? Most medication for a chronic condition has to be taken for ever, or the condition comes back, so eh. Plus... for many fat people, the haters preferred method of weight loss (if it even works long term), diet and exercise, aka eat less move more also has to be sustained for a life time as well. It's not sustainable, especially since the body fights those food restrictions with every wily trick it has. But the clamor from the concern trolls shows loud and clear that it was never about caring about anyone's health, it was just as excuse for hate, and this is just one avenue to hate more.

2. The implication that this is the easy way out. It is not. I'm not talking about side effects, self-injections, and the cost... I'm talking about the fact that even with these meds, you still have to limit calories and exercise. People aren't sitting down to meals of rib-eye steaks, baked potatoes with all the fixings, butter-drenched green beans, and a dessert of cheesecake, with cocktails before, wine during, and brandy and a lavish coffee drink after, injecting their meds, and losing weight. What these meds do (in part) is change the brain's messaging about fullness and the drive to eat when one is on a weight loss diet, allowing people to actually, well, eat less long term.

3. The shortage of the drugs. The drugs that have been working for weight loss (semaglutide and its ilk) were initially developed for diabetes. The dosage from weight loss is, iirc, twice as large as that for diabetes. There have been shortages of these drugs... prompting multiple stories about how all those fatties getting their easy-way-out drugs were essentially condemning diabetics to DEATH. Note that the problem appears to be doctors prescribing Ozempic (the diabetes drug) off label. Wegovy is the same drug in "weight loss dosage" and it appears to also be in short supply. So, eh, seems like a Novo Nordisk/supply chain issue rather than those evil fatties killing off diabetics: remember, all of these medications are by Rx only. This is not asshole buying up every last disinfectant wipe at the start of the pandemic, or even Ivermectin. It's people who also have a need for those drugs asking doctors for an Rx. And anyone who doesn't think there is a pressing need for people not to interrupt treatment has never lived through a phase of weight regain. A few months interruption, for many fatties who need these drugs can mean all the work of previous months wiped away, from a weight loss perspective, probably with any benefit the weight loss brought on (lower bp for some etc). Yeah, I know, not the same as a brittle diabetic, and I'm not comparing the two. Just saying that it isn't the case of dire need on one side and vanity prescription on the other. But yeah, talk to Novo Nordisk before blaming the fatties.

4. And the most recent. Ozempic face. This is what happens to your fatties when you take the easy way out and try to lose weight, to attain the superior state that the naturally thin of course deserve: you get a gaunt, old looking face. Ha ha ha fatties! First of all,... yeah, when you lose weight, skin tends to get loose. But this? The reporting is breathless, as if 20-year-olds were all of a sudden looking 80, and the glee that this is happening is barely hidden. It's the same phenomenon as the diet coke: we don't want you disgusting fatties to have anything nice, to ever get the easy way out, and ha ha, Ozempic face. You might be thin(ner) but you look like an ugly old hag, LOL!

The patterns are repetitive and upsetting.

For the record, a good article on the drugs etc: The future of weight loss.

Still have to take the time to write up the camping trip and talk about Linnea's tummy/anxiety issues which are becoming more and more of a concern.

1. Friday I got to meet irl someone I've known for 25+ years. Always such a treat... I mean, you know people, know about their kids, know about their lives and yet you've never been in the same space. So weird but wonderful. I love the Internet. Anyhow, it was a great visit and I always love it when these visits happen and it's feels like you're just picking up on a conversation because, well, you've known each other for a long time.

2. We filled out our ballots for the primary yesterday. And found out that we've been redistricted out of our solid blue district into a "competitive" one, that only went blue in 2018. The dude running against the incumbent is an asshole son a nasty asshole mother who was that district's rep a long time ago. He has been on a city council as well so he's got great name recognition. I've had D representation here in the Seattle suburbs for several decades and I'm not happy at losing it.

