Friday, July 27, 2007
Who's Your Fat Friend?
So, fat friends make you fat. A friend becoming obese increases your own chances of becoming obese by 57 per cent. One fattens oneself to belong, I suppose; it would be both lonely and visually grotesque to be the skinny one in a crowd of wobbling porkers as they contentedly compared the ripples that spread across their flesh with each passing breath of wind. In fact, Beau Brummell knew this intuitively. He fell out with the Prince Regent who, subsequently, cut him during the introductions at a ball. Brummell turned to Lord Alvanley, who had been greeted by the Prince, and said, 'Alvanley, who's your fat friend?' A fat friend was a stylistic disaster and now we know he would be contagious. Nige and I are, it goes without saying, rake-like in the extreme. But he's currently in Wales, so anything might happen.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
i must quote The Silence of the Lambs, where Starling goes to what turns out to be Buffalo Bill's house, and asks about the first murder victim:
ReplyDeleteStarling: Did you know Frederica Bimmel?
Buffalo Bill: No...oh wait, was she a great big fat person?
In addition to Ted Levine's inexplicably weird voice, the casualness of his line is extremely amusing, as he genuinely doesn't seem to mean 'great big fat person' as an insult.
This study may throw up a whole new perspective on relationships in history. It may help us to identify true and feigned friendships. What about Henry VIII's advisors ? They appear so thin (or is that more BBC kidology ? Well, where do you get your history from ?). Did they just pretend to be friends with Henry after he sacked the Pope ? Was the rake-like Thomas More's stand against Henry more about fat than principle ? Then there's Charles 1 and Oliver C. Charlie could walk through a 6" gap in an open door; Ollie struggled to get into his armour; no wonder they couldn't be mates. It may also explain Hitler's differing relationships with Goebbels and Goering (thinny and fatty) and that Italian with the funny hat (fatty). And what about the sometimes fractious relationship between Churchill (fatty) and Roosevelt (thinny) ? And then there's Churchill and Stalin (a lot of 'friendly' poundage there). Most intriguing of all: Blair and Prescott, forever claiming to be best mates. Based on this evidence, I don't think so.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they were and it was only Carol Caplan that saved Tony from porkdom.
ReplyDeleteYou may enjoy my theory of Fat Flotation in which I suggest it is the dieters who are making us fat.
ReplyDeletewww.womanofexperience.blogspot.com
regards
Ms R