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"If
I ate less, I'd lose weight. But I don't, because I love
food."
Despite
the propaganda of 10,000 suburban strip-mall tae kwon do
"academies," the simple truth is that victory in a fight
is largely a matter of inertia.
Fat
guys can hold their liquor. Remember
those charts they show you in driver's ed? How much you
can drink is a direct function of how much you weigh.
Fat
guys are particularly well-suited to being passive sex partners.
If you want a man who will make the earth move, a fat guy
is your best candidate.
Have
you considered the possibility that a secret brotherhood
of fat guys has engineered what can only be described as
the most effective disinformation campaign in human history?
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I'm a fat guy--always have been. I'm not "big-boned," I don't
"carry it well," and I'm neither "husky" nor "just a little
heavy." There's nothing wrong with any of my glands. I'm not
a victim in any way. I'm a fat guy because I eat too much.
If I ate less, I'd lose weight. But I don't, because I love
food (and I even eat food I don't love, because I love the
mere act of eating). I'm a fat guy, as in I could lose 50
pounds and still be fat, as in I'm 5-foot-10 and 250 very
apparent pounds (plus or minus 10 pounds, depending on what
I ate that day). I'm a fat guy, and I'm not alone.
According to a recent study, 54 percent of American adults
(and 25 percent of children) are overweight--and that figure
is probably skewed downwards by all the people who crash-diet
the week before their annual physicals because they know
they're going to be weighed. We, the fat, are the rapidly
expanding majority. It is the thin who are abnormal.
I enjoy being a fat guy, although I must confess I wouldn't
want to be a fat girl. The societal deck really is stacked
against them (unfairly, I might add, because fat girls are
in many ways superior to skinny ones). But being a fat guy
is great. I've never felt that my weight kept me from getting
a job or a girl or from gaining admittance to a club. And
it has many, many advantages.
Fat guys are strong. Ask any bar owner who hires bouncers,
or anybody who gets in a lot of fights, or any high-school
wrestler. They'll all tell you the same thing: Don't fuck
with fat guys. Despite the propaganda of 10,000 suburban
strip-mall tae kwon do "academies" and health-club self-defense
classes, the simple truth is that victory in a fight is
largely a matter of inertia. "The 300-pound tub-of-lard
beats the 165-pound musclehead every time," says Navy Lt.
Jonathan Shapiro, my brother-in-law and all-around physically
fit tough guy, who spends much of his life recovering from
various exercise-related injuries. "Fat guys kick ass."
In competitive wrestling, if one guy outweighs another
by a few pounds, they put him in a different weight class--the
match wouldn't even be fun. Every fat guy is inherently
strong, but the ultimate weapon is the fat guy who knows
how to fight (a.k.a. the sumo wrestler).
Fat guys aren't as slow as you think, either. I don't have
time to explain all of Newtonian physics to you, but remember
that a body in motion tends to remain in motion. Fat guys
may have trouble turning on a dime, but they can move in
one direction with great alacrity and effectiveness, as
demonstrated repeatedly in every NFL game.
Still, the fat guy is essentially a peaceful creature.
War is for the thin. Fighting requires effort, and minimum
effort is the mantra of the fat guy. Efficiency and economy
of movement are the fat guy's greatest allies. The thin
think nothing of bounding up four flights of stairs, running
to catch a bus or invading a Caribbean nation, but fat guys
plan their days around avoiding these very situations.
But they don't avoid dating. Dating is eating. Nearly every
date centers around a meal, and fat guys are far and away
the best dining companions. They are uninhibited eaters,
they know all the best restaurants and they know how to
cook.
Therefore, fat guys are the best dates.
The thin choose restaurants based on ambience; fat guys
choose restaurants because the food is good. The thin may
know how to operate a grill (badly) and make breakfast (badly),
but every fat guy intuitively knows how to truss a capon,
bake a wedding cake and roast a whole hog.
The fat guy's love life is inextricably linked to his love
of food. For the fat guy, food and sex are two points on
a continuum. No fat guy would ever dream of making a move
on a girl without first feeding her a nice meal--it's just
not done.
