Editor's Note: One of the most maddening trends in American culture today is the way we pathologize relatively mundane things (situational anxiety, boredom, rationality) while making whole identities of actual pathologies — morbid obesity chief among them, and our topic of discussion today. I have no tolerance for the public targeting of people struggling with their weight. But disease is not an identity, and it is certainly nothing so immutable as race, which is to say no, actually, Brendan Fraser wearing a fat suit is not the same thing as blackface. This has really all gone far enough.

River Page unpacks the recent Oscars controversy at the crossroads of acceptance and sanity.

-Solana