Wake Up, Fat Americans

Surely this is not what God intended.

This evening I had an alarming and disturbing experience: I saw, as if for the first time, just how fat most Americans are. My husband and I had gone to see comedienne Joan Rivers perform at the local concert hall, the Merrill Auditorium. The place was packed, and I do mean packed: at least two-thirds of the audience was hugely obese. I'd never seen so many bad bodies collected in one place, including at all my old Weight Watchers meetings. It was like being in a circus sideshow tent, or maybe a bad dream that wouldn't quit.

Everywhere we looked, fat people were waddling up and down the aisles, struggling to squash their ample backsides into their seats. The hefty guy wedged in next to Mitch literally spilled over onto him; luckily the seat next to mine was unclaimed, so we moved over and Mitch was not suffocated to death.

Just when I thought I might be imagining it, a grossly overweight woman approached a seat nearby and discovered she simply could not fit into it. She then waddled over to complain to a group of tubby ushers and, after a heated conversation, waddled out before the curtain went up. I mean really, what did she expect could be done? It's tough to get a carpenter on such short notice, and it is the start of a weekend, after all.

The theater's seats seemed tiny, so I did a little research when I got home and learned that the Merrill was built in 1911, when the average woman was 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 133 pounds. Today the average woman is still 5 feet 4 inches tall, but now she weighs 165 pounds. I'm glad to say I am not average, but tonight I wore a pair of slacks that were way too tight that I hadn't worn since they'd been way too loose. I was uncomfortable all evening, making me realize once again that all those "fat acceptance" people are lying to themselves. Besides being unhealthy, unattractive, unsavory and downright gross, being fat feels bad. And by the way, Joan Rivers was a hoot, and at 80 years old, quite trim and in great shape!