Or, rather, let's talk, constructively and sensibly, about the thorny issue of weight. Female weight to be precise. I've lately been the subject of vitriolic spewings by, one may hazard a guess, largely uneducated individuals claiming that "to be overweight is to be unhealthy".
This rather simplistic viewpoint is, in my view, vastly overstated. To begin with, who or what is the all-powerful oracle on what exactly constitutes being overweight? That oft-touted beacon of authority, the body mass index is flawed in the extreme, owing to the rather obvious fact that it doesn't provide any distinction between fat, muscle, organs or water for its primary data. It's starting from a nonsensical point.
The health profession, then? Perhaps they can offer a realistic and sensible view on the matter. My own GP readily admits that there are such wide-ranging differences of opinion among even a small group of her peers that, at either ends of the spectrum I should weigh somewhere between a stone and four stones less than I do now. Hmm, no real precise answers there either.
The key word here is "unhealthy". Forget "fat" in its entirety - just for a moment. The reason so many people appear to have an issue with large women is because it's repeatedly promoted as being bad for your health. Here's the news: it's a cover-up. A convenient, thinly-veiled method of vilifying those who carry more weight than is deemed acceptable in our image-obsessed society.
Larger women who lose weight, then put some of it back on, then lose it again are often described as "battling" or "struggling" against the devilish machinations of their own bodies, as though they have have no control whatsoever. How many times has Oprah Winfrey - a woman whose life is one of towering achievements in the face of many an obstacle - been subjected to the indignity of scrutiny over her weight?
Of course, what we're really "battling" is the notion that in order to be considered attractive, worthy or even half-way human, women must run the gauntlet of public interest in our weight until we can run no more and either a) emerge, triumphant at the finish line having shed our ugly excess, or b) died from the rigours of maintaining a gamut of voracious eating disorders or dysmorphic conditions which render us incapable of sentient reasoning.
It's not the fat on our bodies that's unhealthy but the insidious creep of strangling unacceptability which comes from being overweight. Far more dangerous than any amount of crash diets, slimming pills, gastric bands or liposuction is that little voice in the back of our heads whispering "You'd be happier, more successful, more confident, less negative, prettier, nicer, more likely to win the lottery if only you weren't so fat".
Clearly that little voice is massively under-informed when it comes to lottery winners, because many are actually quite fat, but the voice will use all manner of persuasion to get a rise out of us.
I don't buy celebrity slag-rag magazines, or watch very much TV, but I do have a terrible habit of trawling gossip pages on the internet, looking at photographs of famous and not-so-famous people for whom weight is not only a daily concern, but a career-breaking, deal-making reality: literally their weight may determine whether or not they really do eat, ever again.
Most often weight is the crux of a story, with a headline geared towards elevating the image of the subject to the dizzy heights of tabloid adulation, or knocking it straight into the nearest ice-cream parlour for a litre of something liable to put ten pounds on their hips before they've even paid the bill.
It's unlikely, however, that any one of these people could be described as "unhealthy". They all do more exercise in a single day than Daly Thompson did in his entire career. We know this because they're often photographed coming out of a gym, sweaty and forlorn-looking with that expression that says "Yes, I know the next story about me will be something along the lines of how I battle with my weight and have to go to the gym because otherwise I'll put on seven stone overnight".
No celebrity in Christendom can be honestly be described as fat. Not truly. At least not the ones with whom the media is so scarily obsessed that they print fourteen photographs of them in the same fucking dress in the space of one "news" item.
Real people, however (y'know, us mortals for whom life isn't a constant round of gym sessions, red carpet events and trying not to be photographed exiting a public lavatory holding a used tampon at arm's length in desperate search of a bin), well, I guess we might be a little bit behind on the macrobiotic-drink-your-own-wee diet of purity, but we're not all fast-food munching sofa-hounds who get out of breath trying to get the last packet of prawn cocktail out of the Walkers multi-pack.
