The current hubbub in school is the removal of chocolate sauce from the cafeteria menu. Seriously. Couldn’t a magical school have more magical scandals?
http://media.soundcloud.com/stream/MPtExVYVg4pv.mp3
TRANSCRIPT
Hello Manticores! My name is Melody Martin and I’m here to keep you in the loop about St. Merlinda’s scoop. That’s a good opening, eh? Took me a while to come up with.
Today’s main story has to do with our one and only cafeteria. The cafeteria actually provides higher quality food than I originally expected, and considering it’s offered free of charge to all students, I have no reason to complain. But others have found such a reason. Protests have erupted in the chat and flyers have appeared around the school condemning the removal of a particular menu item: chocolate sauce bowls.
I’m not talking about little dishes to contain chocolate sauce used for ice cream. No, apparently some students were eating cereal bowls filled with nothing but chocolate sauce for dessert. That’s just…it’s a sugar high in the making, no doubt. And just because we’re part-magic doesn’t mean we’re safe from diabetes. School administration has stated they removed the dish for the health of the students and I fully support them. I’m more shocked it was available in the first place.
To be clear, there’s a difference with this type of ban than the ban on potion making, which was recently resolved. Administrators agreed to allow students to make potions as long as there was no evidence of illegal or dangerous potions being created. The flying ban is still in place, though.
Anyway, the difference between this…chocolate sauce scandal and the potion ban is that the potion ban prohibited students to make potions on their own time. In contrast, students are still allowed to eat chocolate sauce if they can acquire it from other sources. It just won’t be provided free by the school anymore.
Why chocolate sauce anyway? It’s a bit disappointing, actually. I’d expect a magical school to have magical scandals. Protests stemming from a ban on chocolate sauce, frankly, aren’t very magical. It’s still a school story, though, so I’m obligated to report on it.
I don’t have much else to say on the issue, however, so let’s check the chatroom.
Darryl Marchand is wondering why I haven’t said anything about Instructor Sty. My answer is that I try not to report on rumors. To be clear, there is a rumor that Instructor Sty got in trouble for drinking ambrosia in the school halls, but that is just a rumor. Consuming ambrosia is banned at the school because its effect on each individual person can’t be judged until after it has been drunk. That being the case, it would be unsafe for students to consume in a school setting, and instructors are not supposed to do anything that might be viewed as encouraging its consumption.
On a related note, ambrosia is meant to be consumed by the gods, so it can be dangerous for mortals. It’s important to consider that Instructor Sty is a descendent of one of the gods, even if he won’t tell us which one. Honestly, I didn’t quite believe him until this point, but if he’s drinking ambrosia, that would make his claim seem more valid.
But, again, this is just a rumor.
Back in the chatroom, Troy Fletcher is offering to sell chocolate sauce to needy individuals for a steep price. Really, Troy? It’s true that Amazon Prime can’t ship here, so it’s difficult to get items from off-campus, but the price you’re charging is insane. How did you get it anyway?
He won’t answer. My guess is that he somehow acquired the remaining stock from the cafeteria. Either that or he’s found a way to get items shipped to campus. I highly discourage my fellow students from trying this. Knowingly bringing humans onto campus is grounds for expulsion. I suppose you could try convincing someone else magical to bring you items from the outside, but it’s still a risk. Chocolate sauce isn’t worth it. Trust me.
My interview guest today would argue otherwise, however. Her name is Cecily [redacted] and she’s the ogre in charge of the protest against the cafeteria’s menu change. And I’m not calling her an ogre to be mean – she’s actually part-ogre. Welcome, Cecily.
This chair is too small. Why don’t you have bigger chairs?
Oh, well…sorry. Unfortunately, I have no say in the furniture here. I’ll see if Ina can bring in an extra chair, then you can use both.
Fine. You should have had that prepared from the beginning, though. Not everyone is a twig.
Right. So, now that you’re settled, how are you doing today, Cecily?
Absolutely horrid. I can feel myself wasting away after the school decide to deprive us of food.
That’s a big of a hyperbole, isn’t it? There is still plenty of food available. Just not chocolate sauce.
