You want a field day...hmmmmm...
well first off all, whatever panicky crap about the childhood obesity epidemic we've had it's...well... apparently working. The levels of obesity have dropped dramatically in recent years among kids.
Secondly... this is where I'm getting into a deep, personal bitterness angle, so bare with me.
I wouldn't the heck be surprised in the slightest if that PSA wasn't somehow accurate. Looks get you hired. Looks, and a video resume voice overed by a B list celebrity which brings us to field day trip number one: Human resources are the WORST people in the world. You know how they have all those unwritten rules about what makes or breaks an interview? While some of it is the obvious "be more polite in the interview situation than you would normally" stuff, a lot of it is monkey shines for their amusement. As in you have to pick the right exact font and format for your resume for them to toss into the pile and hire their friends anyway. And oohhhhh if you even think about putting Comic Sans on there, pull out a loaded shotgun and kill yourself, because you're worth more to the world of employment to a corpse than someone that doesn't know the exact perfect fonts to use on this sort of thing. Side trip: I HATE FONT NERDS!!! I hate the stupid names they give to fonts that make no darn sense, and half of them look exactly the same unless you've a darn Font Nerd and know to every pixel on a letter there is and how they're arranged on the tips of an uppercase L.
Anyway, back to my rant about HR. There's a certain kind of bread and circus to interviewing. They love to see you trying your darndest not to twist in the wind. They want you to be enthusiastic about working at a dead end job, but don't you dare be overenthusiastic or even slightly under enthusiastic or you're apparently not "sit at a desk filing reports for no reason" material. They ask loaded questions with such a smug little grin that can't be answered right enough. And at the end of the day you better the Heck write them a thank you note for doing their freaking jobs and interviewing you. I swear, they love to see all the hope in your eyes fade. They probably got their jobs because they know people and didn't even need to interview. Like I said, Human resources are the scum of the Earth. And yes, bitterness, frustration, and whatever makes me say that.
Which brings us to the second, main trip: Of course it's going to be tough for kids to get jobs because we tell them to reach for the stars, only to find there's a limited number of them and we probably sold them off to other countries and made the rest obsolete. Parents want what's best for their children. No one makes a kid's show where a happy little puppet comes out and says "Hey kids! You're all worthless cogs, and the chances of you getting a dream job are so slim, you'll go mad." No teenage focus show says "if you're planning to go to college, you better the heck have had 10 years of employment under your belt or really rich parents with connections, cuz it's all just a scam we imposed on you." You find this stuff out when it's too late. No one gives 2 craps about you or your dreams because everyone has the same exact dream and only the ones who were predestined to get those dreams (i.e. not needing to go to college for any other reason than getting a piece of paper saying you're qualified) actually succeed. Yep. You can only succeed if you're the perfect amount of lucky and connected or just have rich enough parents to buy your way into something.
We have too many kids reaching for too little stars. So what does that mean? A lot of college educated kids fighting to the death for the same low paying crap jobs they could have got had they dropped out of high school. And they're darn lucky to even get that. Thanks Baby Boomers. Yep. We have this nice society that says "Tall Poppy Syndrome is BAD! But we're going to enforce it anyway."
And of course, the third and final stop: Absolutely hypocritical treatment for fat people. Why is it that when some talentless schmuck movie critic spends an entire review saying how disgustingly fat he thinks Mellisa McCartney is, everyone jumps in to say how much of a D-Bag he is, YET when it's something negative happening to fat people that actually has an effect, everyone's suspiciously silent? How come it's all "You're slightly above weight! You go, Girl!" when a celebrity is barely curvy, but when it's an actual fat person in distress it's all "you should be ashamed of yourself for being in my line of vision and making me feel disgusted. Eat at the same expensive hipster gastro pub I can easily afford but you can't." Or, bringing it back on topic, "you ain't gettin' hired if you ain't screwable." Like I've always said, look at the "Best and Worst beach bodies" tabloid at the grocery store. It's "EWWW! Anorexic person! They need our help" next to "giant gross fat beast with the face blocked out! You'll never guess who it is! Mainly because it's someone you've never heard of." I have a feeling that a lot of the fatophobia is from vein, vapid, constantly at the gym types who constantly dread the imaginary day they wake up, covered in gravy and look at their sausage finger hands getting smothered by their swollen wrists. OH NO! Now only a certain portion of the population will wanna bang them!
Yet, I do see really fat people all the time with work. Hmmm. I guess they want you to be thin and attractive when they hire you, only due to lack of getting out of the cubicle you wind up large anyway.
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