A few years ago, while I chatted with a roomful of twenty-somethings at a party, a tubby acquaintance thundered into the kitchen. Not long after he bellowed a “hello,” he gestured at my short and slender frame and remarked, “Dude, you're nothing but skin and bones! Why don't you EAT more?”
The others were all heavier than me yet lighter than him, and they let out chuckles as my heckler's cheeks quaked with laughter. I assessed the situation and set my beer onto the counter-top.
“Point taken. But while we're on the subject of weight, have you ever considered eating LESS?”
My retort was met by an uneasy silence. Nobody laughed. Half of the suddenly stone-faced party-goers fled to the basement. The other half glared at me and shook their heads disapprovingly. And the overweight guy reeled back a step and stared at me as though I had just wiped my ass with a love letter he wrote to Little Debbie.
The shindig lost its appeal after that exchange, but I escaped without being sat on or sumo-splashed. Plus I learned a vital lesson about the Fat/ Skinny Double-Standard.
Chubby adults are allowed to poke fun at the waistlines of slim adults, but it's considered taboo for us to mock their flab—even if our jabs are done sheerly in retaliation. For grownups who have supposedly matured past the verbal cruelties of the playground, it's harmless to tell a beanpole to gain weight, but it's nasty to tell a fatso to lose weight—which is puzzling to me, since obesity is much more harmful and common than anorexia in America. Skinny people, or ectomorphs, get mocked in-person as well as when they're not present to defend themselves. Fat people, or endomorphs, get mocked strictly when they are out of earshot. The most genetically privileged of the three basic body-types, the athletic and muscular mesomorphs, are probably the ones who established these cultural norms.
And I'm calling bullshit on blobs, slobs, jocks, and cheerleaders alike.
Concerning endomorphs, to recall that tip about food intake I received earlier on, I'm eager to dismiss all dietary advice that comes from a guy who wads chicken McNuggets between the patties of his Big Macs.
“Eat more, eh? You want me to gorge fatty foods and sweets so that I can someday know the wonders of having my body overrun by lumps of flabby flesh...just so I can be more like YOU? Na. I'm good.”
In regard to mesomorphs, they tend to get away with more crimes of cruelty and ignorance than their corporal counterparts. They typically don't have to work as hard to refine their morals and intellects. Mesomorphs can behave this way because of their physical attractiveness. Whether good or evil, smart or stupid, a whole lot of people still fantasize about having sex with them. And mesomorphs fully realize this. All mesomorphs would have to do to exterminate everyone else is lure longing and unsuspecting blimps and pencil-necks into their bedrooms, where Calvin Klein models and sorority sisters would hide in the darkness, poised to ambush with baseball bats until, one-by-one, they'd rid the world of endomorphs and ectomorphs.
That hasn't happened—not yet, at least—and so I suppose I'm left with a little bit of faith in humanity, the mesomorphs included.
Mesomorphs aren't all that bad, thankfully, but they nonetheless have too much power over the rest of us simply because they're good-looking.
What's more, why did those aforementioned party-goers with more idyllic frames show sympathy for the plump guy when he was insulted when, prior to that, they openly laughed at me when I was verbally reduced to “nothing but skin and bones”? If we the two of us embodied the extremes of metabolism, why is an anti-skinny remark acceptable while anti-fat retort is insensitive?
First off, America has an anorexia problem, but we have an obesity EPIDEMIC. Even though mesomorphs will always command the most attention and power, the population of endomorphs is swelling like so many elastic-worn waistbands. Ectomorphs have become the underdogs to both the bloated majority and the well-built elite. And if the movie The Karate Kid taught us something other than that cleaning techniques can translate to kicking some serious ass, it's that underdogs are common targets for bullies.
That explains part of it, but in personal interactions, why do mesomorphs so often display more tact and regard for endomorphs than ectomorphs? For mesomorphic men, I think it's because stout guys are more beneficial than lean guys in the two foremost competitions of men: war and sports. Whether they serve as expansive body-shields in battle or offensive linemen in football, soldiers and athletes can get some use out of the obese. It's a different matter with elfish physiques, however. My skinny brethren are capable of inventing deadlier weapons and conceiving military strategies. We can also draw-up successful game-plans and win Boston Marathons. (The ectomorphs from Kenya, at least.) But on a more tangible level, on landscapes packed with bodies, mesomorphs tend to brand us as the chickenshit medic from Saving Private Ryan, or the nervous kicker who choked in crunch-time and destroyed all hopes the Buffalo Bills had of ever winning a Super Bowl. A little bit of fat helps fuel the competitive fire of mesomorphs, but the value of male ectomorphs is stocked exclusively in our minds. To them, we're food for thought in a world where ideas have never kept anyone from starving.
It gets trickier for me to assess or condemn mesomorphic women for their dealings with their thinner kind. More pressure is put on women to be thin—by men, mass media, and themselves. Guys are sometimes encouraged rather than chided for packing on a few pounds to obtain a stout and endearing “Teddy Bear” look, but women rarely get that luxury. In our culture, plus-sized models and actresses are in less demand than those starry-eyed willows on the cover of Cosmopolitan who might as well be captioned: “Doesn't this bitch make you feel FAT?!”
I'm not stating that this is fair. It's not. But neither is the Fat/ Skinny Double Standard.
Returning to that conundrum: mesomorphic women are kinder to the heavy than the slender (face-to-face) because the latter group manifests as a threat. The fiercest competitive drive of the fairer but by no means angelic sex is the pursuit of true romance (and all that blossoms from it). For athletically built, medium-sized women, there is no need to talk too much trash to the easiest opponents during manhunt season...but that skinny skank Sheila could be a tough competitor in the playoffs.
I'm not immune to the gender double-standard when it comes to body shapes. The last time I spent most of the day shirtless, a plus-sized and cute woman from my group of campers needled me for being so thin. She demanded to know my weight. Without asking for hers, I told her. She disputed my estimate and accused me of fabricating ten pounds. She persisted until I groaned, “I'm so tired of these compliments on my body!” She laughed and shook her head as I walked away smiling. I had to choose between self-defense and submissiveness and I didn't retaliate as I did to the flabby man in the kitchen years ago.
I know exactly what Jack White meant he sang about how hard it's becoming to act like a gentlemen. The rewards for any act of submissiveness are growing scarcer everyday. When I next see that woman, if I have to endure that unoriginal “nothing but skin and bones” line again, I will at the very least reply, “Well, that's a silly overstatement...”
Before I get my thoughts outta here, I'd like to mention that one of my best friends from college was obese. Our eating (and drinking) habits were on par, but our metabolisms dictated that he remained overweight and I remained underweight. We both wrote jokes that were sometimes mean for the school newspaper, but we never wisecracked about each other's physiques. We had a humane truce on the matter, a shared realization that people should feel ashamed for putting so much onus on genetics instead of “minor things” like character, morals, and choices.
I'll always treasure what that wonderful endomorph said to me about my body: Not a damn thing.
