Jill Parkin, 66, despairs of young Fattypuffs and admires old Thinifers
Have you ever sat in a motorway service station the wrong side of the latest Cornish-pasty chain – and wondered how you’ll squeeze your way back to the car park without getting up close and personal with a man mountain and his matching woman whale, both in Nike plus-size sports tights?
Like a non-stop but very slow conga, the Big Ones leave their oversized cars, roll and sway through the automatic doors and around the food court before coiling about the counters of pasties – traditional, steak and gravy, and cheese and onion.
They often come in groups, possibly to maximise the free-jumbo-sausage-roll offer. You may need satnav to find a route around them without meeting their close relatives in the McDonald’s tailback. They too wear outsize sports gear, for their workout – carrying the Krispy Kreme bag back to the car.
It was in a service station I learned that there is something called an all-day-breakfast Cornish pasty. There was a time when a full English breakfast was a treat at your weekend B&B. Now you can put it in a pasty and eat it between meals. What progress.
I am now looking over my shoulder for the body-positivity police. At 66, I may not hear them coming, but if I see them coming I can probably outrun them. Even at my age.
Body positivity! What about body responsibility? Tell the truth and fat-shame the devil. The Big Ones have a whole industry catering for them and living off them. That’s why we have an obesity epidemic and a diabetes crisis.
Fat has been normalised and given rights. Rights to the NHS budget, the right to respect and, above all, the right to pretend the truth is not the truth.
We are supposed to believe grossness is somehow a disease, a contagion that anyone can catch. No one’s fault. I was just standing there and I inadvertently inhaled these loaded chips, a large Coke, and a stuffed-crust pizza. And if they sell doughnuts in bags, surely that’s a normal portion, isn’t it?
Have you been in the M&S bra aisle recently? They go up to cup size K, big enough to make a sling for twin babies. Diving among them for a normal size you risk asphyxiation by a balcony bra requiring planning permission. Now you can buy outsize sportswear and outsize sexy underwear.
When we were young, there was Evans the outsize shop – an exercise in clothing ugliness if ever there was one, keeping you in your fixed waistband. Now big is mainstream and shops go up to at least size 24. Can you imagine the row on social media if the size-12 people asked for a reduction for their clothes’ using less fabric?
Move over Gay Pride – make way for the ever-expanding Fat Pride. Corpulence is catching for a reason. Catered for and beyond reproach, ever more people are relaxing into elastic waistbands – and into your airline seat as well as theirs.
Fizzy drinks are huge. Hot chocolate comes with swirly cream. People neck full-fat latte and think they’re ‘just having a coffee’. Popcorn in the cinema comes in tubs that would last through a double showing of Ben-Hur.
Chain coffee shops offer wrapped ham-and-cheese things with saturated-fat readings statin-manufacturers must dream of.
Big Ones don’t know how to cook, say the body-positivity police. It’s to do with education, you know.
Really? We have a MasterChef-trained nation who can talk about deconstructed cheesecake and sous-vide but can’t make poached eggs on toast or steam some vegetables with a piece of fish or meat? How clever do you need to be to eat an apple instead of a deep-fried apple turnover?
Most of the Big Ones are not Oldie-readers, but they may be their children. Thin old women in care homes, who grew up during the war, are visited by massive children and grandchildren. Old family photo albums reveal a different, slimmer breed that’s evolved into something much bigger and flabbier.
Hospital beds have got bigger, as have ambulances. People who overflow airline seats object if there are complaints from fellow passengers who cannot breathe. The NHS is spending a fortune on diabetes treatment, stomach stapling and statins.
Fat is no longer wedging itself in a corner, trying not to be seen. It is out there, flaunting itself, swaying across the pavement and cowing the rest of us into silence.
Body positivity? Someone should tell the Big Ones it’s all just a big fat lie.
Jill Parkin wrote for the Daily Mail and Daily Express
