Monday 7 June 2004

Pic of the day: A shapeless woman being sacrificed to the powers of darkness, if not for the timely intervention of the superhero known as The Valiant Winterlord. (Screenshot from City of Heroes.) You don't want this to happen to you, right? So read on ...

Ever fatter women

For years, Norwegian women have lagged behind the menfolk and also most of their European sisters in putting on weight. (I will not even compare them with the Americans in this matter.) Well, our women are still behind, but those behinds are growing bigger fast.

I have noticed it for the last couple years, but this summer it really stands out. That is to say, the butts stand out. (People can still keep them from actively sagging, at least with clothes on, and that's the only time I see them. Others may not be so fortunate.)

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Don't get me wrong, it is natural and positive for a woman to have a well rounded hip area. Women (or more exactly people with plenty of female hormones) will naturally store most of their extra fat on their hips, buttocks and thighs, where it is very hard to use unless you're lactating. In contrast, masculine hormones cause excess fat to converge on the kidneys and guts, where it can easily return to the bloodstream to fuel our larger muscle mass in times of need. So it is natural for a woman to have a larger backside than a man; it is feminine and therefore somewhat attractive to men who prefer women. (Although not quite as foolproof as breasts, but let us not go there today.)

Lower-body fat is basically harmless, so it's OK to have a big soft rear. (Also they are great fun for boys to play with ... Although not as much fun as City of Heroes. Also you can play City of Heroes every day for $15 a month. But that's all beside the point.)

However, as the posterior fat reservoirs approach full status, the body starts distributing more and more fat to the guts and a subcutaneous (under the skin) layer all over the body. Keep it up and you will eventually change status from "feminine" to "shapeless blob". The point at which this starts to change varies from family to family, sometimes even from person to person within the family. But in no case is there any sudden reduction in appetite or increase in desire for physical activity to mark the transition. Therefore a young woman with a truly large rear is often a sign of a future older woman with a large everything. Time to put on the brakes.

(Please bear in mind that there is very little connection between a woman's estimate of body size and reality. Furthermore women will lie to one another without blinking in such matters. Please use objective measures such as clothes sizes.)

In fact, part of the increase in visible body fat could be the gradual aging of the population. While Norwegian women have more children than the average European, they are still below the magical 2.1 child per woman needed to keep up the population without import. Since people live longer and there are fewer young ones, there are obviously more older ones. "Older" is a relative concept, but may be enough to explain much of the recent change in the fat/pavement proportion. Year by year you grow slowly fatter (it mostly happens around Xmas), but one year you finally run out of normal clothes to dress your bulk in. Changing to "jogging" clothes (as if you could ever again move at that speed without the aid of bees) will certainly help get you noticed. But even in more traditional textiles, such as some variant of denim jeans, there is some subtle, blurry line you cross that takes you from "large" which is within the bounds of normalcy to "huge" which is not.

It is these people who have become more plentiful in the very recent years. The ones that make me stop, turn around and try to verify that I'm not hallucinating. (What would I do if I discovered that I was indeed hallucinating about women with double-sized behinds? That's a good question. Any more questions?) These people are still not anything near a majority, but the sightings have risen from once a fortnight to every other day or so, perhaps more. There are also more men whose guts should, according to the laws of gravity, fall out and spill on the pavement. They must have enviable gut muscles to hold the mass in place! The number of grossly obese shapeless blobs is pretty much constant, and they are all women. The men are probably dead, or at least not getting out of the door. Women are simply more resilient. You can fatten them till you barely see the eyes, and they will keep on ticking for a long time yet. But you probably shouldn't do that.

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I repeat my earlier theory that obesity would be less of a problems if everyone joined Jehovah's Witnesses, because they don't celebrate Xmas and that's when you put on those pounds. Also there would presumably be no wars, since the Witnesses are all pacifists. Fat and war both look a lot more attractive before you get caught up in them. Which of them causes the most suffering and death, I don't know. Probably some UN office has the statistics on it. But I still conclude: "Make cakes, not war" because even a little war is a dangerous thing, but a little fat can be pretty good.

And please don't take this entry as an endorsement of the fashion designers' sick, twisted fantasies. I maintain that some of them should be arrested for the common good.