Being fat is treated as a referendum on your worth as a person – people see it as an implication that you’re only fat because you simply don’t want to change badly enough. The societal disdain for heavyset people is so ingrained that even people who are fat feel ashamed about who they are and that they have to apologize for some personal flaw that leaves them with the mark of Canes when the truth about obesity is as much about external factors as it is about food consumption.