So much privilege, so little time.

I found out recently that thin people are privileged. I did not know this, having been out of the academic atmosphere for well nigh forty years. I don’t remember the word privilege ever crossing anyone’s lips back in the 70s, unless it was the standard, “Driving is not a right, young lady. It’s a privilege.”

I did have a naturally thin roommate in college. She had lots of friends, was cast in her theater class production of something or other because she was Singing Privileged, and she was generally always having more fun than I was. I’m sure of it. The fact that I was more of an introvert and liked to stay in and read had nothing to do with it. She was privileged.

I suspect it’s the naturally thin people who are able to eat hot fudge sundaes all the live long day and never gain weight that are the unfortunates who are being dinged with privilege.

It matters not; if the thin person became thin through sweat, hard work, and sacrifice, they’re still privileged. Do you know how hard it is to get sweaty, work hard, and sacrifice stuff, like a certain number of hours of free time every week to work out, or not eat cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes?

People who can achieve those things are privileged to have the fortitude to do them. They got some nerve. Maybe they learned this art of discipline from good parents. Privilege. Or maybe they learned it from not having good parents, which motivated them to build character on their own. Privilege.

It’s very tiresome of them. I had nice, middle of the road parents who were sick of the whole parenting thing by the time I came along, and I was able to pretty much do what I wanted as long as I didn’t knock over convenience stores or get into witchcraft. I had no privilege at all.

Someone inquired whether it was fair that Thin Privileged parents should ‘force’ their overweight child to lose weight. Someone else retorted that it would be the height of hypocrisy if a Weight Privileged parent should do it; in that short lived debate, the Thin Privileged came out ahead.

(Notice nowhere have I said that I’m Weight Challenged. That would be justifying, and I am nothing if not Fair Minded Privileged.)

When I heard the term thin privilege for the first time I’d recently been accused of Hearing Privilege (I’m so sorry I was born hearing!), so I was already in a snit. (A Snit is a new compact car that drives off in a Huff, sort of like those Russian nesting dolls, when it’s accused of being Sense and Motion Privileged.)

One person weighed in (snort) and said the overweight child of thin privileged parents has Autonomy Privilege, which translated in their words to mean ‘Her body, her choice.’  Which is why my toddler smokes and does drugs. Because I’m a good parent.

Notice this person did not mention ‘My house, my rules’, as a corollary. Or even, ‘When you’re 18, have a job and your own house, you can eat whatever you damn well please and go to hell in whatever way you want.’

The upshot of the entire conversation did not have the effect of making me aware of true unfair privilege. No, it had the effect of making me aware of all privilege, whether of the human kind, the inanimate object kind, and the atmospheric kind, like the air we breathe.

The sky has some nerve getting to be a gorgeous blue with fluffy clouds. (I love fluffy clouds, but I don’t get to be one, or have one, unless I save up all the stuffing from new aspirin bottles and make a goofy first grade type cloud.)

I look at scissors and think Cutting Privileged. I don’t have sharp edged fingers like Edward Scissorhands, who was Unique Person Privileged instead of Regular Person Challenged. I need to make and find tools to cut things and if a pair of scissors has been taken out and not replaced in the utility drawer, some package isn’t getting opened. It isn’t fair.

Fans are Cooling Privileged; the sun is Life Giving Privileged and Death Dealing Privileged both (how fair is that?); birds, those rotten poopers from on high, are Flight Privileged, and we’ve envied them from time immemorial.

Do they care? Have they done one whit to balance the scales in all these millennia? I think you know the answer to that, if you are at all Sentient Privileged.

I am now privileged to sit around and grump about all the privileges every single object and being around me has that I do not, and the sofa is really starting to tick me off with it’s smug air of comfort and privilege.

I’d get up and go to the gym to get away from it, but I don’t want to get too thin.

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