Thursday 7 July 2005

Pic of the day: Unnatural selection! "Generally boys like bigger breasts, hips and in this case head disks." From the anime Rizelmine.

Trade Day

Trade Day was late in Kristiansand this year. It is on the first Thursday of July, but this year July began on a Friday. So I had read about it in several of my year-ago entries through the week. The one feature that seemed to be repeated in those entries was the presence of chubby women, lots of them, with big backsides. But this year as I walked along the main street looking, there were amazingly few of those. Instead, the fashion statement of the year seems to be pregnancy. There were lots and lots of pregnant women.

I guess this makes sense in an evolutionary perspective. I mean, the reason why they save up fat on their thights and hips is to have a reserve during pregnancy and lactation. Of course, these days food is so plentiful that many women are fatter after childbirth than they were before the conceived. And even the hungry babies don't make much of an impact. Then again, most women stop breastfeeding when the babies start to pick up some real appetite. If they had kept it up for a couple more years, they would surely lose some weight. They might look a bit strange in the chest region afterwards though, as seen in pictures from stone age tribes. Like, dangling.

Be that as it may, somehow I doubt that the real explanation here is that the men have collectively realized that a fat backside is nature's way of saying "let's have kids!". It is more likely socio-economic forces at work. More's the pity. It would have been kinda cool to see evolution in action like that. Survival of the fattest!