I’d Rather Be Fat Than Have Weird Ears

Imagine it, if you will.

You are having a “night out”. Young people are strewn about the place exchanging views on a number of different topics, some topical (e.g. the US elections and/or Kerry Katona), some whimsical (who would you rather sleep with, Nigel Lawson or Douglas Hurd?), and some puerile (if Finnegan’s Wake is about the Bible, and the Bible is about the law, does that mean that Finnegan’s Wake is about the law?) and drinking alcoholic beverages of various kinds. Everywhere you look, heads are thrown back with gay abandon. Outside, young ladies in short skirts who have forgotten their hosiery are sucking hard on extra-long Consulate cigarettes.

You are looking quite nice, like you might smell of buttercups and taste of caramel; your hair is glossy like that of a show pony; your clothes are well-cut and effectively demonstrating your capacious bosom which - it must be said - is one of the benefits of being a porker. You look like you’re getting it, and you probably are.

At the back of your mind, as it always is, is the awareness that you are bigger than most other people in the room, but you don’t really think about it; there’ s no need; after all, sometimes it’s a benefit and anyway, it’s not actually making any difference to the type of evening you’re having: your friends are still cretins, someone’s trying to chat you up, you’re drinking gin straight out of the bottle with a bendy straw, you’re better looking than the dwarf with extensions, and all is right with the world.

Then you are introduced to a woman you haven’t met before. You dimly register that she’s sort of medium-sized. She’s got slightly weird ears and could do with a good haircut. She’s OK; a bit over-familiar perhaps, but OK to talk to while Katy’s getting off with the Lithuanian in the corner.

And then it happens. She puts a confiding little paw on your arm and leans into you. Her voice drops and she tells you how fat she is. How - no, look, I can pinch AN INCH under my arm - flabby she is, how little exercise she takes, how she just hardly eats a thing but just can’t help being so fat, how she just feels so awful and how she’s not sure she’s ever going to fit into a size 10 again.

You go through the usual rigmarole, which usually involves saying something along the lines of “No no, you are wrong: for it is I who is fat; approximately twice your size, in fact!”, at which point she takes a step back and squeaks, “But you’re not fat! You’re just … big-boned! And you’ve got such a pretty … face. And a lovely personality.”

You look at her, and more half-arsed platitudes are exchanged. For some reason that, later, you can’t quite fathom, you have neither set her hair on fire nor invented a terminal illness that involves serious weight gain. Nor, importantly, have you told her to fuck off.

The rest of the evening is a bit shit, really. You’ve remembered that you’re a porker and have, against your will, said it out loud with your mouth in order to make someone else feel better. And indeed she does feel better, but you feel fat and (far worse), patronised.

Then you get home and you think about it a bit more, and you think: fuck me, when I’m three stone down I’ll be so fucking grateful I won’t worry about sags and kneecaps and flappy underarm skin. I’ll be medium-sized, wearing medium-sized clothes, possibly even able to do cartwheels. Things generally will be a bit faster, easier, less annoying, and I will be happy with that; but her ears will be as weird as they always were.

With this unkind but soothing thought, you fall into a deep slumber, interrupted only by pornographic dreams involving Alex James and cheese on toast. In the morning, you wake up and go straight to the gym realising, as you pack your size 18 gym pantaloons, that never being patronised again is as good a reason as any to stop being fat.