And when you're out with a fat guy you don't have to worry
about looking like a pig. You can eat whatever you want,
because nothing makes a fat guy hornier than a girl who
can devour a big steak (although fat guys also appreciate
skinny girls because they represent leftovers). As an aside,
fat guys can hold their liquor. This is a simple biological
fact. Remember those charts they show you in driver's ed?
How much you can drink is a direct function of how much
you weigh.
And who better to bring home to mom than a fat guy? Mothers,
especially immigrant mothers who speak little English and
have yet to be co-opted by American neuroses, love men who
can eat. They (correctly) equate eating prowess with intellect
and potential for success.
The fat guy wages a stealthy seduction. The woman sees
the fat guy as a confidant. She thinks the relationship
is platonic. Eventually, she marries the fat guy. Sound
familiar?
When it comes to sexual prowess, women in the know prefer
fat guys because fat guys are better in bed. The thin and
the fit like to demonstrate their manliness by getting on
top and banging away, but no fat guy in his right mind would
do the equivalent of 100 pushups when he has the opportunity
to lie on his back. Do you know what the odds are of a girl
getting off in the missionary position? If I have to tell
you, you're obviously not a fat guy. But do you know what
the odds are of a girl getting off when she's on top? Pretty
damn good. For every hard-bodied two-pump-chump out there,
there's a fat guy ready to lie back and provide an erect
instrument for as long as need be.
Fat guys are particularly well-suited to being passive
sex partners for fit-and-trim athletic girls who have the
stamina to ride all night. You've seen the couples; now
you know why. If you want a man who will make the earth
move, a fat guy is still your best candidate (see inertia
and Newtonian physics, above).
The best thing is that fat guys sincerely appreciate women
who deign to sleep with them, because every fat guy harbors
the deep-seated fear that he's unattractive. And really,
what many women want (more so even than great sex) is to
be appreciated. Fat guys are particularly appreciative of
fellatio, because it's the ultimate in minimum-effort sex,
even less strenuous than masturbation. And fat guys are
themselves masters of oral sex, because their mouths are
so agile and in such good shape from all that eating.
There was a time in history when, to get respect, you had
to be fat. It meant you were affluent. It meant you were
healthy. Now it's all twisted around: You can never be too
thin or too rich, they say. But while it's possible nowadays
for anybody on food stamps to maintain an impressive body
weight by eating potato chips and Entenmann's chocolate
doughnuts, the fat-as-healthy stereotype is making a comeback--at
least in the gay community--and it's only a matter of time
before straight people catch on.
It's simple: As my friend David, they gayest guy I know,
put it to me, "Everybody knows fat guys don't have AIDS.
In the gay community, fat is in."
I pity the thin. They spend their lives fighting the inevitable
weight gains that come with age, butting heads with their
chubby destinies. When they finally get fat, which they
all do, they become inconsolable. Their spouses and partners,
terrified by this harbinger of what is to come for them,
are likely to up and leave. The formerly thin die miserable
and alone, raging against the injustice that has befallen
them.
The lifelong fat guy experiences no such problems. He's
a rock, a source of stability for all around him. He was
fat as a child and remains fat. He looks no worse in middle
age than at age 20, and therefore his lifetime of fatness
keeps him looking young (plus, it is well known in the dermatological
community that fat equals fewer wrinkles).
I was a fat kid, and I took some flak for it. But now,
as I enter my 30s, all my formerly svelte friends are getting
fat--and I'm having the last laugh. As my long-lost friend
Andy said to me 10 years after we graduated from high school,
"You guys who were fat in high school are the only happy
people at the high-school reunion--we've all gotten fatter;
you look the same."
Now, I'm enjoying my life, whereas my slowly ballooning
friends are consumed by the battle against fat. They climb
pretend stairs, "spin" on pretend bicycles and run for dear
life on treadmills. They deprive themselves of bodily pleasure,
engage in self-indulgent and self-righteous fad dieting
(no meat one month; no carbohydrates the next) and are otherwise
miserable companions. They are particularly insufferable
at the dinner table, because they are driven by an irresistible
impulse to deliver a running commentary on the nutritional
and medical ramifications of every bite they (and I) eat.
