OK, we've got a so-called obesity crisis in this country (the U.K.), right? It's gotten so bad that the British are no longer allowed to make fun of bouncy-assed Americans because they're now well on their way to waddling—as opposed to walking—themselves. They've caught the couch-potato bug too.We hear, nearly every day, about proposals to ban junk-food advertisements and that obesity-related health issues take up nine percent of our public health care budget. It is reckoned that 14 million people in this nation will be obese by 2010. And, as we've recently heard, obesity causes cancer.
Still with me?
So get a load of this particular madness: It was reported in today's The Daily Telegraph, in a fluff article entitled "The look of love," that smiling faces are more attractive than neutral or scowling faces. Well, bend me over and call me Doris, I wonder how much public money went into that study? I'm not much for smiling myself, but then I'm not looking to attract people to me. As far as I'm concerned, people are like flies—I like it very much when they keep their distance from me.
But, in a sidebar to the article, the researcher, Dr. Ben Jones from the College of Life Sciences at the Univeristy of Aberdeen, also wrote "In a hunter-gatherer society, where size is a signal that a person is successful, being overweight is a turn-on."
Say what?!
Being overweight is a turn-on? So why are so many women starving themselves in an attempt to achieve weight loss? Why are teenaged boys nearly just as prone to anorexia or bulimia as girls are? Why is British society—or the British media anyway—creating such a fuss over an obesity time-bomb that's about to explode on this island?
But then, Dr. Jones works in Scotland, one of the fattest areas on the planet, a place where people scoff deep-fried Mars bars and haggis like it's all going to be shipped overseas tomorrow for Americans to gorge themselves on.
Nevertheless, I would like to ask Dr. Ben Jones one question: What millennium is he living in? Hunter-gatherer society? The only people who hunt these days are toothless, monosyllabic rednecks who are as much of a danger to road signs as they are to animals, and those who gather are pack-rats. There is no—I repeat, no—environmental, physical or societal reason to be overweight at this point in the history of the human species. There just isn't.
Want to talk "signals of success?" What better feeling of accomplishment can a person feel from shedding 20 pounds or more? I ask you.
As for the overweight being attractive or a turn-on, suffice to say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.
But if someone ever tells me that I should gain weight to embolden my powers of attraction, they're going to get one of my running sneakers shoved down their esophagus.
2 comments:
What kind of crackpot study showed an increase of attraction with obesity? I wonder who was included in this study.
This whole govt regulated crackdown on obesity bugs. If people want to gorge themselves with food it's their choice. And if they have a heart attack, don't use tax funds to revive them. It's that simple.
Exactly! If someone wants to eat a large fry-up for breakfast, eat McCrap for lunch and have a pizza for dinner every single night of their lives, and never get any exercise, then hey, it's their life, their body. They can do as they please.
But I dearly hope they don't think for one moment that I or anyone else should pay more tax into the public health care coffers to cover the multitude of problems they'll soon encounter.
In fact, it should be the other way around. If someone refuses to lose weight in order to be healthy/healthier, then they should pay a surcharge for all doctor visits and hospital stays. The same should also apply to smokers who refuse to quit, alchies who won't cut their drinking, and diabetics who won't take their meds. Slap a surcharge on all of them, but don't increase the tax I have to pay to help treat the lugheads!
*phew!* Off my soap-box now ...!
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