On Being Fat

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 377, 11 June 1928, Page 5

On Being Fat

Two-Chins Has Her Say

The fat girl chuckled over her two chins, snuggled deeper into the chair, and helped herself to her third cake piled with cream. There was a twinkle in her eyes, and a humorous twist to her mouth, between her inroads on the cake she told her cheerful tale to a couple of plank-like companions who sipped weak tea and toyed with dry biscuits. “I don’t know why you make such a fuss about being fat,” she said. “You get much more irritable than I do, and don’t seem to enjoy any more fun in life because you halfstarve yourselves to he thin. Curves are much prettier than angles, anyway.

“Look at me. I never worry, .1 never hurry. I haven’t got a lean and hungry look, and I can laugh without wondering whether I’ll develop lines on my face. I’m quite well aware that we fat women sometimes provide the comic relief of life, but isn’t that better than looking on the world with a soured and bitter expression? “I’m all for the fat and jolly folk. Imagine a pinched Pickwick, for instance. Perish the thought! Thin people look upon fat people with a certain degree of pity, as if a little sympathy were asked on the score of weight. Secretly the lean ones offer up a silent prayer to be delivered from any extra ounces, and immediately put another liquid day into the diet.

Told Over Cream Cakes

“Thin people are so busy worrying over their weight and the food they mustn’t eat, that they miss a good deal of natural happiness in life. They lose all sense of comfort because comfort spells another ounce. They pursue slimness so desperately that many of them become scraggy in the struggle. “We fat people don’t ask for any commiseration. Most of us, at any rate. We have a contentment that few people know. We can smile serenely and gurgle at any foolishness which cames along. We have a happy philosophy of life which is envied by many, and we neither worry over an addition of a pound of flesh nor joy over the loss of a stone. “Fair, fat and forty is looked upon as something too dreadful to contemplate. I consider it an ideal to be striven for. Here goes.” And she pounced upon another cream cake.