Culture Vultures: Obestiality
Steyn, Mark
by Mark Steyn Obesliality America has the weight of its weight on its shoulders. A fter blacks (or, if you prefer, persons of color) and gays (persons of orientation) and women (persons of...
...I was a teenager at a party in Albany, New York, and the fattest girl I'd ever seen came up to me and said, "Have you ever done it with someone really gross...
...They can put in seats that'll accommodate Sally and Patti—and every movie theater will go belly-up...
...Canadians may drive American cars and watch American TV, but they do not yet have American butts...
...In America in 1998, just being who you are is a considerable achievement: I get a kick out of me...
...My own rule is that the wealth of any town is inversely proportional to the width of the butts filling up at the gas station...
...I myself have met at least one large person interested in exploring her sexuality, and indeed mine...
...Well, let 'em try...
...A couple of years ago, in Texas, a husband, puzzled that his wife didn't seem to be making much progress with Weight-Watchers, followed her to the weekly meeting and discovered that she was instead chowing down at a local steakhouse...
...On current trends, 75 percent of Americans will be obese by 205o...
...Michael Hamilton of Duke University, "a typical businessman will earn $1.,000 a yearless for every one pound he is overweight...
...We may gloat over the "Asian flu" currently afflicting the Far Eastern economies, but whatchance has America in the long run, if Sally and Patti get their way, that it can ever compete with those wiry Filipinos and Koreans...
...A far more useful guide as to which side of the border you're on is the width of the rear ends at the shopping mall...
...It's so unspoiled...
...So?, "for people who don't apologize for their size" — but Nomy decided to cut to the chase and call her magazine I'm So F---ing Beautiful, because "that's what I want to hear...
...At the top level, according to Dr...
...Confronted by him in bed that evening, she reached for her gun and shot him dead...
...We haven't seen the movie," said Sally Smith...
...It used to be that people explored the Tyrol or the ruins of Carthage, but go there now and you'll have the place to yourself: "Oh, we thought this year we'd spend three weeks exploring our sexuality," friends say...
...Everyone's exploring their sexuality these days...
...Stuck in Montreal during the recent ice storm and looking for ways to keep warm, I noticed a remarkable number of ads for "escorts" boasting that they weighed 25o, 300 lbs...
...Stick the entire population of Nauru in a New Jersey mall and no-one would even notice...
...Anyway, fat Americans are now demanding, as Al Gore would put it, a place at the table...
...He'd once weighed 1,000 lbs, then lost 700, then put on 800...
...Madonna explores her sexuality, Snoop Doggy Dogg explores other people's sexuality (no appointment necessary), so why shouldn't tubsters...
...Nikki, for example, has 58-inch hips and makes a very nice living...
...Every couple of weeks or so on the local news shows, you'll see a group of volunteer firefighters cutting the wall off the house of some fat guy who's gotten too fat to get out of the door...
...True, it's not yet the fattest country on earth...
...That's just one of the ways fat people are oppressed in this society," added her colleague, Patti Horton...
...The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is really a National Association to Accept Fat Advancement—and fat is advancing through American life quite fast enough as it is...
...It's an unreliable strategy, at least while Hillary Clinton's grand project is still sitting in a desk drawer somewhere in the White House, for it suggests that, in the event that America moves to a socialized health system, Canada loses its raison d'etre...
...After all, America has far more lardbutts — pardon me, persons of bulk—than blacks or gays, and almost as many as women...
...Michael Hebranko, who had to be forklifted out of his home in Brooklyn...
...Actually, it's very hard to give fat activists a shot in the arm: try finding a vein in the folds of flesh...
...professor needed to lose weight in order to be sexually desirable...
...He's also learned to keep his hazardous waist in check—dropping (according to one paper) 25o lbs...
...Or guys with 400 lb...
...man who yearns to be trim and sexually desirable like, well, Eddie Murphy...
...Canadians, obsessed with differentiating themselves from Americans, claim their national identity lies in such distinctively un-American activities as universal health care...
...Nikki herself comes from upstate New York and concedes that her unique selling point would be far less unique south of the border...
...Compared to Sally, Murphy's 400 lb...
...So what exactly had so offended them when they saw the movie...
...Maybe it would be easier if, in the same way that the handicapped are now "differently abled," fat people could find their own circumlocutory euphemism — "differently weighted...
...Are most of your clients men with emaciated 25o lb...
...The film was a huge box-office hit, out-grossing (so to speak) every other comedy in America...
...Besides, fat may mean sexy, but it also means poor...
...Indeed, given the fuss government now makes about societal costs incurred through smoking, it's amazing it hasn't yet turned its attention to regulating our diet...
...The theaters have no seats big enough...
...professor is slinky...
...However, when they first heard about the film, NAAFA wrote to Paramount offering to work with the studio by going through the script and replacing the offensive jokes 54 March 1998 • The American Spectator with ones that were more affirming of fat people's self-esteem...
...I learned about keeping my ego in check...
...peak is positively cadaverous...
...But what really riled Sally and Patti was the implication that Murphy's 400 lb...
...or (according to a fourth) 600 lbs...
...That's what NAAFA objects to: it's not good for the social fabric to have an unrepresentative, attenuated elite at the top and a huge heap of lardbutts underneath...