3. Here is why fat people don't trust "We make plus sizes!" companies. ReI GoreTex jacket, purchased 2018. Can zip it up but not comfortable and wouldn't easily fit warm layers (I gained A LOT of weight during the pandemic. Sob.). Bought the 2021 version of the same coat one size up yesterday. Sleeves are about 3 inches longer -WTF is with that?- but the jacket itself? Maybe, at most, an extra inch or inch and a half in the chest compared to the old one. Fits, and I'll be able to get one thin layer beneath, but I suspect that if I compared same size to same size 2018 vs 2022, the newer one would be smaller. So much clothing works like this. I have the same fleece from the same vendor and over the years, the plus sizes have gotten smaller and the straight sizes have gotten bigger. (Land's End. I own at least 6 of their quarter zips. I used to find them used at Value Village all the time).

Saw a disgusting piece from CNN yesterday that talked to vaccine-stupids, and pretty much gave them a platform without any real rebuttal. That drives me nuts.

Two things:

1. At this point, I don't give a fuck if the stupids kill themselves or their families. I do, however, care that they put others at risk, who just happened to be near one of the stupids, and that they're breeding grounds for new variants.

2. These people almost invariably claim that 'they'll be fine' and then they get sick and go clog up hospitals putting others at risk. The stupids are often -not always- fat and older.

Which brings me to two other points I want to make.

1. While I despite these stupid, selfish asses, I'm of the opinion that we cannot, and should not agitate for, refusing them treatment, or should not use vaccine status as a determinant for treatment, no matter how tempting. Because I'm fat and I'll always be triaged to the back of the line, because it's my own fault (oh ha, as if I wouldn't be thin if I could, LOL. Do people really think fat people don't spend much of their lives desperately chasing thinness?), so since I don't want to see us going the route of using what would no doubt be called a 'personal choice' to be fat to deny me care, I will be on the side of not kicking the unvaccinated out of the hospital.

2. Fat people and Covid. Data looks pretty compelling, that fat people do poorly with Covid. That was what they said, what the studies showed as well, back in 2009 with H1N1, that fat people were particularly at risk. And then... someone did a meta-analysis a few years later and controlled for treatment... and lo and behold, the problem was medical bias: thin people got treatment earlier and fat people got lower quality of care in general. It'll be interesting to see if the small increase in morbidity and mortality in fat people in Covid get smoothed away once we account for how soon fat people got antibody treatment, how often/for how long they were proned etc.

Which brings me to two more points.

1. Approximately 74% of Americans are some degree of fat. 78% of people who have poor outcomes with covid (hospitalization, need of a ventilator, death) were fat. Excuse me while I don't think that the 4% difference is worth blaming every fat person for their own demise over, especially considering point 2 above. The data, btw, is often mis-reported as "78% of people with poor outcomes were considered overweight or obese" followed by '42% of Americans are obese.' Note the difference.... I also find it interesting that the data out of China (30% fat people) did not show an additional risk factor, nor did the initial data from NY or, even, King County. Again, not saying there is no effect of being fat, just that the data is, again, being blown out of proportion, and that it'll be interesting to see over the next few years, if anyone tries to tease out the balance between actual risk and the risk conferred by medical bias.

2. Fat lives are considered worthless. It's been horrific, over the past year and a half, to hear the chant, mainly from wingnuts, but also from the left, of 'well, they were fat, lol, what did they expect?' The immediate reaction after a death is announced was to explain it away "oh, they were fat" or to, in no uncertain terms, blame the victim, or worse, parents who lost a child.

And now Linnea is pissed off with me because I won't make her sticky buns for breakfast tomorrow. I'd said I'd do it at some point, I did not specify a time, and now she's pissed because she wanted them tomorrow or Monday, and she's saying that I shouldn't be so mean, and that she's leaving in six weeks and I'll regret not making them then.

I just can't.

My mom just had a gigantic bowl of ice cream. LOL.

So. My sister is headed down to Colorado for 3 weeks and my mom is coming to stay with me. Because of the prednisone she's been on, she's not cleared for travel.

