IN WHICH I HAVE A BAD FATTITUDE.
For some time now, ever since the dawn of the self-help movement in the Seventies, it has been fashionable to worship a new deity on the block, Self-Esteem. That which was denied us boomers by our often petrified, repressed and distant parents, is now the cornerstone for raising an “empowered” child. Kids born in the last thirty years enjoy the constant stroking of helicopter, “friend” parents who assure the child will never experience even the most minor disappointment.
For example, a school chess tournament features 29 trophies. Now, apparently, 29th place is something to celebrate. What happened to the usual top three or four places? But that isn’t even as absurd as sports events, where every team member gets a participation trophy! A trophy for simply showing up! When did actual accomplishment become so devalued?
It’s all part of the current Cult of Entitlement, and I’m not a fan. I don’t believe for a second it empowers, but disables. Of course, I preach Self-Esteem, but never without a nod to its companion, Reality Check. And so, at the risk of tredding into vehemently non-PC territory, I assert obesity is neither beautiful nor something glorious to be extolled as “self-acceptance.”
Obviously, self-love can extend to loving oneself at any weight. But I’m not sure I buy that all “happy” fat people always believe their own hype. I’ve been there, and I didn’t like the way I looked or the unhealthy way I felt — arthritis and breathlessness did not feel hot. It seems to me, many of the obese are simply rationalizing their way to eating whatever they want; they have given up and are making the easy choice to not address a very, very challenging food addiction.
For my part, though I have to fight temptation and old patterns just as hard as every other person with an eating disorder, I’ve been ready to trade my passion for pastries, my weakness, to the masculine délice I crave even more. There’s no longer any competition between cookies, doughnuts, or danish and the sizzling hot buns which are my binge of choice. Plus, in that meal of male, I’m burning calories and in the most entertaining way possible.
Sadly, there just doesn’t seem to be any way around it. Once, at my highest weight, in a chic French cafe, I sat next to Hugh Grant and his fiancée at the time, the svelte Jemima Khan. I was mortified when Hugh glanced over to see me lustily scarfing down a crème brulée, which he himself had ordered. My dinner companions noted that Jemima did not have crème brulée, from which we drew a hard and fast corollary: You can have Hugh Grant, or you can have crème brulée, but you cannot have Hugh Grant and crème brulée.
Let’s face it: a surfeit of fat physically broadcasts imbalance and poor health, and most of us are never going to look or feel hot, no matter how many affirmations we recite to accept it. The ancient Greek idea that beauty resides in balance resonates with most of us — our brains are wired to see beauty in balance in any given context: art, gardens, clothing, visual design of any kind. Balance as an indication of health, moreover, is key to the beauty requisite to attracting the opposite sex. The hot physical characteristics which ignite sexual attraction spring from the biological level, in order to perpetuate the species.
In a way, it makes sense that in America — where people win trophies for eating contests, anyway (How sick is that in a starving world?) — and where mediocrity is rewarded and standards have plunged to below sea level — we’ve decreed “Big Is Beautiful.”
But what about those who face reality, the fit and balanced ones who reach in to make the hard choices, who grit and bear the pressure of tough-loving themselves?
Well, it takes one to three billion years of 725,000 pounds of pressure per square inch to make a diamond.
We’ve got this.
Yours truly,
