FAT
Condemned to the apartment by no money, unemployment and a fever, I have spent my time industriously watching my roommates' cable channels whilst they are at work. No doubt when they discover this fact they will discreetly slip an extra charge on top of the $1150 I currently pay for a room in a two-bedroom-formerly-one-bedroom-convert in midtown. My tab grows increasingly larger as they sneak more and more bizarre items to the list. Hand Soap? 50 cents. Kitchen Paper? $3.50. 1 egg? 29 cents. 2 potato chips? 10 cents.
Do not, I implore you, ever share an apartment with Asian accountants.
I have consequently become intimately acquainted with such choice reality shows as Dr 90210, Made, True Life, Extreme Makeover et al. All these shows seem united by a common theme: huge, obese ugly people. I watched in fascination today as 27 year old Jane was wheeled into a consulting room to talk to various doctors about the possibility of gaining gastric bypass surgery. Jane was unable to simply walk into the consultant's office because she weighed nearly 600 pounds and her legs were unable to support her. The consultant eyed her with disdain.
"You do realise that this procedure is potentially life-threatening because of your size?"
Jane wibbled anxiously in her wheelchair, which creaked ominously underneath her bulk.
"Uh - yessir"
"But similarly, you have to realise that the life expectancy of someone of your size is approximately 32 years of age. That means you only have 5 more years, probably less, to live."
"Oh."
Jane and her husband Danny (also fat, but at 400 pounds, dwarfed by the rippling folds of his wife) cried together in their SUV and praised the Lord a few times, before Jane turned to the camera and declared emotively that "fat people are people too, we still have feelin's". Jane was, she wept, "tired of bein' considered a freak. I ain't a freak". Her health insurance company were footing the bill for the surgery.
Pause for a second.
I'm all for curvy, busty woman with a little cellulite crushing society's obsession with skinny wenches, but 600 POUNDS? How does somebody increase their body mass to 600 pounds 'by acccident'? 600 pounds entails industrious and committed eating. It's eating as a career. It involves the consumption, python-like, of about 6 whole rotisserie chickens a day washed down with 16 pints of Double Cream, half a cow and probably the entire produce of Ireland's potato farms, deep fried and with a coating of beer batter. 600 pounds is, by itself, evidence of amazing willpower. To have pushed one's body to the extremes of existence by diligently ignoring the little switch in the mind which triggers the 'full' button after a hefty meal, and to have done this so impressively as to have assumed the epic proportions of a killer whale, is a feat one surely must applaud. I cannot help but argue with Jane's poignant claim that she "ain't a freak". Jane, my dear. You have honed to perfection a new form of athleticism - Olympic eating. You are certainly not what one would consider 'normal'. When the cameras showed Jane in surgery, the doctor's face contorted with effort as he punched through her layers of flab. "There must be like, 8-10 inches of fat to get through before we reach the intestines," he murmured in awe to the cameras.
Jane, I beg to differ. You are a freak.
I was later introduced to 400 pound high school student Bubba and 16 year old spoilt Beverly Hills brat Emily (now 160 pounds, reduced from 300) all the recipients of gastric bypass surgery. All, like Jane, phenomenal achievers in the field of indiscriminate eating. I was appalled - forced to switch off the TV and retreat to my yoga class and the sanctity of skinny, taut bodies. What is wrong with these people? To channel all their energy into the consumption of as many bumper packs of Cheetoes as possible? Why is it so impossible for them to simply cut down on food? Walk around the block a few times? And where do they get the money to feed what equates to a small African village every day? Their monthly food bill would probably pay my rent for a year. How do they have the time to sit back and chomp their way through 12,000 calories a day? Do they get up early to fit in a few Dominoes Stuffed Crust Spectaculars before breakfast? And if they can't walk - how do they get to the fridge?
Surely instead of bypass surgery it would be more productive to lock them into a room for forty days, push a few salads through a hatch and after they've slimmed down enough to regain mobility, ship them off to India and put them to work in Mother Teresa's home where a good bout of amoebic dysentery, hard manual labor and all those emaciated, dying people would soon melt the weight off and probably cost the insurance company less.
No wonder I don't leave New York. It seems to be the last bastion of the skinnies in this god-forsaken country.
