I am not, nor have I ever been, an advocate of "Politically Correct" speech.  Period.  For my entire life, I have been fat.  And I've heard all of the euphemisms:  chunky, stout, hefty, husky, etc.

Call me crazy or insensitive if you like, but why try to lie about things?  George Carlin in his book Brain Droppings said it quite well:  "I don't like euphemisms.  Euphemisms are a form of lying."¹  Look, folks, lets call things like they are.  I don't go out of my way to hurt peoples feelings, but I do think that people need to get over themselves.  For thousands of years, people got by just fine without such idiotic phrases as "weight-challenged".  No one, and I do mean NO ONE, is going to tell me what I can or cannot say.

Having said this, let me expound for a few moments on the one I have the greatest issue with:  Weight-challenged.  I am not, nor have I ever been, challenged by my weight.  Neither am I "Horizontally challenged", "Gravitationally challenged", or any other horse manure like that.  I'm fat.  And, when I decided that I no longer wished to be, I did something about it!

Whoa!  What a concept!  Instead of whining about it, I did something!

This is a concept that people fail to grasp.  You are what you are.  Either like it (or learn to) or do something about it!  Crying about it while digging in to that half gallon of double fudge ripple ice dream accomplishes NOTHING!!!!  Why do you care what I think about you?  If your self-esteem is that weak that something I say is going to shatter you, then I say you have greater problems facing you than what worrying about what label people use!  If you don't like your waistline, this is a fixable problem.  Fix it!

On the other side of that coin are the people who insist on attaching such labels to us.  To them, I say "Knock it off!"  You are not me!  I have a mind of my own, and I am not interested in what you, in your omnipresent wisdom, think I should be called!  I am a fat polock, and if you can't handle my calling myself that, then you need your head examined!

Now, I will also be among the first to acknowledge that there are a number of factors in our lives that nothing will ever change.  I will always be half-Polish.  There is nothing I can do to change that.  Nor do I wish to.  But dammit, I am not a "Weight-challenged, Polish-English-Hungarian-American".  What kind of nonsense phrase is that?  I'm Grayhawk!  The rest of that is a slew of false distinctions made up by some well-meaning fool who was trying to protect someones overly-fragile ego.  To quote Mr. Carlin again:  "We need fewer labels, not more."²

The alert will note that I said "well-meaning fool".  We all know the old saw about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.  Look around you.  At what can conceivably be called one of the most enlightened periods of human history, we seem to have more people with emotional problems than at any other time.  One wonders how people dealt with it in the year 921 AD.  Probably something along the lines of "Build a bridge, get over it, blow it up behind you!"  One then wonders why that same method, which worked quite well for hundreds, if not thousands, of years isn't being applied now.

As a whole, the human race needs to lighten up!  What people call us is not, repeat *NOT* important!  Last time I checked, all our bodies were essentially built the same way, and we all bleed red!  All this name-calling and labeling does is artificially divide us, and that's not necessary!  We all need to get over ourselves and get past this foolishness.  Like it or not, we are all one people, and no amount of PC-speech crap os gonna change that!

1:  Carlin, George:  Brain Droppings, Comedy Concepts, Inc., 1997.  The Easton Press, publisher.  p, 161
2:  ibid:  p. 165