March/April 2004 Issue

Fat America

Illustration By: Mark Matcho

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Despite dire warnings from public-health officials, Americans keep packing on the pounds. Bad news for our hearts and kidneys, but
good news for the marketplace, which can now sell us Atkins shakes and supersize
showers. Entrepreneur.com sees the hefty (along with metrosexuals and Hispanics) as one
of 2004’s six hottest markets. “Plus-size is morphing into regular size,” gushes an analyst.
“There are no boundaries.” Indeed:

Whole Girth Catalog: Amplestuff.com offers airline seatbelt
extenders, scales that go up to 1,000 pounds, “extra-large fanny packs,” “big bibs”
and wearable napkins, and, for those who can no longer bend over, sock installers, lotion
appliers, leg lifters, and (depressingly) porta-bidets.

No Butts About It: Theaters and stadiums are widening most seats by four inches and instituting
“persons-of-size sections.”

Mile Wide Club: After “overloading” was suspected in a small plane crash last year, the
FAA upped its estimate of the average passenger’s weight from 180 to 195 pounds.

An Apple Pie a Day: In part to accommodate the boom in gastric bypasses, hospitals are
rolling out bigger, sturdier gurneys, operating tables, ambulances, wheelchairs, walkers,
and, of course, gowns.

Lazy Boys & Girls: Berkline’s new “XL-Series” motorized recliners can bear 600 pounds.
“There seems to be an insatiable appetite for these products,” says a company V.P.

Hippo-crisy: In February 2003, McDonald’s quietly dropped plans to use healthier oil.
Six months later, it released “Happy Meals for Adults,” which include a salad, an exercise booklet,
and a pedometer.

Speaks Volumes: What Are You Looking At?, “the first fat fiction anthology,” was published
last fall by Harvest Books.

Very Big Adventures: The staff of Freedom Paradise, “the first and only size-friendly
resort in the world,” reportedly watches Beauty and the Beast as sensitivity training.

This End Up: The 44-inch “triple wide” wasn’t big enough, so Goliath Casket just introduced
the B-52, designed to hold a 1,100-pound corpse. The company reports its sales are swelling
20 percent annually.

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That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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