I'm headed down to the Columbia crossing south of Yakima (about a three or so hour drive) to meet up with sis and BIL in their gigantic truck-RV combo and pick up my mom.

What I'm not looking forward to: having to keep snacks and sweets out for her to eat.

My mom has always been a big eater in general, but never a big breakfast eater. However, my sister has found that she does a lot better when she eats three meals a day so that's the goal. The best way to get her to eat? Leave out sweets/put out sweets, and she'll claim that no, she doesn't want them, and then eat them.

The problem? So will I.

This is going to be a difficult few weeks. I'm trying. It's so hard. I mean, I fight for weeks to lose few pounds, and one weekend of inattention -not gorging, mind you, just not paying attention- will bring them straight back, sigh.

Random musing's on Weight Watcher's decision to allow teens to join with parental consent.

So far NO intervention to make larger bodies smaller has been proven to work, short of weight loss surgery. Some have better results than others, BUT the ones that do are the ones aimed at younger children and their families, NOT at teens.

We live in an environment that facilitates anyone who is going to be prone to weight gain gaining weight, with the predictable results of some will gain more some will gain a lot more, some will gain less, and some will not gain. This environment is mainly controlled by commercial enterprises, there is not much government intervention can do to help on that level, especially in the current climate of no-holds barred no regulation business is god in Trump-Ryan-Paul-McTurtle-Putin-Land (formerly known as the United States).

The interventions that work marginally are the family level ones, aimed at younger children. Of course, they are more cost and time intensive and are going to require support from all levels of society, something we are not going to get easily out of anyone. The idea of early intervention is to prevent the initial weight gain. By the time kids get to elementary school, it's too late, so the intervention point is parents of young children.

Here's the raw deal: aside surgery, pretty much nothing works long term. Nothing. Not diet, not lifestyle changes, not the paltry meds we have to try. And even surgery is not a magic bullet. Living with weight issues is a nasty, miserable ride on a roller coaster, or to borrow a better analogy
running down the up escalator.

So what can we do? I think there are two prongs of approach, one for those of us already trying to get downstairs, and one for everyone else. Namely the teens who may be fat, but who haven't yet started on the race.

For us? Another Canadian obesity specialist, Yoni Freedhoff over at Weighty Matters has the best approach:

The most important factor in sustaining your weight is not just tolerating, but actually liking your life and being both consistent, and, believe it or not, imperfect. Truly, your job in regard to both weight and health is to live the healthiest life that you can enjoy - in other words, to do your best. That said, it’s important to note that the best you can do over say, Christmas or a vacation, is very different than the best you can do during a plain, old, boring week, but that also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be thinking about things. Given our modern day Willy Wonkian food environment, not paying attention, for many, leads to easy gains, and given it’s so much easier to gain than it is to lose, remaining thoughtful, but not blindly strict, and doing so consistently, is crucial. Putting this another way - the healthiest life you can enjoy still needs to include chocolate, but that amount of chocolate needs to be the smallest amount that you need in order to be happy, and that amount changes day by day.

(By the way, his book, _The Diet Fix_ is excellent.)

So for us? Find something that works, and stick with it, knowing that for many of us that elusive "I should weight 132lbs for my height and frame" is never going to happen, and that a happy, healthy, fit life at a higher weight is a better goal. Finding a diet, by which I mean a method of eating that allows one to restrict calories while eating foods we love and enjoy and that make us feel healthy, is essential, and that diet won't be the same for all of us. With that diet or method of eating found, the goal, I think, is Constant Vigilance! But it is a battle that we will not win, ever, at best we can come to an armed truce and that'll be a lot better than the raging war many of us fight. Note that I'm not saying give up and eat all the chocolate (though, hey, some may decide to do that, and that IS their prerogative.). I'm saying do what you can to be happy and healthy, and yes, you will probably be at a higher weight that you'd like, but if it is sustainable, and you can move and live, and eat etc? Happier in the long run.