It doesn’t matter. It’s oppression! How dare they tell us what to eat. In the human world, I was surrounded by fat-hate because of my size. But that’s because I’m an ogre. I thought, here in the magic realm, I could be free from such judgment.
Well…we studied ogre bodies in my biology class and you still seem to be two to three times the size of an average ogre.
How dare you! My body is not yours to control.
Sorry, I can agree on that. But I don’t see how removing chocolate sauce from the school menu is oppression.
It’s because the school is trying to control my body! They think they can call me unhealthy just by looking at me, or by seeing the number on the scale. But I am more than a number. I am my body and I deserve to be accepted for who I am.
But what if your health is in danger?
My health is perfectly fine, thank you very much. You can’t tell someone’s health just by looking at them. If you’d like, I can give you some pamphlets on this movement I’m a part of, called Health at Every Size. We advocate that people can be healthy at any size.
I think it’s great to accept people for who they are, but if they’re over twice the size they should be, surely that’s unhealthy.
You are so misguided, Melody. Size has nothing to do with health, just like the things we eat have nothing to do with our size. You might look at me and think I’m unhealthy, but guess what? I ran a marathon. It took only 20 hours and twelve minutes.
That’s…that’s a long time.
So? Can you say you’ve completed a marathon?
Well it’s not a competition. You don’t need to make it one.
Look, I only came on this show to spread my message. The school is trying to fat shame those of us who are bigger by controlling what we put in our mouths. But the truth is that eating and size have nothing in common.
You can’t be serious. Of course the things you eat affect your weight.
No, Melody, that’s not true at all. You have fallen for the lies of the diet industry. They want to make us feel inadequate so we’ll buy their products, but I refuse to be brainwashed by their tactics. There is nothing wrong with my size. I am merely built bigger.
Okay, let’s take size out of the equation for a moment. Surely a bowl of chocolate sauce can’t be healthy. There’s nothing of nutritional value in it.
That is not your right to decide. You and the school should not be allowed to police what I put in my body. I should feel free to eat whatever I want, whenever I want, and so should every student in this school. And every person in the world, for that matter.
But no one is telling you that you can’t eat chocolate sauce. The school just won’t provide it free in bowls anymore.
And how am I supposed to get it, then?
I agree it’s difficult to do, but how much do you really need chocolate sauce? Can’t you go without it for a few weeks? There’s still chocolate cake available as a dessert.
It’s the principle of the matter, Melody. You clearly wouldn’t understand the heroism of my efforts to bring back chocolate sauce. The bottom line is that the school has no right to take away food they have been supplying to us. If I starve, it will be their fault.
Fine, let’s say I agree with you. How do you plan to get chocolate sauce back on the menu?
By advocacy, of course. I will fight until this matter has been resolved. You may think my fight is silly, but I am fighting oppression, the same oppression that affects African-Americans and gays and lesbians.
You can’t honestly believe that.
Oh, I do, Melody. You are skinny, so you don’t understand, but fat people face oppression on a daily basis. There’s no difference between getting judged for your skin color or your sexual orientation than for your weight.
But people can’t change their skin color or sexual orientation.
That’s true. And we can’t change our weight either.
Oh gods. You really believe that, don’t you? Cecily, thank you for being on the show, but I don’t think there’s much else for us to discuss.
You’re very welcome for having me, Melody, and I hope someday you can cast off the illusion of beauty set by the diet industry and become your true self.
So, that was frustrating. I get that overweight people face judgment, and guess why? Because I’m overweight. Cecily called me skinny, but that’s totally not true. Sure, I can fit in a single chair, but that shouldn’t be the sole measure of whether someone is skinny or fat. And taking weight out of the equation, it’s simply not healthy to eat a whole bowl of chocolate sauce. I guess it would be okay once in a while, but from what it sounds like, Cecily’s indulgence was far from rare.
But I’ll stop talking about her now. I don’t want to seem like I’m targeting her. I’m sure she’s…fine as a person. I just want to be clear the food you eat does affect your body. Your weight is a result of simply thermodynamics. To lose weight, you just need to eat less calories than you burn. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though. I want to lose weight, but I have a proclivity toward chocolate, and I eat way too much of it. Bowls of chocolate sauce, though? That, I can do without. Until next time, good night Manticores.
