SMUG

I thought of a word, today, that is already coined, but struck me funny. It's a word that describes people I run into at work and at the local hippie grocery store. You know, the type of people that make me want to take an organic eggplant and throw it at their heads...really hard.

I call them huppies. They are yuppies, with the money of the upwardly mobile folk, but they think they are hippies. They take the yuppy wealth given to them by companies that probably support or do things that would make their hippie toes curl. I'm sure they find some way to justify it, and then they go to the hippie grocery store and behave as if they are more in tune with natural stuff than anyone else.

As I took my cart around the hippie grocery store, today, I noticed something else about these huppies: smugness.

I make no bones about my weight. I walk through my day knowing why people stare at me. So, it is always interesting when I go through this store with my wild-caught fish and shrimp, organic veggies and fruits, and antibiotic and hormone-free meats (all for health reasons). I get stares and peeks into my cart. I wonder if they are thinking, "Wow. How does that fat chick know what to buy. She must be too stupid to buy healthy food." I know that look. Not unlike these folks, the people at work who are like them, stare at what I eat for lunch. They comment on how healthy it looks, too. Funny. I don't take a second glance at what they eat, except for the times they have something really yummy. I don't judge it healthy or unhealthy. I stopped eating with everyone else because of it. I eat at my desk with one or two co-workers. As people walk by, they still look and some comment, though.

Back to that smugness. These are the same people who have their lives in neat compartments. They see me as lacking that neatness they desire in their lives. So, I get the stares.

That smugness also leads to some pretty annoying behavior in the hippie grocery store: They like to leave their carts and block the aisles. They see where they need to go and walk blindly without regard for others and run into them with their carts. Then come the looks of, "What are you doing in MY way?"

They are the people out with their only (trophy) child--the one with the hyphenated last name of both his parents. They talk with the hyper-intellectual nasal tone to their voices-where every statement sounds like a question. They get into their V8 SUV's and drive home to their oversized McMansions.

But hey, they shopped at the hippie grocery store, saved the planet, and put on a good show, right?

There's something else I notice at the hippie grocery store: When there is another fat person there, we look at each other with the "we'll get there" look of wanting to do better for ourselves.

Oh yeah, and those huppies? They always seem pissed off about something. They never smile.