Yet, self-righteous though they may be, the joke's on them.
Thinness is an unattainable goal. We've all seen the charts
and tables--you know, the ones that say the "ideal weight"
for a 5-foot-7 man is 138 pounds. Maybe that's what people
weigh in television fantasyland, but, according to Kathryn
Putnam Yarborough, a therapist at the Center for Eating
Disorders at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Md., "Less
than 5 percent of the population, healthfully and genetically,
can expect to achieve the shapes and sizes the media portrays
as ideal. The media holds this unrealistic goal up to us
and suggests that we try to reach it. No wonder so many
men and women are struggling with body-image dissatisfaction."
Western culture's belief that thin is better is a rejection
not only of common sense but also of basic human instinct.
Children and animals (the most anthropologically pure subjects
available) love fat guys. Watch the baby's face light up
when it sees a fat guy. Watch the dog beg for a fat guy's
attention. They understand.
Non-Western cultures, which invariably have less emotional
baggage than ours, revere fat guys. The fat Buddha is worshiped
the world over. Only in self-flagellatory Western religions
are our idols so anorexic. Look how skinny Jesus was. Look
what happened to him.
But, you say, being fat is unhealthy.
The thin see this as the trump card in any discussion of
weight. But even if the statistics are true, even if being
fat is unhealthy, can we really do anything about it?
Despite the $33 billion a year that Americans spend on
weight-loss programs, the Federal Trade Commission reports
that 95 percent of the 50 million Americans who will go
on diets this year will fail. Even better, according to
the Center for Eating Disorders, "33 to 50 percent of these
people gain to a higher weight," which means we're talking
about a serious waste of money.
Although near-constant attention is paid to the health
risks of being fat (the National Institutes of Health says
that "someone who is 40 percent overweight is twice as likely
to die prematurely as an average-weight person," and the
American Heart Association calls obesity a "major risk factor"
in heart disease), the consequences of the war on fat are
largely ignored. Yet the unquestionable harms of eating
disorders and diet-drug abuse surely must be weighed against
the largely speculative harms attributable to weighing more
than the "ideal" weight. For example, the Center for Eating
Disorders' records indicate that 8 million Americans suffer
from anorexia, bulimia and various other disorders--and
20 percent of these people die prematurely.
Moreover, the one statistic glaringly missing from most
mortality studies is quality of life. How much happier is
the person who lives life free of the constant pressure
of negative body image and fad dieting? How many days, months
or even years of life is that happiness worth?
Still, perhaps there is another explanation for the statistics.
Have you considered that the so-called evidence on weight
and mortality has been fabricated? That a secret brotherhood
of fat guys has engineered what can only be described as
the most effective disinformation campaign in human history?
That fat guys want to keep you thin, miserable, afraid and
powerless so they can enjoy the fruits of your labor?
Think about it. Fat guys sit around and eat whatever they
want. Meanwhile, they tamper with the statistics and use
fear of obesity to sap the thin of their energy and will.
They keep the thin exercising and distracted, like rats
in a maze, like gerbils on a Habitrail.
This master plan also includes a carefully cultivated image
that allows fat guys to manipulate the thin into doing their
work. The fat guy sits behind a desk all day, most likely
screwing his secretary, while the secretary's athletic husband
is out fighting fires (fat guys have made it very difficult
for themselves to pass the firefighters test), protecting
democracy (fat guys have arranged it so that the military
will not accept overweight recruits) or otherwise creating
wealth for fat guys to exploit. The fat guy holds the ladder
while the thin ascend, risking life and limb to do the fat
guy's bidding.
Actors are thin; producers are fat. (Most) candidates are
thin; chiefs of staff are fat. The fat guy retreats from
the spotlight, content to be served. Content to rule the
world.
And so, the next time you see a fat guy eating a double
cheeseburger or struggling up a flight of stairs, do not
pity him. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
This article first appeared in Salon.com, and can be
found at www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/10/15/fat_guys/index.html
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