Honey Boo Boo makes the point

Everyday society may have reached the tipping point.  Careful observation reveals that young women and girls (and the occasional pregnant looking man) have determined that leaving the house in cropped tops revealing two inch rolled belts of dimply fat is an acceptable look.  Personal pride has been dissolved by a generation of self esteem building and copious amounts of Mountain Dew.

If  the health and fitness industry is such a behemoth and Americans idolize the slim and beautiful, how can every fair, festival and crowd be stuffed with so many porcine pedestrians?   Fitness is a business, but its product has failed, in a big way.  Maybe it's my location in southwest Ohio.  The demographics and the pervasive poverty likely have an impact on self image.    In  New York, Chicago, LA, or any European city there is a notable absence of this phenomenon. So maybe it is about the location.

On the other hand, this depressing effect may be the result of these typically young women growing up being told that fat is fine.  That there is nothing wrong with their blatantly awful food choices.  That its okay to be "curvy".  Ma'am, Beyonce is curvy.  Stretch marked sausage belts are not.

Look at Honey Boo Boo, the obese five year old with the grossly outsized mother.  This TLC Channel darling  started out as a beauty contestant (??) featured on Toddlers and Tiaras. That show is populated by mothers who AS A RULE are outsized and unstable and who spend thousands of dollars hauling their reluctant little dress up dolls (daughters) to popularity contests.   These women and their daughters have made many viewers relate. "If they are on TV then it's okay to be big and...unique."

Honey Boo Boo's show just proves the (subtitled) point.  American culture has nosedived into a supersized order of fries and a milkshake.  But that's okay. We're just big boned.