I will only post link

"It is a big change for the 5ft 2in mother, who requires a mobility scooter to go shopping and wears XXXXXXXL.

Last Christmas she feasted on two 25lb turkeys, two maple-glazed hams, 15lbs of potatoes (10lbs roast, 5lbs mashed), five loaves of bread, five pounds of herb stuffing, four pints of gravy, four pints of cranberry dressing and an astonishing 20lbs of vegetables."

If you can stand it read the rest but not if you've just eaten.

BIG BIG GIRL

I am allowed to make remarks about big girls, being built like the proverbial concrete crapper myself.

So walking behind big girl at Westfield watching her tatoos fight across the broad acreage of her naked shoulders had me making remarks in my mind.

Why does anyone wear a white shoestring top with a floaty bottom that covers the big bottom and mixes it with navy blue shoestring bra straps? The top was nice, black pants okay.

For the want of a sleeve on each shoulder, she looked just okay. A bit of posture and a smidgeon of material, she would have been striking.

Her face was lovely and animated. She was obviously quite at home in her body, enough to go with the current fashion and show it all. What I wanted to do was polish the rough diamond and make a gem.

I thought about this after I'd posted and I want to make it clear that I'm not patronising this girl but I felt if she hadn't been dressed in the Britney/Paris/Lohen uniform then she'd have been a walkover in any contest with the skinny models thrown at young girls these days.

Nope, it still hasn't come out right so I'll leave it to you to know what I mean.

BIG, WELL COVERED, ANYTHING BUT FAT

A subject dear to my heart, my lardarse and my gravity challenged bazoombas, FAT.

First from the A-Z of Consumer Pleasures, 1994.
"For women, beauty carries a moral overtone. The current ideal for women is that they should be thin, while the ideal for men is that they should be tall. Being tall is seen as a happy circumstance over which one has relatively little control, but being overweight is deemed entirely of one's own making. This has the effect of making women far more responsible for their physical appearance than men. A short man is considered unlucky, but an overweight woman is blamed for her size and becomes a target of derision. It is assumed she is irresponsible, self-indulgent and weak, a person of flawed character who cannot resist the temptation of food. Being fat or, for that matter, beautiful or wrinkled or dowdy, has become a statement of character."

Fast forward to April, 2007 to another book, "Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet" by Neris Thomas and India Knight (Penguin Figtree). The two woman also have a blog and a forum to help other women lose weight http://www.pig2twig.co.uk and the women using the forum and following the diet have lost 905 lbs.

But the women have critics, other women. Zoe Williams wrote an article called "You're Vain and Stupid", saying that weight was a funny old thing for an intelligent woman to be concerned with. "The real mystery is how people get away with fixating on themselves like this without relinquishing their right to be taken seriously."

I don't understand this view by feminists and I've come across it before. Why is it considered frivolous to want to lose weight, apart from health reasons, to please yourself by regaining some self esteem that judgemental people like to strip away, see first paragraph. The 1994 attitude to fat women (men too) has become more malevolent in 2007. Of course, we'd all like it if our appearance and self-esteem wasn't tied to body type but it is and women who criticise other women can be the biggest enemy.

I really don't care one way or the other about weight since I make my own clothes and whip up a piece of jewellery to match but health wise I've got to drop it. I'm doing it for me and I wouldn't like any feminist fellow traveller to tell me I'm vain and self-obsessed for doing it any more than I'd like someone to tell me how good I look when I've lost the flab.