I’ve attended three different fat camps for five consecutive summers. For four summers, I was a camper. Then I stepped it up hard core and became a counselor to overweight eight year olds whose vaginas were concealed by their corpulent stomachs. So I know a little something about them. It’s why I’m writing a memoir about Fat Camp. Lately, I’ve been receiving a host of emails pointing me to articles and books related to Fat Camp. I won’t read other books in fear that I will inadvertently lift an idea and call it mine. I’ll read memoirs, just not those having to do with what I write. I have a whole meat scale full of what to say about fat camp, but you’ll have to wait for my book to hit the shelves if you care to hear it.
I caved today and read the NY Times article titled, "For Overweight Children, Are ‘Fat Camps’ a Solution?" The article was milquetoast. It was the equivalent of telling an overweight person they need to change their eating habits. Shocking. Like they don’t already know that watching an ab-roller commercial from their sofa isn’t exactly aerobic. The parents help out when the kid returns from the bush, and they’re more likely to succeed. Shock and awe.
This article doesn’t even nick the surface. I’m still a fat camper. I always will be. It’s just that now, I’m fat passing as thin. So when I read things like, "Ms. Werth [the mother] also locks up junk food in a kitchen cabinet, and only she has the key. Lexi [the fat camp daughter] said she found that helpful." Now that’s one way to fcuk her up real good in the head. You might as well strip her naked and sharpie marker all her flaws and scream in her ear, "God dislikes you." How about not having the junk food in the house at all. Locking it up? The mother might as well sprinkle baby powder on the kitchen floors at night, to spot a rouge footprint. Believe me, once you have eating and food issues, you’ll be conscious of it for the rest of your life. You have to learn to live life without locks and combinations, to learn control from within.
