Ftrain, by Paul Ford

AND herein lies the genius of JC Penney: It has made a point of providing clothing for people of all sizes (a strategy, company officials have said, to snatch business from nearby Macy’s). To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of “Roseanne.”

I've been enjoying the pudgefuss brought on by C. Wilson's article, from which the above paragraph is excerpted, regarding the invasion of plus-sized-friendly JC Penney into Manhattan. A decent-enough summary is at the WSJ, and the Awl also fanned some flames. All of this has led to many indented conversations on Tumblr.

Me, I spent at least a half-hour writing up my thoughts on all of it, but I have erased all that. My goal was to try to tease out some idea about the National Discussion on Obesity, starting with this contretemps. But as I tried to parse the dialogue I realized that this is not a National Discussion but merely a pile of Internet Stupid-- pure hydrogenated fat-baiting. Not one new idea or interesting thing in the mix. Wilson's article is basically LOL JC PENNEY FOR POOR FATTIES PEOPLE LOL FATTIE GIRL GET OUT OF MY MANHATTAN SPROUTS AND EAT A PIZZA NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Yes, Manhattan is a place of thin, nervous strivers, who define virtue in bizarre ways. A place where people take muscle relaxants to do yoga. But there is every day, lately, a moment when all 23 stone of me crests the Manhattan Bridge on my bicycle and I see the boats in the water, trailing robes of foam, and I am in awe of the majesty of the humans, who, in their venal selfish apery, Tammany Hall and Robert Moses and all the rest, constructed, for me, a skyline scene that plays out, every morning, in concert with the rising sun. And I am at that moment, sweating and trembling, duty-bound to acknowledge every privilege I am accorded. A voice being one privilege.

I will continue my bike rides into Manhattan, where I work, gut flailing.

If that quiet, anonymous passage offends the reader then should the reader not spend, as I do, a certain portion of time looking in the mirror and thinking?

Yours in 3XLT,

Weight: 333.25 lbs