Am I Watching My Weight or is My Weight Watching Me?

Fat fat fat- it's everywhere at the moment. It's a moral issue, or a feminist issue, or a cultural issue. Or it's about aesthetics or health or fashion or the consumer society, or self-esteem or self-loathing or self-pity or self-control. Take your pick. Actually, my pick today is a New York Times article by Dimitia Smith, 'Demonizing Fat in the War on Weight' (May 1, 2004), which I came across on Google. I rate the interesting little details in this article over weighty argument. Thin wasn't always the chic size to be. Apparently Louis XIV padded his body to look more imposing, living as he did in an age when plumpness was associated with affluence, aristocracy, and good health. Conversely, 'The People Against the Fat' was a rallying cry of the French Revolution, which led to the the guillotine becoming a rather drastic method of weight loss. 
Another nice morsel: "The first popular modern dieting book, 'Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public', written by William Banting, an undertaker, appeared in 1863. Banting wrote that when he was fat he was regarded as a useless parasite. He went on a diet and lost 35 pounds. 'I can honestly assert that I feel restored in health, bodily and mentally', he wrote." Plus ca change. He could have been writing today.