Archive for the ‘The Fattimists’ Category

50 Kilos Around The Waist Is Not A “Body Type”

Dylan Thomas defined an alcoholic as someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do. In the same way, an anorexic nowadays means someone you don’t like who is not as fat as you are. It is sufficiently clear that the obesity epidemic, currently the Western world’s greatest public-health problem, is caused largely […]

Neener Neener, There IS Such A Thing As A Normal Figure

People complain about Hollywood images of Woman. Whether the stars could stay so slim – like the sexy forty-somethings in Desperate Housewives – without horrific self-discipline and many hours working out every single day, not to mention personal trainers, is a good question. But there is a difference between being an “anorexic” on the one […]

It’s Not About Us Men

Anorexia has nothing whatever to do with competition for male favour. After all, when have women ever cared what we think? If they ask us whether they look good, whether they are talking about their party dress or their waistline, they never listen to any male answer that contradicts what they themselves think. This is […]

The Rubens Myth

Sexual taste is only partly conditioned by culture. Natural selection ensures that both sexes are attracted first and foremost by health. What most men want is either a moderate slimness or a moderate voluptuousness, according to individual taste. Our species is equipped, not with one single programmed behaviour but with a behavioural suite of possible […]

Socialisation To Obesity

Where I live, I am hearing two conflicting social messages: the one is increasing public-health alarm about the obesity epidemic, rapid growth of fitness studios and fat-farm reality shows. This is increasingly countered, however, by the iron triangle of female academics, journalists and government officials fulminating on the terrible damage being done to young girls […]

Impossible Skinnies Shopping

Western airports are full of sacred friezes in honour of Mammon. Stylised, tall, skinny women bearing the sacred Designer Shopping Bags in procession. One wonders how future archaeologists will be able to avoid setting their beloved “cultic” label onto the figures. And of course it is cultic, the point is not to get the goods […]

Sheridan Prasso And The Asian Figure

We may all agree that it is madness for young girls to go under the knife to further enlarge what are already fine and attractive breasts. But is this due, as the accusation goes, to male demand alone? On the one hand, many young men certainly do talk as if bigger is better, to infinity. […]