In Defense of Fat

A large percentage of Americans are "large." A significant percentage are "significant." At only 30 pounds above my ideal weight, above the weight I was in college, I'm neither. But it's noble being fat, it's selfless to be obese. Sure the basic reason is people eat more calories than than they burn off, and when you do this over time you gain weight. Over a long time, you gain a lot of weight. One extra pound a year for 50 years is 50 pounds. For an American man of average height that would be 190 to 200 pounds. And to hit 350, 450 pounds, by age 20 or 30, you're talking about a gain of 200, 300 pounds in 20 or 30 years, that's 10 extra pounds a year. But that's the scientific explanation. As any bored high school child will tell you, preferably over a pizza or nachos with soda, science is boring.

Forget science, let's take a step back and think about beauty and sexiness. Let's think about Monica Lewinsky. While she was, is, "chunky" or "big boned," and while she looks good in a beret, she never made it as a sex symbol. The height of her fame was not characterized by pictures of her in a bikini or less on the bedroom walls of teenagers across the country. She may have been interviewed for Playboy, but unlike Marilyn Monroe, another special friend of another President, she wasn't asked to pose. You're not likely to see her in the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated. If their models define feminine sexuality, and Playboy and SI hope they do, then fat chicks don't define feminine sexy.

So what we're seeing, in part, is a deliberate existential challenge to normative popular culture on the definition of sexiness. This image: very pretty girl, long hair, large boobs, tiny waist, tottering on stiletto heals, in a very short skirt – barely wider than a belt – the Barbie Doll image of sexuality – is falling, perhaps because it's top heavy. It is being challenged by our sisters, our daughters, our wives, our selves And we, who love our sisters, daughters, wives, and selves are rising to the challenge. It is being replaced with the matronly woman. A robust and mature woman. To whom you say "yes, ma-am," when asked to do something.

Fat chicks are challenging our notion of beauty and sexuality. Fat guys in Speedos, mostly from Germany, Russia, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, are joining in the challenge. They have a dream, to echo Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "they have a dream that one day their children be judged by the content of their character, not by the quantity of their skin; they have a dream today."

There's more.

Toxic organic chemicals, such as DDT, PCB's, meythyl mercury, which are in our food and water, albeit in trace amounts, which are linked to health effects like Parkinson's, and cancer, concentrate in fats and fatty tissues: breasts, brains, beer bellies. Obese people, by concentrating these substances in their very bodies, are doing the rest of a favor and taking them out of the biosphere.

Obesity is linked to a shorter life-span. Fat people are sacrificing themselves so the rest of us may live longer. By using more resources now they enable us to use fewer resources later, but we're resourceful, we'll think of something. Vegan food, no doubt...

So to my fat friends, I say, thank you, let me give you a big hug.