I have always been keenly interested in questions of etiquette (after all, you can't break the rules unless you know the rules, can you?). The "Miss Conduct" column in the Globe Magazine is about the only thing in it worth reading every week. Recently, "Miss Conduct" (aka Robin Abrahams), has been exploring "issues of obesity and prejudice against the overweight... from a social and scientific perspective."

The issue came to the fore for her when someone wrote in to complain about being squished by obese commuters on the subway.


Of course, we have all been sat on on the T, I'm sure. As well as smacked with backpacks and goosed by a briefcase or two over the years. Not to mention being coughed or sneezed on on a fairly regular basis. You have no personal space to speak of on public transit. That's just the nature of the thing. One reader's response to the complaint was spot-on: "he's picking on a specific discomfort in a whole uncomfortable experience."

But I took umbrage at another reader's response. She starts off by likening obesity to blindness or cerebral palsy...

If you sat down on the subway next to a person with an obvious disability, who was taking up extra space so her seeing eye dog could lie down in front of her, or because cerebral palsy made it impossible for him to sit straight in a seat so that he took up half of the one next to him, most likely you'd manage not to be annoyed.

Her obvious point is that obesity is a condition, and those suffering from it deserve the same compassion as anyone with a disability. But then she takes it a tad too far for my taste:

When [people] see a fat person, they see someone who is perfectly able to be thin but chooses not to be.... I find this reminiscent of the idea that people choose to be gay. Why on God's green earth would a mentally healthy person choose a life path that lays them open to family disapproval, social ostracization, harassment by strangers, and discrimination on the job?

Sorry, but, um, no. Let's back up here.

Does anyone else find the claim (intentional or not) that gay people are not "mentally healthy" a wee bit offensive? She means well, obviously, but she still deserves to be bitch-slapped. 

Can we just clear this up once and for all? People do choose to be gay, in that they choose to "identify," or "come out" as gay. This takes a good deal of mental and emotional strength. You have only to look at the misery that being closeted causes, the damage deceit (to self and others) does, to see that coming out — in essence "choosing to be gay" — is actually the "mentally healthy" thing to do.

Not to mention that the "family disapproval, social ostracization, and harassment by strangers" that I've experienced has had nothing at all to do with my sexuality. A lot of people are obviously just jealous of my good looks.

There are other significant differences between obesity and homosexuality that strain the analogy further. It's not over when the skinny queen sings, to name one (in fact, our motto, as one skinny queen famously sang, is: "The Show Must Go On!"). Also: instead of eating we have sex. And if we sit on a stranger's lap, it's usually not an accident.

You know, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous the analogy becomes. It's like saying, "why on God's green earth would a mentally healthy person chose to be fabulous?"

And if you have to ask...