Dream big: Donna Simpson aspires to become fattest woman alive

If you’re reading this, Michelle Obama (as I’m certain is your regular habit), avert your eyes right now.

Discontent to be simply the Guiness record-holder for world’s fattest mother, New Jersey’s Donna Simpson has a bigger (ahem) goal: Become the fattest woman in the world. She spoke to the Cleveland Leader about her quest, addressing it with the serious of a world-class athlete: “I’d love to be 1,000lb. It might be hard though. Running after my daughter keeps my weight down. … [Men have] sent me gifts through the post, like protein shakes to help me put on weight faster. I love eating and people love watching me eat. It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”

The Leader reports:

To achieve her goal of weighing 1,000lbs. in just two years, Donna says that she needs to eat 12,000 calories per day. That’s about 10,000 more than the average woman needs daily. To fund her massive grocery bill, she runs a website where men pay to watch her eat fast food.

Her site is purportedly like a one-woman, around-the-clock eating contest.

Donna Simpson is hoping to become the world's fattest woman

It’s hard to determine how we ended up here. Among the current obesity storylines making the news recently, we have Michelle Obama’s campaign to end childhood obesity, and constant rallying cries to destroy media stereotypes that only rail-thin women can get ahead; and the uproar over Oscar nominee Gabourey Sibide and Howard Stern’s declaration that she’ll never work again because she’s so “enormous.”

Certainly Simpson isn’t the first person to gain fame for being morbidly obese: TLC, the leading programmer of all circus-freak-starring reality TV shows, has already made shows like “World’s Heaviest Man,” and MTV’s “True Life” had at least one episode following obese subjects. But Simpson is perhaps unique in that she is actively pursuing getting fatter – and to a freakish degree.

It’s not an aspiration that anyone should replicate – but sadly, the more reality TV dominates network programming, the more likely it will be that people will attempt hugely dangerous and disgusting endeavors in order for attention.