Fatass whiners

What a bunch of babies. Big, fat babies:

In late April, Troutman learned an unfortunate side effect of his healthy weight gain: After entering the Michigan Avenue Gap store, he was told that they no longer carried his size, XXL.

"I'm not sure what I felt at that moment, but part of it was embarrassment," Troutman wrote on his blog, My View from the Jeep. "Regardless of the words the associate used, all I heard was, 'We're not serving your kind anymore.' "

The horror. It's like Jim Crow all over again.

The Gap was Troutman's favorite retail spot, and shopping there provided him with relief from the stresses of working as human resource manager at a Chicago not-for-profit. Now, he says, the local store on his block is a reminder of where he is not welcome anymore. "At my size, I don't have many options for shopping, and this was just one more limitation," he said. "The Gap is making it harder for a group of people who already have difficulty shopping to purchase their product."

Paul McAleer is a Chicago Web designer and developer who created and writes for My Big Fat Blog, which aims to report on "fat awareness and fat rights." He said the Gap's decision to pull the XXL from stores is part of a retail trend to make the bricks-and-mortar store less plus-size friendly. "To me it says that fat people, both men and women, do not fit within the Gap's brand image," McAleer said. Last year Old Navy, a youth-oriented brand of clothing owned by Gap Inc., pulled women's XXL from its stores, making it available only online.

What I'm about to write is not because I hate fat people and make fun of them (though they can be funny sometimes). It's because I'm 6'9" and can't find clothes everywhere I want to shop either:

All right, fatty, here's the deal. Stop being such a whiner. First, you are fat because you eat too much and don't exercise enough. If it's really just due to muscle gain, no one has to subsidize your roided up body. To complain about not finding clothes because of your lifestyle is ridiculous. That's like if you chopped off your arm on purpose and started complaining because stores don't carry one-armed shirts.

Second, why is Gap a bad guy? They are trying to be more efficient in their inventory. You can still buy your clothes online. Besides, since you are a guy you should appreciate not having to go to a store. It sucks poop, and only gays and metrosexuals enjoy shopping for clothes. Online shopping is SO much easier and better. Trust me, I do it all the time.

Third, this isn't Russia (to turn a phrase; I know they have a market economy now). We have a free market. If there are so many fashionable fatties out there who want to shop, open a store for them where you design the clothes. You should be fabulously rich benefitting from all of the fat discrimination out there.

Wait, what's that you say? You wouldn't get rich from it? Well no kidding. I guess there's not that much demand for it. Now do you see why Gap is not carrying that stuff any more?

Why should a store be required to carry everything they have in your size? Where does it end? Can I get some size 15 shoes, or 38 inch inseam pants, or XLXT shirts too? How about Shawn Bradley? How about Yokozuna? Hey, they've got rights and shouldn't be inconvenienced either, correct?

Yeah, dude, everybody today is a victim. Everybody has to bitch about something. Why don't you stop complaining and either fix the problem (by opening your own stores) or deal with it? You do that by finding out where you can find clothes that fit. It was quite a disappointment when I was a 6' 6" junior in high school and I figured out I had to buy all of my pants and shoes (and most of my shirts) from a catalog for the rest of my life, but I GOT OVER IT. Life goes on. With the internet, it's easy to find all kinds of big and tall stores.

Short guys can buy clothes!

This whole article is so funny I won't even bother to excerpt much from it. It's about a store that sells clothes for, well, here's the good section:

But for short men -- Anders prefers the terms "men slightly below average," "normal sized" and "not overly tall" -- the unappealing options range from shopping in the children's department to spending hundreds of dollars on alterations to wearing oversized, baggy clothing.

The children's department? Really? I'm not even trying to be funny here.

A 5' 4" man is NOT normal sized, no matter how much these munchkins want to believe it. Not overly tall? How about not at all tall?

It's hard for me to feel much sympathy for these Lilliputians. Being a tall fella has its advantages (chicks dig it, for example), but try fitting on an airplane or buying a car. Oh, wait, that's pretty minor stuff compared to not being able to see anything and being laughed at. Ha!

Best catalog ever (if you're really fat)

So when I got home tonight from work, I found in my mailbox a catalog named "Living XL". The subtitle is "Unique, innovative products for tall and plus-sized men and women."

(As an aside, there's no thing such as a "plus-sized man". If women who stuff their faces with bon-bons are too emotionally fragile to be called big, that's their issue. I don't know what goes on in women's heads anyway. But us fellas know when we're fat and there is no need to finesse it. What the hell does "plus-sized" mean anyway? There's no large plus, there's extra-large. Where would plus begin? Waist size of 40? 44? 50? The whole thing is insulting.)

There are some phenominal products in this catalog:

seat belt extenders
fanny packs for waist sizes up to 64"
a scale with 1000 lb. capacity (!)
combo clock/blood pressure monitor (surprise)
a personal leg lifter (you've got to see this thing to believe it)
something that helps a person put on his socks
1200 lb. capacity toilet seat
big bike seats with 500 lb. capacity
folding chair with 800 lb. capacity

That's enough joking about the morbidly obese and the odd products they need to live their exciting lives. There are actually a few things I'd like to get:

22" wide hangers
80" x 40" bath towels
44" x 86" sleeping bag
big folding chair (this one only has a 500 lb. capacity)

Anyway, these guys clearly have some fantastic stuff. You can also check them out at their website. I recommend you do!

Finally, check out this thing. How useful would that have been at the Iowa-NIU tailgate on Saturday?