Wall-E angers fat pride groups

But one group is not amused - the swelling ranks of fat pride groups, who believe the film propagates anti-obesity hysteria comparable with the quest for the perfect body by the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany.

The backlash has become a cause celebre for a growth industry in the United States, where pro-flab "fat-tivists" are campaigning for human rights for the full of figure.

As the WALL-E controversy hit the headlines, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (Naafa) was last week holding its annual convention in Los Angeles, a celebration of so-called "flabulous figures", seminars on fat discrimination, a fat fashion show, podgy pool parties and entertainment from weighty singing group The Fatimas.

Fighters for fat rights are calling for legislation to ban weight discrimination in the workplace, denouncing airlines that demand they buy two seats and car manufacturers whose seat belts are too small.

They are also battling doctors who won't treat patients who refuse to lose weight and companies that won't insure them.

They seek to reclaim the word "fat", dismissing terms like "overweight" and "obese" as morally loaded.

Research published in April by Yale University's Rudd Centre for Food Policy and Obesity suggests they might have a point. It found that one in eight people now complain of weight discrimination, up from one in 14 a decade ago. The report compared the impact on victims compares with racism and sexism.

The anti WALL-E crusade began on the internet. Rachel Richardson of the Coalition of Fat Rights Activists (Cofra), used her blog, "The F-Word", to object that the film "singles out and targets obese people as the primary cause of mankind's demise."

Among the issues that these test audiences have supposedly cited are “WALL-E” ’s depressing settings (i.e. The first act of this film is set on Earth 700 years from now, where — thanks to humanity’s wasteful ways — our planet is now basically one big trash heap floating in space) as well as the picture’s depiction of people (i.e. In the future, mankind has grown so slothful that everyone weighs 500 pounds and has lost the ability to walk on their own. Which is why we all make use of these devices that look like floating barcaloungers).

But WALL-E specifically singles out and targets obese people as the primary cause of mankind’s demise, further perpetuating the stereotype of the gluttonous, slothful fat person. Furthermore, the film suggests that, in their exaggerated laziness, obese people disregard not only personal health, but also that of the planets, and are held up as the cause for the destruction of the environmental landscape.

This is, despite mountains of evidence that show, as a group, fat people do not eat more than thin people, nor are they less active and that the so-called “obesity epidemic” has been greatly exaggerated by self-serving corporate interests. For more information on this, see any number of authors on the subject, including Gina Kolata, Paul Campos, or J. Eric Oliver, or Michael Gard and Jan Wright, or Glenn Gaesser, or Marilyn Wann, or Laura Fraser.