And then there are the children and the teens who are already fat.

Again, remember, short of surgery, we have no proven, long term solutions.

I think for this population of -pretty much- diet virgins, the approach needs to be "First do no harm", and starting them on a diet, for most of them, IS going to do harm. These are the people that Weight Watchers would presumably be targetting with their teen program. And WW would be doing harm.

Because Oprah can spin it any way she wants, Weight Watchers IS about dieting and calorie restriction, and it's a program that I think is a good one for the people above, the ones already ON the roller coaster/escalator (even if FreeStyle did NOT work for me.) Even a program geared towards teens with more support for better nutrition is going to be sending a clear message: your body is wrong, and you need to change it. I mean, would they be allowed in the meetings, with their focus on how much weight we've lost? While I've found over the years that WW leaders are more and more body positive, members are often not.

Kids who are fat a) know it and b) need a totally different program than those of us on the escalator. Teach healthy eating and encourage exercise, without any focus at all on weight. Some will lose weight with that type of intervention. Some will not.

Some kids/young adults will eventually decide to attempt a weight loss diet, and it should be with the full knowledge of what they are doing, and with awareness that this diet may have lifelong consequences. I don't think teens can make that level of medical decision, and considering, I don't think parents have any right to make it for them either. I don't have research to back this up (to be honest, if it's been done, I've not seen it), but I personally think that we all have ONE good shot at losing weight: that first diet, if properly done and supported, can work with sustainable results. But I think its expectations, goals, and method need to be carefully evaluated, and I don't think Weight Watchers is the place for that for a teenager. They will need more support than a meeting can provide, perhaps the intervention and help of a clinician, and again, some guidance on realistic expectations. IOW I'm not sure parents or the teen who would be involved, would truly be made aware by Weight Watchers of the potential consequences of getting on the escalator, I'm not sure if true informed consent is possible under these conditions.

If Weight Watchers really wanted to intervene to help long term, I'd suggest community based classes for parents of young children. Again, preventing the initial weight gain. Also community based fitness centers and classes. Heck, if Oprah wanted to truly help: launch a line of exercise clothes for fat kids and women, at a reasonable price point (yes, Junonia is awesome, if you can afford it...), with choices of colour and pattern. Even better, have that line go from small to xx-whatever-x l with the same patterns and styles, and don't segregate it to the sad plus size back basement, so that all girls can go to the sports section at Target and WalMart and find their size.

The other prong is antithetical to Weight Watchers itself: to work at lowering the level of fat hatred, fat prejudice, and fat phobia in society. As I think I said in a previous email, living healthy and fit in a body that carries a few extra pounds is better than constantly trying to attain that elusive lower weight with ever upwards spiraling results. Being able to do that without encountering scorn or contempt would mean a lot to many. Studies are showing that the stress felt by fat people because of the way we are treated is a large contributor to how fat people live and feel and act and, in the end, how healthy they are.

Yoswa, I think I wrote a tome. There is, alas, no quick tl;dr summary, read it or don't.

My doom is sealed. In a fun way.

We just signed up for our yearly bike rides, that we missed last summer. Flying Wheels, a nasty hilly metric century in early June, and the Seattle to Portland, 204 miles! It's just dh, Perry, and me this year, Anne-Chloe having said "oh hell no" about doing it again.

We need to buy Perry a bike (sigh.... decent road bikes are expensive, even if we buy used) and get training.

The three things I am not looking forward to:

-- Getting up early for STP Day 1. I hate hate hate the nauseated feeling of getting up too early.

-- The hill into Napavine at the end of the day, 110 miles in, on STP Day 1.

-- All the condescending Good Jobs! tossed at the fatty biking. Those hurt my soul in a way I'll never fully be able to articulate. Someone I know, when I was complaining about it, said it was the compliment giver's way to welcoming me to the biking community.... To which someone else pointed out, which really helped me in articulating my feelings on this, that this was seriously othering, because it assumed I needed welcoming into anything, it removed the default if you're doing this ride, you're a cyclist into something that can be bestowed by someone wanting to feel good about tossing a compliment the fatty's way. They are. I must be given. So blah.

