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Shared Opinion | 15 November 2008

I’m not saying these are bad people. Just that they are fat

issue 15 November 2008

I’m not saying these are bad people. Just that they are fat

They say that Eskimos have 50 words for ‘snow’. Like a lot of the things they say, this isn’t true, but should be. Right now, I’m a good few thousand miles from both Eskimos and snow, on holiday down in the sun-drenched dogleg of Florida. I’m wondering, these Americans, can they really only have a handful of words for ‘fat’?

Forgive the predictable observation, but there are just so many different types. I can see many from the window of my hotel room, down there on the shore watching the startlingly noisy, don’t-book-a-room-next-door, annual Key West World Championship Power Boat race. Arse fat, neck fat, hip fat, thigh fat. There’s also the proper, terrifying Star Wars villain fat: arms unable to descend below an obtuse isosceles triangle sort of thing, but that’s actually fairly rare.

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