I’m not Skinny, You’re Fat! The Politically Incorrect Diet Book

................................. Man Pointing by Alberto Giacometti

[This an excerpt from a draft of a book I wrote in 1998]


Introduction

Call me Ectomorph. My Popu used to say that I was “Tin. Tin like a tootpick.” He serenaded me at meals, “Eat totala, eat!” The other three grandparents weren’t much better. Each engaged in the same battle cry of their ancestors, “EAT!” These 19h Century Europeans knew the value of fat. They were intolerant of me, a skinny kid who, transported to the Russia of their youth, might not survive the winter. “If only he were chubbier, he’d be alive today.” Of course the Bronx of the 1950’s was a harbinger of the 1960’s urban strife and poverty, but famine was never a real issue. So I grew up with guilt imposed by ancestral fears. Sounds more like Catholicism than my native Judaism.

Now at age 44 I’m still a mutant, at least by our cultural norms. Traveling through America, I sometimes feel like Gulliver in the land of giants. Last summer my daughter (she’s skinny too) and I visited Augusta, Maine. The local population is, well, how should I say it? Obese. The back of a pick up truck is a perfect fit for the average woman, 4x4. Now unlike us skinny people, these folks aren’t malevolent or misanthropic. So I know they meant no harm when they lifted their faces out of bacon cheeseburgers to think, “Two Jews out of the concentration camps.” But this was genuine concern, not anti-Semitism. I’m sure they honestly believe that a six-foot man weighing 145 pounds needs hospitalization. In fact, it’s a frequently held belief that being overweight is healthy because if you go to the hospital and lose weight, you’ll survive. Of course, being overweight guarantees your trip to the hospital, if you’re lucky.

The self-help industry focuses attention on making fat people feel good about them selves. Where does that leave me? Well, the Surgeon General’s height and weight charts now offer some solace, some justification for my existence. Back in the 1960’s I was off the charts. But since then, the charts have been adjusted several times so I now have the government’s blessing of normalcy. Paradoxically, while everyone grew fatter, the charts grew slender so more of the population is now off the charts. Continued at blogowitz-unabridged