Do you know that fat people are costing you billions upon billions of dollars? It's true! Well, not really, but Shirley Skeel sure thinks that it is, through a twisty turny labyrinth of faulty logic. Fatties are sinking the airlines! Fatties are the reason that you can't find a decent pair of jeans! They're driving food prices through the roof, with their insatiable hunger for sugar! Obesity is the reason the economy is in the pooper! When fat people aren't destroying the American way of life, they're contributing to global warming!

Whoa, no wonder I'm so tired at the end of the average day. At first, I honestly thought this was a piece of satire, but sadly, it's actually supposed to be real analytical journalism (minus supporting facts, of course). Let's look at just a few of Ms. Skeel's incidents of bad reasoning, shall we?

• Fat-related illnesses drive worker sick days? I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time I called in "fat". A cold? Yes. Pneumonia? Definitely. I've even stayed home with a migraine. Last time I checked, thin people got colds and migraines too, not to mention sprained ankles or hangovers.
  

• Worker productivity would increase if everyone were thin, because they would be so much more healthy and that would fuel the economy. But wait, in the same article she says, "Just look at 2000 to 2005, when worker productivity rose 16.6 percent while median wages rose less than half that amount." So...we were more productive during the same years when we were collectively gaining weight? Doesn't that destroy the whole foundation of her claim?

• Diabetes, heart attacks and strokes drive 6 percent of health care costs, and since obesity is a contributing factor, and 66 percent of America is obese, if you eliminated fatness, then suddenly doctors would need to find other jobs, like driving a cab. Wait, is the implication that 66 percent of the population is driving 6 percent of the cost of health care? So, thin people don't get strokes or have heart attacks? It would be equally as ludicrous to imply that 94 percent of health care costs are driven by thin people.

• McDonald's only sells Big Macs because that's what the fatties want. If we were all thin, they would serve little steamed packets of chicken instead of fried stuff. You know, I actually really wish for this portion of Thintopia, because I would so love the immediate gratification of healthy stuff instead of the scary crap that comes through a drive-through window. Again, say it with me, thin people aren't eating Big Macs! We haven't been lured into McDonald's since childhood, trained to crave a pack of Chicken McNuggets. Nothing titillates the reader more than the idea of a big fat girl eating a fast food hamburger bigger than her head, so I totally get why you went there, Shirley Skeel. If this doesn't bother you (as a thin person, a fat one, or an in-between), consider if she had talked about an African-American sitting on a porch eating watermelon and fried chicken?

• Plus-size clothing costs up to 15 percent more than "regular" clothes. Although Ms. Skeel doesn't provide a reason, we can assume that it is because of the extra material or maybe because the stores have to install specially widened doors and reinforced flooring to accommodate the shoppers. No matter what, it is not because the limited supply versus the demand drives up price. And also, please ignore the fact that Petite clothing also costs more than traditional sizes.

You know, I have some what ifs:

• What if our children were shown diverse images of beauty, depicting people of all sizes, ages, ethnicities and orientations?

• What if we didn't hate ourselves so much for the size of our thighs, upper arms or breasts? What if we worried instead about how we can make ourselves smarter?

• What if our bodies were just machines to get us from one place to the next and what really mattered were your ideas and how you treat other people?

• What if your weight were just a number, something that you would feel free to announce to friends, just like your blood type or birthday?

• What if people didn't feel the need to attribute society's ills to a particular group or subsegment of the population?

Kind of mind-blowing, isn't it?