...The only people who didn't like it were NAAFA...
...One day, warn Sally and Patti, the lardbutts will rise up and storm the barricades, or at any rate lean on them...
...In other words, you can't be a fat cat if you're fat, cat...
...Perhaps it's something in the diet, but NAAFA members seem to have a special knack for the inapt metaphor...
...At last," roared a fat activist the other week, "fat people are on the march...
...Not surprisingly, the sinister, emaciated studio execs sniggering into their curly endives declined the invitation—probably wisely...
...wives in need of something svelter...
...They insist that they're entitled to their full The American Spectator • March 1998 55 salary just for being propped up against the workbench and wheezing for eight hours a day...
...Her colleague added that fat people were very interested in exploring their sexuality...
...or (according to another) 32o lbs...
...compared to Patti, Oprah at her 237 lb...
...Fat people are very sexual," said Sally, with just a hint of menace...
...and now weighing (according to a third paper) 500 lbs...
...The organization leading the battle for "respect for the obese" is NAAFA—the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance— who've been weighing in with their thoughts on this year's first trial of the century: the California woman whose 68o-lb...
...For example, there was 800 lb...
...today, it's pushing 40 percent...
...teenage daughter was found dead in her room, covered in bed sores and surrounded by empty food cartons...
...by 1991, it was nearly 33 percent...
...But then you realize: with this crowd, "fat" is a euphemism...
...As I understand it, a traditional, oppressive fat joke would be: "I wouldn't say my wife is fat, but, when she went into The Gap and said, 'What have you got in my size?' they said, 'How about the delivery truck?'" Whereas a non-offensive joke would be: "I wouldn't say my wife is fat, but that's because I'm a sensitive partner who understands her need for self-esteem...
...Alas, she was speaking metaphorically...
...The statistics bear her out...
...economy loses $roo billion from weight-related sickness...
...The titles of fat activist publications tend to be in-your-face—like Fat...
...Indeed, America now weighs more than any other society in history...
...wives looking for something a little meatier...
...You sound like you've been spending too much time with these bony-butt French women they've got up here...
...Class Three Obesity—which means, broadly, people who can't squeeze into theater seats for The Nutty Professor—has risen some 350 percent since 1970...
...S o I'm with Eddie Murphy on this one...
...This case was a shot in the arm for the fat activist movement," said Judy Freespirit...
...Fat people who are too fat to do their jobs are now claiming the right not to be sacked by size-ist employers...
...Even the most dirigiste libertarian has to ponder whether, when your population is too fat to work or wage war or do anything much except sprawl on the couch and dial the local Domino's, this isn't a matter in which the state has a legitimate steak —er, stake...
...But fat people are on the drive, wedged behind the steering wheel with a couple of Twinkies for the road and heading straight for the latest fat rights demo, with a quick stop at the drive-thru Dunkin' Donuts...
...Tell me," I said...
...But they've been talking like this ever since The Nutty Professor, the 1996 film in which Eddie Murphy, with the aid of a ton of special effects, plays a 400 lb...
...So, when NAAFA gets upset by Eddie Murphy movies, I say to them: lighten up...
...Mark, sweetie," she sighed...
...Unfortunately, more and more Americans have difficulty standing up from where they are now and moving forward...
...Pound for pound, they may outweigh the average MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...magazine's Women of the Year was Nomy Lamm, who, according to Anastasia Higginbotham, is "inspiring a new generation of feminists to fight back against fat oppression" through her magazine...
...In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control classified 25 percent of Americans as obese...
...American, but we've got 25o million and they can muster a mere 10,00o...
...Because of the inconsistent figures for his inconsistent figure, I tried to call him up, but I got his answering machine, on which he advised: "Stand up from where you are now and move forward and say I will and I did...
...That distinction belongs to Nauru, a small Commonwealth island in the central Pacific composed chiefly of guano deposits—which somehow seems very appropriate...
...Unable to manage it on her own, she could only lie there helpless as the police arrived to arrest her...
...Still, there seems to be a market for it...
...When he returned —this time through the front door—he said, "I've learned a lot about me...
...If only...
...I suspect that's not the approach Sally and Patti and their members have in mind...
...Although she lived only seven blocks from her junior high, Christina Corrigan hadbeen too fat to make the trip...
...She has a point...
...Fat kids slip between the cracks all the time," said NAAFA's executive director Sally Smith...
...56 March 1998 • The American Spectator...
...She was about to get up and skip town when she remembered that one of her late husband's more useful attributes was that he helped her get out of bed...
...Theirs might more accurately be summed up by the banner stretched across a school hall in a Midwestern suburb, "We Applaud Ourselves...
...On top of the guano sit the island's hearty trenchermen...
...Thus, last year, one of Ms...
...You can talk about "fat genes" and "hormonal problems," but the vast bulk of America's vast bulk is due to eating too much, to double Whoppers and super-size fries...
...Already the U.S...
...The only really important economic question of our time is whether the European Union can hold off collapsing under the weight of its Franco-German social programs until the United States has collapsed under the weight of its weight...
...John Foreyt of the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas has calculated that by the year 223o every American will be obese...
...A fter blacks (or, if you prefer, persons of color) and gays (persons of orientation) and women (persons of gender), it was inevitable that one day fat people would also call for an end to discrimination...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 3