Also, OMG, I'm going to be biking with a taller than me teenaged boy. Why do I sense he's going to just head to Portland and call us from the Finish Line? (He's not 18, so he can't do the one day solo, poor kid, or he'd be sure to try.)

How Washington lost the war on childhood obesity

What a stupid headline.

Because of course only the fat kids eat pizza and sugar laden foods! Thin kids must subsist on water and fresh veggies? Yeah right.

What we gave up was an opportunity to ensure healthy food for children. But of course it's so much more dramatic to play it as a war on something. Or someone, ie fat kids.

Crappy food is crappy food. And the government should know by now that their efforts to get the right thing done -healthier foods available to kids- is actually harmed by tying it to the war on fat (kids). People are repulsed by fat kids, and think it's their own fault and/or that of their parents. You're not going to get the public to care about improving crappy food by making fat kids your proxy. If anything is to happen, the government needs to show that all kids are hurt by this crud (they are), because people will protest when thin (ie virtuous) children are harmed. This current methodology hurts only the fat kids (who are blamed for the loss of cupcakes in the classrooms) and helps nobody.

In a nutshell, attempting to tie improvement in food marketing to children to Protect the FAT KIDS isn't going to ever work because most people really don't CARE about the fat kids. See the recent CNN story on how bullying about being fat only became important once kids who were not fat started being bullied: Fat is the new ugly.

By associating fat people = unhealthy = eat bad food, we are a) ignoring the fat people who -gasp!- don't, and b) ignoring the thin people who do, and who just may have bodies that don't show the evidence of their "sins".

By associating the cruddy foods with fat bodies, we are made the proxy for everything bad, and with the level of disdain (milder word that reality, actually) that the population has for fat people, there is a general feeling of "why bother to help those people?"

Again, you may get attention with OMG FATTIE FAT FAT, HEADLESS FATTY EATING CRAPPY FOOD OMG OMG! headlines, it will attract the people who gawk at accidents, the ones of who want to look on in curious disgust. It turns the issue of crappy food in school into those FATTY FAT FAT kids' parents problem, not a societal one.

We can barely move toward societal good for people we think deserve it (say, veterans or older people who've worked all their lives), there is NO way that we'll motivate any action when the perception is that it's for people who do not deserve anything but shame and scorn.

The Fat Trap.

This is why I knelt there, in the small bathroom with red linoleum in my apartment in France, with my wash basin filled with warm water in the shower stall and a razor blade in my hand, hating myself for not even having the courage to kill myself. I've never lost that hatred.

I've also never lost the feeling that people don't understand fat. They just don't. Oh, there are some glimmers now: "It's impossible to lose weight!" Well no shit, Sherlock, I could have told you that 20+ years ago when I realised that I'd never be thin and thought that dead was better ya know?

Add in the constant reminder that fat people are really not people, but just lard to be eliminated (read my fat tag for prior examples, I'm too depressed to look for them) and it's no wonder that most of us feel like we really would be better off dead.

Maybe I'm not making sense. And I gained 6lbs in a week, because of two days of eating holiday food. It won't come off. I've been on a plateau for 6 months... why should I expect my weight to do anything but go up.

I live my life in a war zone: me against my body. There is no truce possible.

And it's very very frightening to realise that nobody, not doctors of scientists or fuckwit journalists like Gary Taubes, has a freaking clue as to what to do, how to help. There is lip service paid to not getting fat in the first place... but I have a fat kid, and let me tell you, we did everything the experts said to do, and yet, here we are. Another generation cursed, and more guilt for me, for having dared to have children.

So I panic, consider gastric bypass, and remind myself that with three children and a spouse who love me, suicide is no longer on the table. And some part of me regrets that I didn't succeed, so many years ago.

