Eat Fat

In this tour de force the author traces the older, positive meanings of the word "fat." He analyzes "the thing fat, " discussing not only the aesthetics of fat but also the nature of fat. He examines "fat sex, " including representations of the human body designed to arouse people whose taste in beauty is fat. And he explores "political fat, " i.e., the relation of fat to power.

Klein, author of Cigarettes are Sublime, is making a profession out of political, and medical, incorrectness. Here he assembles statistics on "healthy fatties," adds the weight of anecdotal evidence that fatness equals happiness, cites the voluminous depiction of plump beauty in art, and piles on the heft of his own forceful opinions to make a case for fatness as the ideal. Given modern culture's unhealthy addiction to a vision of waif-like beauty, leading to the extremes of anorexia and bulimia, and the dangers of more routine crash dieting and weight-loss programs, he certainly has a point. Klein anticipates with pleasure the day when the aesthetic of Rubens becomes normative again.