I’ve been at a mouse related resort. It’s a festival of overindulgence in many ways: kids rinsing their parents in the gift shops, general holiday related “fuck it” behaviour and also that of eating. 

I physically cannot eat the portion sizes which are afforded to you here. So the conversation is a little moot as to whether I would want to eat that amount of food anyway. My husband can’t eat the portions. My kid, who is a great eater, eats less than half of the kids’ meals which are ordered, to the point that I think she’s a little off put by the quantity of food which is on the plate.

I understand that when you are charging the amount of money that the mouse does for food options, that people will want “value for money” (imagine twatty, psuedo-intellectually superior finger movements here). And because of how economics works on the most base of levels, Mouse bosses can chuck the food at you because it’s getting fairly hefty discounts on it in the first place because it orders so much. Quite the catch-22. Probably. 

One of the things which really struck me was the sheer misery that some people were displaying when they were eating. Why are you eating all of that shit if it makes you so fucking unhappy? I mean, I did it sometimes, but the sight of undulating arms lifting grossly overfilled forks into gaping mouths… I don’t get it. The face of one woman I saw, clutching the food tray as if her life depended on it, will never leave me. Every mouthful seemingly brought her more unhappiness and discomfort. What is the mental allure of this misery? Why not put the fucking fork down and start living?

There are some large people at the world of the Mouse. There are lots of mobility scooters, many of which I fear are populated with oversized bodies which otherwise simply couldn’t cope with the 18,000 steps or so a day that they would otherwise have to make if they were walking. Even at my absolute heaviest, I could haul my fat, flabby arse around Disney. Sure my feet hurt, but I still did it. This time, my feet didn’t hurt at all and I felt energised by the walking (exhaustion due to child related overexcitement notwithstanding).

There is a huge underlying Disney subculture. And subcultures of subcultures. It’s an extraordinary thing to see. One of the things which stands out is that there is a place for people at any size. Even if you weighed 600lbs, someone somewhere will make an item of clothing with a Disney pattern on it, and thus you will be accepted by your fellow Disney-goers. Human nature needs acceptance and inclusion on some level and that is here in abundance. There are forums on the internet dedicated to how fat people can “do” Disney. Quite the festival of schadenfreude.

From the tone of this, it’s evident that I am judging some of these people for their misery in obesity. I’m not apologising for that. I’ve become fattist. And I’m kind of OK with that, because the week after, I went skiing in Colorado for the first time. The rush of the cold air on my face was liberating and I didn’t even go wrinkly arse over feral tit.

Remarkable.