Fatties who dress up as superheroes + stolen valor Hello. I've been reading FPH for a few months, I've recently responded to a few established posts, but this is the first post of my own and it was brought on by last night - Halloween. I was never fat, but I was out of shape for a long time and for all the usual excuses. Because I've always been thin, the joke was that I was like a stick dipped in mashed potatoes - skinny, but never very strong. Anyway, flash forward a few years and here I am - an officer in the National Guard and very proud of that. I don't love everything about the military but I love the friendships I've formed and how strong I've had to become to better myself. I look better than I ever have but I feel fantastic and that's what's most important to me. I have pride in my appearance and what I can physically accomplish now, things I never dreamed of doing before I enlisted. I'm also a DC/Marvel nerd. Last year I was Poison Ivy from Batman, this year I was Black Widow from the Avengers. Whether hero or villain, the characters have always shown the human body to its fullest potential - the men are muscular and strong, the women are strong too but they don't lose their femininity. In a word, they're the ideal.  This year and last, no matter where I went for Halloween parties (either at a friend's house or a live music bar), I saw fats dressed as heroes. This bothers me on the same level as those exposed on Stolen Valor. For those of y'all not in the know, Stolen Valor is when civilians will dress up as military personnel for one reason or another - maybe they're after that sweet 10% military discount that's only offered at a handful of places, but my guess is that they do it to feel respected. To them, it's Halloween every time they pull this trick. The one thing a service member is supposed to be is fit. We're meant to be fast, strong and able to endure whatever is thrown in our way. We're not the ideal, we're not heroes, we're just doing our jobs as best we can. But we do sacrifice a lot to do that job and that has to mean something, but they dress up with the expectation of admiration that isn't earned. Hell, even real soldiers don't always have gratitude expressed to them so why should these people expect anything when all they did was buy a uniform at a surplus store? Then it hit me - fatties and the slime of Stolen Valor have the same mindset, and in a majority of the cases, they're the same class of people. They put on the uniform of real heroes because they know they'll never be one. These "people" put on the costume of characters who have deep meaning to the rest of us - Wonder Woman has always been a favorite of mine because she's a strong, noble woman, an ideal. And of course the first thing I saw last night as I was coming into a bar to see a kickass cover band was some fatty in a cheap costume, drunk off her ass and looking like hell. I want to be WW next year after Dawn of Justice comes out - but I owe it to the character to actually look like WW when I put on the costume, so I'm building up my cardio and I've added more weights and squats to my workouts. I'm planning my costume a full year in advance because when I put on that costume, I'm representing a character I've loved since I was little. I owe it to her not to degrade the Wonder Woman legacy. Probably I'm giving in to my own fee-fees with this, but they don't deserve to wear the uniform of a hero: comic or military. The only thing they should wear during Halloween is the same thing they wear everyday: crumbs and sweatstains.