12th October 2004
O in the world lexicon is still for Obesity even with the enlargement of Oil prices. Outsize is outrageous.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was a huge dinosaur. He was so big people wondered how he had grown so big. Recently, by some complicated formula, which involved measuring the femurs of skeletons of the beast, it was calculated that he put on 2.1 Kilos every day during his teenage years. Those were the days when fat was fun.
(This useful information is thanks to an article I read in the Guardian or London Independent. The reason I am not sure in which publication is because one of my sons dislikes the Guardian, the other the Independent and I can never remember who goes with which. To avoid being berated for reading such rubbish I throw the papers in the green bin as soon as possible. This could be a form of elder abuse and if I had a social worker I would inform on them. I do retaliate sometimes by threatening to buy the Daily Telegraph, a prospect which deals with both of them.)
What brought the article to my mind was a recent trip to Scotland where I put on much the same weight every day as Tyrannosaurus Rex and I'm no teenager. Food in Scotland is very fattening and the folks there are beginning to show it. We had gone to see two factories somewhere between Loch Ness and the North Sea, and in case I became too unpleasant on my "holiday", to go to Edinburgh as well to meet friends at the Fringe.
The first bed and breakfast in which we stayed in Elgin was excellent with a huge Scottish fry for breakfast. One did not, after all, have to eat all of it. The next one in St. Andrews had no fresh fruit for breakfast and both establishments had only low fat but very high sugar yoghurts. But the piece de resistance was the Edinburgh establishment run by a very good looking slim Pakistani man and his beautiful wife. Breakfast was tinned fruit, the ubiquitous low fat, high sugar yoghurts, Coco Pops, Ricicles or Frosties followed by white sliced pan toast and jam. The B&B owner told me he kept slim by running between his three shops and two other boarding houses!
There were two Canadians of about our own age staying in the B&B and they said to us one morning "We saw you walking into town, uphill!" with astonishment. If we hadn't walked everywhere photographs of Tyrannosaurus Mary could have been taken.
There was more than the high calorie, high sugar breakfasts in Edinburgh, however, to make one feel fat was fab and flab was fun. The Titian exhibition was on and a "must" at the National Gallery.
As far as Titian goes men are muscular, women are fat and babies are obese. His paintings are religious, secular and allegorical and in the latter ones the women are most fleshy. Venus rising from the waves is a fine figure, not the coy lady painted by Botticelli holding her curls across her pubic hair. Titian's Venus is full frontal. But the groups of women are even more amazing. How did Diana, the Queen of the Hunt, manage to get on a horse or did she have a special heavy weight lifter? Her attendants were no better. But interestingly, Actaeon, who surprised them while the ladies were bathing is as fit looking as a fiddle.
The Blessed Virgin is a normal size in all paintings, looking especially lovely in those by Bellini. But being a saint doesn't protect a girl from being fattened up as was very obvious from Cariani's St. Agatha, who had two plump breasts on a plate in front of her!
Courtesans and babies got the worst treatment. It is almost impossible to believe babies could have been as fat as those in Titian's three ages of man. Were they painted thus because thinness was a sign of disease and death?
A good lunch was necessary to recover from two hours of wandering around the National Gallery. Scotland is the home of fish and chips, so a helping of same was essential. Let me recommend the Home Bistro in West Nicholson Street. There is beer in their batter and when I asked them to go easy on the chips they did. They must have realised this was a health request because they gave me four only!
Then, on to culture. Culture came in large sizes, too. A wonderful Canadian soprano called Measha Brueggergosman, billed to be the next Jessie Norman, has decided she needs Jessie's size as well as her voice. Are sopranos told they have to be at least twenty stone to succeed and is it true? I heard Maria Callas when she was overweight and when she had lost weight and I thought she sounded lovely always. I saw Montserrat Caballe once and she was a worrying size. But I have seen the Americans Renee Fleming and Anne Sophie von Otter and both sing beautifully and look well, too.
Unless it can definitely be shown that being very fat improves one's voice is it fair to encourage obesity in singers? If they have lovely voices we would like to hear them for as long as possible.
There was some exercise on show in Prince's Street. People from Argentina were dancing the tango, of all un-Scottish dances. There was a great deal of throwing their legs around each other by the dancers making me feel the emotions were getting the most exercise. Not a bit like the jigs and reels we'd expected to encounter. By the look of many of the natives they'd better get at them this winter.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
