John Tierney has a report on advances in weight loss pills and wonders, "if anyone could take a pill to be thin, how many people would want to? Would being 'overweight' lose its stigma?" By which I suppose he means people care about being skinny because not everyone can be, but take away the uniqueness angle and skinny is as skinny does. But how does that cause being overweight to "lose stigma?" It's not as if being hefty is going to take on the old positive qualities of skinny. It won't look like it takes hard work, or lots of money, or tons of free time. It will just look like someone isn't following the fashion for the pill. The pill might make it easy to be skinny, but it won’t change our food supply. Our society will still be awash in cheap calories. It won’t make it hard to put on weight. Unless of course you live in a totalitarian evil brave new world where all are forced to take the pill, in which case I could envision a certain revolutionary chic to fat.
And all that is if you agree with the underlying premise that skinny is a status marker because it looks like it takes hard work and money (gyms, trainers, organic food, weight loss books by the dozen), the antithesis of an easy pill. But I'm not sure I agree even with this. Who cares if skinny looks easy? My suspicion is people are reactive in terms of what they think looks nice. Fashion set by money is reactive to old negative stereotypes of old fashions set by money. In other words, you could chart it through visual history. I don’t know what the market for art history books is, but surely it doesn’t hold a candle to the market for weight loss books. This leads me to this week’s get-rich-quick scheme: an art history book of fat vs. thin!
1 comment:
I'd call it "Rubens vs. Giacometti"
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