Every day I get a mailing from Amu Garg (whom I've seen at my local library, he lives near here..)'s A.Word.A.Day. I've been getting that email, on one account or another, for almost as long as it's been going on, since 94 (They started in March, I got on that summer.). Anyhow, they used to include what they called the X-Bonus, a short quote, but you only saw that if you had a certain type of email reader, and later changed it to be part of the message. The words are fun, and I wish I could remember even 1% of them, and I love the quotes.

Here is today's:

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth. -J.K. Rowling, novelist (b. 1965)

It is perhaps no secret that I've long immersed myself in the Potterverse, and aside from the last one, I really do love the books.

Rowling has flashes of genius, I think, but is also self=deluded about her world in a way... well, pretty badly, actually.

The question authority and the press and all that? Yeah. However, just as an aside, since it's not the point I want to make today, if you're going to go against the establishment, be very careful who you listen to. Because if you choose your alternate source of information poorly, you'll end up as misinformed and on as poor a path as the people who listen to the establishment, and you'll think you're right because you're not sheeple. No, you're just an idiot. Anyhow, that isn't the point I wanted to address.

No, that point was the first part of her little self-congratulatory little quote there: [t]he Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry[.] WTF, JKR?

A world where you are "tracked" based on the utterings of a talking hat is tolerant? Where 1/4 of a school community is assumed to be evil and bad, treated accordingly, and nothing is done to bring them back into the mainstream? Oh yeah, Crabbe and Goyle and Malfoy are pretty awful even before they're sorted, but puleeze. There is acceptance that it's fine to literally throw away 1/4 of your children. 25% are just evil and we'll deal with them later, kthxbai? That's tolerance? A plea for tolerance in a world where it is never questioned that the best course of action for these kids who apparently come to school with less than perfect character (ie to be sorted into Slytherin) is to throw them all together and let them stew in their lack of upstanding moral character. There is no attempt to change, to teach, just an assumption of bad=slytherin=toss-them-into-their-dungeon-and-don't-attempt-to-teach-them-better-values.

Hermione is mocked for being outraged at the enslavement of house elves. Mocked. Constantly. And we're shown house-elves who, except for the exceptional one, appear to like their enslavement. See everyone? Hermione really is silly, they like to be slaves, why bother with changing that? The ok-ness of this is understated by the fact that Ron, with Harry's unsaid approval, I think, comments on how his mum would love a house-elf. The Weasleys are pretty run-of-the-mill wizards, they're poor but mainstream. They accept slavery as a matter of course. As does Harry. Unless there is abuse of the slave, then of course, Harry doesn't like that. So there is a problem for me there.

Shall we even talk about the kick to the stomach to any fat kid that the descriptions of Dudley Dursley are? JKR has made some very accepting statements herself about fat and young women but in the books? She has fallen into the fat/evil/venal/lazy/etc rut, with Dudley and Slughorn. Dudley especially. I wish I could find the blogpost about a fat mother reading the first book out loud to her young, and fat son, and how she trailed off into tears, and didn't know what to do. It was heartbreaking to read. Fat as an symbol of lower moral character isn't tolerance. I'm fat, not venal, not (too) lazy, not evil, not greedy, not...

Oh yeah, it's a plea for tolerance... one kind of tolerances, towards the impure of blood. Everyone else? Not so much.

[eta] cassandra7 left a comment that is very relevant and adds much to what I wrote above:

She certainly doesn't consider squibs (the name is such a giveaway) equal to wizards, nor does she consider muggles human at all. The treatment of muggles by "good" wizards is totalitarian--just walk into their heads and tamper with their reality any time it's convenient to you to do so. Hermione even does it to her parents. The only people JKR really takes seriously are male, white Gryffindors, who are excused anything, including endless bullying (George and Fred, Sirius and James) and Unforgivable Curses (Harry). But, oh, the points she gives herself for her alleged "tolerance."