Ok, I'm so sorry, but GET OVER YOURSELVES.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against pride. I have a lot of it myself. In fact, of all the deadly sins, pride is probably the one I partake in most regularly (that and envy. Mmmm, envy). But there's pride, and then there's pride.

Aside from the fact that the whining about Wall*E is totally misplaced - the fat people were the heroes! They fought the evil AutoPilot! They returned to repair the sins of their skinny-yet-irresponsible ancestors! - I'm really not certain that you have a leg to stand on, or an overly fleshy buttock to sit on, by complaining about a movie that says an inevitable result of sitting around all day and slurping sodas is obesity. IT IS.

But the larger point is that obesity isn't something to be proud of, or ashamed of, or anything of the sort. It is simply a state of the body, one which is not healthy. Like having a broken ankle or a protein deficiency. The human body evolved to be moved around and exercised, it evolved to eat mostly green things and a bit of meat, and it evolved around small inputs of sufficient calories to sustain it, but with a capacity to store against leaner times. We and squirrels diverged at least 10 million years ago.

So unlike squirrels, fat is bad for people, not good: it puffs up your arteries so that your blood can't flow through them properly. It negatively affects your brain and your sleep patterns. It produces diabetes and gall stones, affects bone mass and muscle composition, and makes it more difficult to do things that the human body was built to do - run, jump, and bend. Active fat is better than inactive skinny, but fat itself - all other things being equal - is not good. These Fat Pride organizations are attempting to act as if Fat is a-OK. But it just isn't.

And I say this as somebody leaning towards the the Roseanne side of the BMI. I'm not proud of being fat. But I'm not ashamed, either, and this is where these groups are missing the point. Fat is a health problem, not a moral problem, and the people who participate in the Fat Pride movement are mixing up the two. We don't live in a world of five cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins anymore (and if we did, gluttony could not be wished away by pride anyway.) Until we stop feeling and start acting, being fat is a public health crisis, because it is a symptom of a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy food.

Taking pride in your body is fine - fat or thin, we're all somebody's cup of tea. But taking pride in the symptoms of an unhealthy body - I have broken leg pride! I need to wear glasses to read street-signs pride! - is just kind of weird.