So, it's with a little bit of pride that I can say this: Yes, I might be F.A.T. but I'm not unhealthy and if you confuse the two ever again, I'm going to come round your house and sit on you until you really understand that very important distinction.
This rather simplistic viewpoint is, in my view, vastly overstated. To begin with, who or what is the all-powerful oracle on what exactly constitutes being overweight? That oft-touted beacon of authority, the body mass index is flawed in the extreme, owing to the rather obvious fact that it doesn't provide any distinction between fat, muscle, organs or water for its primary data. It's starting from a nonsensical point.
The health profession, then? Perhaps they can offer a realistic and sensible view on the matter. My own GP readily admits that there are such wide-ranging differences of opinion among even a small group of her peers that, at either ends of the spectrum I should weigh somewhere between a stone and four stones less than I do now. Hmm, no real precise answers there either.
The key word here is "unhealthy". Forget "fat" in its entirety - just for a moment. The reason so many people appear to have an issue with large women is because it's repeatedly promoted as being bad for your health. Here's the news: it's a cover-up. A convenient, thinly-veiled method of vilifying those who carry more weight than is deemed acceptable in our image-obsessed society.
Larger women who lose weight, then put some of it back on, then lose it again are often described as "battling" or "struggling" against the devilish machinations of their own bodies, as though they have have no control whatsoever. How many times has Oprah Winfrey - a woman whose life is one of towering achievements in the face of many an obstacle - been subjected to the indignity of scrutiny over her weight?
Of course, what we're really "battling" is the notion that in order to be considered attractive, worthy or even half-way human, women must run the gauntlet of public interest in our weight until we can run no more and either a) emerge, triumphant at the finish line having shed our ugly excess, or b) died from the rigours of maintaining a gamut of voracious eating disorders or dysmorphic conditions which render us incapable of sentient reasoning.
It's not the fat on our bodies that's unhealthy but the insidious creep of strangling unacceptability which comes from being overweight. Far more dangerous than any amount of crash diets, slimming pills, gastric bands or liposuction is that little voice in the back of our heads whispering "You'd be happier, more successful, more confident, less negative, prettier, nicer, more likely to win the lottery if only you weren't so fat".
Clearly that little voice is massively under-informed when it comes to lottery winners, because many are actually quite fat, but the voice will use all manner of persuasion to get a rise out of us.
I don't buy celebrity slag-rag magazines, or watch very much TV, but I do have a terrible habit of trawling gossip pages on the internet, looking at photographs of famous and not-so-famous people for whom weight is not only a daily concern, but a career-breaking, deal-making reality: literally their weight may determine whether or not they really do eat, ever again.
Most often weight is the crux of a story, with a headline geared towards elevating the image of the subject to the dizzy heights of tabloid adulation, or knocking it straight into the nearest ice-cream parlour for a litre of something liable to put ten pounds on their hips before they've even paid the bill.
It's unlikely, however, that any one of these people could be described as "unhealthy". They all do more exercise in a single day than Daly Thompson did in his entire career. We know this because they're often photographed coming out of a gym, sweaty and forlorn-looking with that expression that says "Yes, I know the next story about me will be something along the lines of how I battle with my weight and have to go to the gym because otherwise I'll put on seven stone overnight".
No celebrity in Christendom can be honestly be described as fat. Not truly. At least not the ones with whom the media is so scarily obsessed that they print fourteen photographs of them in the same fucking dress in the space of one "news" item.
Real people, however (y'know, us mortals for whom life isn't a constant round of gym sessions, red carpet events and trying not to be photographed exiting a public lavatory holding a used tampon at arm's length in desperate search of a bin), well, I guess we might be a little bit behind on the macrobiotic-drink-your-own-wee diet of purity, but we're not all fast-food munching sofa-hounds who get out of breath trying to get the last packet of prawn cocktail out of the Walkers multi-pack.
So, it's with a little bit of pride that I can say this: Yes, I might be F.A.T. but I'm not unhealthy and if you confuse the two ever again, I'm going to come round your house and sit on you until you really understand that very important distinction.
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