This is Michael Karolchyk. He owns a gym in Denver that is somewhat atypical. It has numerous slogans, from "Too chubby; Never find a hubby," to "Have Sex With The Lights On" to "Save The Chubbitos" to "No Chubbies." It also has numerous amenities, including "live DJs, cage dancers, and our elite co-ed Ravish Room." The Ravish Room turns out to be a sauna that admits only members who have reached a sufficiently low body mass index, but you also have to be screened to so much as join his gym, where motivational techniques include having cupcakes hurled at you on the treadmill, through a questionnaire filled with queries like "Would you rather have your ideal body or an extra $50,000 a year?"
Now, I may just be crazy, but it seems to me that anyone who would pick the perfect body over $50 large a year should be voted off the island. But what do I know? I'm a fatty.
All that would be obnoxious and sad if kept within the confines of his own gym. Of course, as Jill points out, he's not content to keep his fat-shaming insanity to himself. Click that link if you want to see one of the most sexist, fat-shaming, and anti-human commercials I've ever seen. Warning though: it may be triggering. If you want the quick summary: fat women aren't hot, and will lose their husbands to sexy thin model-types. Also, "no chubbies." But the quick summary can't do justice to the horror of the ad, which includes Karolchyk shouting "moo!" and literally shoving the actress to the couch. Frankly, it makes me embarrassed to share a species with this clown.
Of course, Karolchyk is the symptom, not the disease. An article in The Los Angeles Times blames fat people for the closing and refurbishing of "It's a Small World," despite Disneyland's flat statement that overweight riders have nothing to do with it. The facts must be massaged to make it the fault of fatties, even if there's no actual evidence of that other than boats occasionally running aground, which is happening because patching has made the channel more shallow. And unfortunately, over at Feministing, the thread on this gets quickly bogged down with people saying, "Well, this is offensive, but shouldn't fat people just lose some weight?"
No, it would be nice to think that Karolchyk is the problem, but he's just riding the wave of fat-hatred. Unfortunately, that's one heck of a big wave these days.
