5 Things We Are Making Fatter (In Addition to Ourselves)

The fattest woman in the world wants to get fatter. And when you hear that, you kind of want her to don't you? You're sitting there mentally cheering her on thinking, Yes, push the human body to the limit lady, like a world class athlete competing in the sport of cheese-appreciation. The world we live in has become not only extremely fat, but extremely OK with the general idea of being fat. Unfortunately, while size would ideally just be a personal issue, it turns out that this overwhelming expansion is actually contagious in ways you wouldn't think possible. Here are some of the ways your beer belly is changing the world (literally) for the worse.

You know how they say pets look like their owners?

"Hey, your dog looks like Michael McDonald too!"

Well, pets are getting just as chubalicious as their owners now too. Not content to push the boundaries of physics with our own expanding waistlines, we project our insecurities onto our animals; and as a result, they're bigger than ever. The expanding girth of our beloved pets is the number one health threat facing them right now. In America alone, over 50 percent of cats and dogs are overweight. And there is a good reason for this: It's because fat animals are totally fucking adorable.

Awwwww.

The main problem is that our culture is so in love with sugar that we have actually started adding huge amounts of it to stuff we don't even eat, namely dog and cat treats. There is absolutely no need for this. I don't know if you've noticed but there is not exactly a lot of natural sugar in the mice, birds and fish that our pets would eat in the wild. By adding ingredients they have never experienced as a species we are actually "rewiring our pets' behavioral responses" and "creating cravings" that have literally never existed in dogs and cats before. We're taking animals that have never had a desire for sweet things and making them beg for peanut butter because it's so adorable when they try to lick it off and then they use their little paws like tiny furry people and...

Ahem, sorry. My point is: Screw you, thousands of years of evolution, I want a 30-pound kitty.

"I can haz heart problems down the line?"

It's actually gotten to the point where the average pet owner sees an overweight animal as "normal." We're so used to seeing super-sized bundles of fur running around (or just sort of laying there having minor heart attacks) that our perspective on what size a dog or cat should be has changed. Forty percent of owners with obese cats, not just overweight but obese, think their cats are at a healthy weight. It's this bizarre change in perspective that affects almost every aspect of the world-fattening (or Chubpocolyps. Or Fat-Assmageddon.)

Are you concerned you might be the Fat Albert in your gang? Don't worry, you won't be for long; you'll make them fat right along with you eventually. According to a recent decades long study, behaviors both good and bad are actually contagious. If you and your friends decide to give up smoking at the same time, you are all more likely to quit. If you take up running with friends, you're more likely to make it a lifelong habit. And if you start gaining weight with friends, you are all more likely to end up hilariously overweight sooner.

It's something we can't escape: According to studies, your college roommate's GPA dragged yours down or up. If your sibling has a child, you are 15 percent more likely to have one in the next two years. If a person has friends that are in better shape than them to start with, just having them around keeps them alive longer. Of course, less and less people are staying really healthy these days, meaning you're much more likely to be experiencing the down side of this discovery.

If just one of your friends becomes obese, you are 57 percent more likely to follow in their footsteps. If a friend of a friend gains weight you are still 20 percent more likely to gain weight. That's right: You're getting second-hand fat. The pattern stretches on and on, just like those marks on your ass. So think about it when you're reaching for that eighth handful of Doritos; you're not just eating for you, you're eating for your friend, and your friend's friends, and your friend's cousin's boyfriend's sister's husband, and so on and so on, until Kevin Bacon eventually just dies of a coronary.

RIP Fatty McBacon.

But fuck Kevin Bacon's theoretical secondhand fatass; you've already done it for real. You've made Russell Crowe fat. And John Travolta. And Denzel Washington. Three men who were once ubuer-sex symbols are now nothing more than chubby leading men and it's because we decided it was OK.

Crowe started out as a muscular everyman; woman wanted to sleep with him and men wanted to have quick enough reflexes to dodge the phones he threw at them. Over the last few years Crowe started piling on the pounds, but still always managed to lose them in time for his next big role. Then he got cast in Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott, thus recreating the same team that brought us the eye candy-fest that was Gladiator.

"Are you not inexplicably aroused?"

Now, it's been 10 years since Gladiator; he can't realistically be in the same shape. But surely Russell got back into some kind of fighting form for Robin Hood. After all he's only 46, he had plenty of time to prepare and...

Oh.

Recently, audiences have been accepting sex symbols that have gone to seed, in roles they are no longer physically accurate for, presumably because even having that little tubbiness still makes Crowe look like a sex-god compared to the veritable truckstop diner that the rest of the Earth is becoming. Oh, but still: No fat chicks. Sorry, ladies.