Happy holidays.
It's been forever since I've been here, the return, I think motivated by, well, longing and, oddly, a recent trip to the gym.
The story goes like this: I'm back in NYC visiting family and friends; visiting the gym, too, which is always a part of my day. Here's what I see: a generation (20-somethings and thirty-somethings) of women, all fat, all unashamed (as though they need feel ashamed), all into fitness and all uninterested in the svelt life.
Granted, it's anecdotal, the evidence offered here; and the terms "all" and "fat" are largely relative. But the 28-year old woman on the stepper next to me last night, 5'4" and 210 (the weight she entered into the machine when she climbed aboard it) told me without hesitation that she likes curves, likes her size, feels good in her skin. She had the face of a Giotto Modonna and the collectedness of a saint (in the spirit of the season, I guess). The discussion started when she asked if I was working toward some goal and I told her I was trying to slim down some and she said "thin's overrated."
There were six or seven other women, and an equal number of men, maybe more, each pitched at a higher weight than the current charts would recommend, each engaged in a serious workout (swedish ball, light weight, cardio--mostly walking on the treadmills). One woman, a knock-out blonde who was clearly over 300, walked and a comfortable pace on a treadmill for about 40 mins, then did some stretching. "For my left knee, which is kind of blown," she said. Nothing radical here. Just slow, careful, non-sacrificial stuff. (I asked her out, by the way, and was nicely turned down by way of her pointing out her fiance, a big, friendly guy who was punching a bag in one of the siderooms. I kept my distance.)
I'm tempted to take a turn here and talk about the more erotic side of all this, but the idea of being fit and fat, of putting a love of size and growth on the same scale (yeah, yeah) with health and well being (how the 210 girl stopped into the next-door deli after and dove into a large bag of chips), leaves me thinking.
Maybe we ought to start a "Fat and Health" board--a discussion that affirms the fact that the media and the fashion industry and Nike and most doctors have it all wrong: it's possible to be big, beautiful (handsome) and healthy. Just a thought.
It's been forever since I've been here, the return, I think motivated by, well, longing and, oddly, a recent trip to the gym.
The story goes like this: I'm back in NYC visiting family and friends; visiting the gym, too, which is always a part of my day. Here's what I see: a generation (20-somethings and thirty-somethings) of women, all fat, all unashamed (as though they need feel ashamed), all into fitness and all uninterested in the svelt life.
Granted, it's anecdotal, the evidence offered here; and the terms "all" and "fat" are largely relative. But the 28-year old woman on the stepper next to me last night, 5'4" and 210 (the weight she entered into the machine when she climbed aboard it) told me without hesitation that she likes curves, likes her size, feels good in her skin. She had the face of a Giotto Modonna and the collectedness of a saint (in the spirit of the season, I guess). The discussion started when she asked if I was working toward some goal and I told her I was trying to slim down some and she said "thin's overrated."
There were six or seven other women, and an equal number of men, maybe more, each pitched at a higher weight than the current charts would recommend, each engaged in a serious workout (swedish ball, light weight, cardio--mostly walking on the treadmills). One woman, a knock-out blonde who was clearly over 300, walked and a comfortable pace on a treadmill for about 40 mins, then did some stretching. "For my left knee, which is kind of blown," she said. Nothing radical here. Just slow, careful, non-sacrificial stuff. (I asked her out, by the way, and was nicely turned down by way of her pointing out her fiance, a big, friendly guy who was punching a bag in one of the siderooms. I kept my distance.)
I'm tempted to take a turn here and talk about the more erotic side of all this, but the idea of being fit and fat, of putting a love of size and growth on the same scale (yeah, yeah) with health and well being (how the 210 girl stopped into the next-door deli after and dove into a large bag of chips), leaves me thinking.
Maybe we ought to start a "Fat and Health" board--a discussion that affirms the fact that the media and the fashion industry and Nike and most doctors have it all wrong: it's possible to be big, beautiful (handsome) and healthy. Just a thought.