---------------
There'll be some more dancing stories after I've purchased some fake hair in Oregon and returned to New York blonde and stripper-like. In the meantime, you'll have to put up with my 'editorials'... although if any of you have suggestions for posts, send 'em in.
Do not, I implore you, ever share an apartment with Asian accountants.
I have consequently become intimately acquainted with such choice reality shows as Dr 90210, Made, True Life, Extreme Makeover et al. All these shows seem united by a common theme: huge, obese ugly people. I watched in fascination today as 27 year old Jane was wheeled into a consulting room to talk to various doctors about the possibility of gaining gastric bypass surgery. Jane was unable to simply walk into the consultant's office because she weighed nearly 600 pounds and her legs were unable to support her. The consultant eyed her with disdain.
"You do realise that this procedure is potentially life-threatening because of your size?"
Jane wibbled anxiously in her wheelchair, which creaked ominously underneath her bulk.
"Uh - yessir"
"But similarly, you have to realise that the life expectancy of someone of your size is approximately 32 years of age. That means you only have 5 more years, probably less, to live."
"Oh."
Jane and her husband Danny (also fat, but at 400 pounds, dwarfed by the rippling folds of his wife) cried together in their SUV and praised the Lord a few times, before Jane turned to the camera and declared emotively that "fat people are people too, we still have feelin's". Jane was, she wept, "tired of bein' considered a freak. I ain't a freak". Her health insurance company were footing the bill for the surgery.
Pause for a second.
I'm all for curvy, busty woman with a little cellulite crushing society's obsession with skinny wenches, but 600 POUNDS? How does somebody increase their body mass to 600 pounds 'by acccident'? 600 pounds entails industrious and committed eating. It's eating as a career. It involves the consumption, python-like, of about 6 whole rotisserie chickens a day washed down with 16 pints of Double Cream, half a cow and probably the entire produce of Ireland's potato farms, deep fried and with a coating of beer batter. 600 pounds is, by itself, evidence of amazing willpower. To have pushed one's body to the extremes of existence by diligently ignoring the little switch in the mind which triggers the 'full' button after a hefty meal, and to have done this so impressively as to have assumed the epic proportions of a killer whale, is a feat one surely must applaud. I cannot help but argue with Jane's poignant claim that she "ain't a freak". Jane, my dear. You have honed to perfection a new form of athleticism - Olympic eating. You are certainly not what one would consider 'normal'. When the cameras showed Jane in surgery, the doctor's face contorted with effort as he punched through her layers of flab. "There must be like, 8-10 inches of fat to get through before we reach the intestines," he murmured in awe to the cameras.
Jane, I beg to differ. You are a freak.
I was later introduced to 400 pound high school student Bubba and 16 year old spoilt Beverly Hills brat Emily (now 160 pounds, reduced from 300) all the recipients of gastric bypass surgery. All, like Jane, phenomenal achievers in the field of indiscriminate eating. I was appalled - forced to switch off the TV and retreat to my yoga class and the sanctity of skinny, taut bodies. What is wrong with these people? To channel all their energy into the consumption of as many bumper packs of Cheetoes as possible? Why is it so impossible for them to simply cut down on food? Walk around the block a few times? And where do they get the money to feed what equates to a small African village every day? Their monthly food bill would probably pay my rent for a year. How do they have the time to sit back and chomp their way through 12,000 calories a day? Do they get up early to fit in a few Dominoes Stuffed Crust Spectaculars before breakfast? And if they can't walk - how do they get to the fridge?
Surely instead of bypass surgery it would be more productive to lock them into a room for forty days, push a few salads through a hatch and after they've slimmed down enough to regain mobility, ship them off to India and put them to work in Mother Teresa's home where a good bout of amoebic dysentery, hard manual labor and all those emaciated, dying people would soon melt the weight off and probably cost the insurance company less.
No wonder I don't leave New York. It seems to be the last bastion of the skinnies in this god-forsaken country.
---------------
There'll be some more dancing stories after I've purchased some fake hair in Oregon and returned to New York blonde and stripper-like. In the meantime, you'll have to put up with my 'editorials'... although if any of you have suggestions for posts, send 'em in.
MIMI IN NY | 12:20 PM |
