Fat girls

Obesity. There’s a fat word. That big round ‘Ooh’ at the beginning, and then the ‘bee’ which actually looks like the sort of people the word is describing in profile. The only way the word could better describe the condition was if it was longer and had an ‘oom-pah’ sound in the middle of it. In reality, this is not needed, as most people using the term ‘Obese’ follow through with the silent action of puffing their cheeks out like a startled fish and holding their hands two feet from their hips.

The newspapers recently made much of a decision by some school somewhere (I suspect the journalist was little better informed than I) to ensure that the word ‘Obese’ did not appear on any kids’ school report. This is, to a certain extent, a sensible move. After all, any parent irresponsible enough to let their kid get so fat that his size is appearing on a school report is unlikely to know what a word means; so better leave it at ‘tubby’ and move on. The question might well be; ‘what is a reference to the size of little Johnny’s arse doing on a school report in the first place?’.

Only two subjects have any real reason for addressing the subject, the first is physical fitness, where, let’s face it, anyone unable to commit themselves to playing football in blizzards, go into crunching rugby tackles with kids twice their size and three times their age, get to the top of the rope in the gym in under five seconds and achieve marksman standards of flicking arse with a wet towel is considered a ulist.

The second subject is home economics, where the report might explain that eating everyone else’s homework is unacceptable.

Why is size an issue? Unless the kid is actually so fat that his classmates can’t see round him to see the blackboard, or his mass has become a nuisance by attracting small objects into his orbit, then I don’t think a school report is the right place to inform parents that their kid is a fattie. This will already have been done in the caring environment of the school playground, where a (wide) circle of taunting kids will be chanting ‘porker’ around some quivering wretch. What the school, the parents and the fattie himself are unaware of is that these taunting kids are actually sponsored by the local corner shop in the sure knowledge that the kid will comfort eat his way through a dozen curlywurleys to get over this, thus assuring a healthy profit for the week.

A bigger problem than fat kids are fat adults. That’s because, with fat adults, there’s no chanting circle of evil sods to tell you you’re fat – unless you’re a fat bloke. That leaves the problem of fat girls, where, without honest friends, the only signs of your size being a problem are the lack of a boyfriend and the fact you own all of ‘Sex and the City’ on VHS and DVD. And a three figure weekly grocery bill.

That’s because, unlike fat kids and their school reports, taunting and ritual humiliation by sadistic gym teachers, nobody is telling fat people that they are fat anymore. Fat people are being told that being fat is normal. This has led to fat girls dressing like thin girls…with disastrous results. It used to be that to be an evil genius, you had to live in an undersea volcano base and plot to destroy New York with a giant robot or something. Now to be an evil genius all you need to do is design hipster jeans for fat girls. These, worn in combination with a tee shirt, are truly a sight to behold.

You want to know when you’re fat? It’s when people start using your arse as a landmark; ‘yes, carry on, take a left at the Red Lion, then a right at that girl’s arse, then you can’t miss it’. Oddly, this means that fat people are more useful than thin people, who are mainly used as warnings of what happens when you go vegetarian.

Worried you’re fat? Try Google Earth. On it? Start slimming. Fatty.