The Name “Tubby” Is Hurtful*
Something momentous happened the other day and I forgot to blog about it. The night I went and ate Indian food at Beijing’s most opulent shopping mall, The Place, I saw my first fat Chinese person. In a month here I have, I shit you not, seen one fat person. Even the westerners who are here are thin, oddly enough, considering the amount of food everyone eats. Well, of an acceptable body weight by western standards anyway.
The fat Chinese was a woman I saw the night I ate Indian food. She was in the restaurant next door, and I caught a glimpse of her as I was walking out. She’d be considered fat by western standards. Now, I’ve been in China, what, five weeks now? If you count everyone I see in a day in the streets from the taxi on the way out, the people I’ve seen in bars and restaurants, and so on, I bet I’ve seen a million people. And only ONE of them would be fat by our standards.
There’s a young gal who works for me, about 24. By Chinese standards she’s considered fat. By our standards she’d be shapely. She doesn’t have a gut or anything, she’s just sort of thick and stocky, more of an athletic build. But in her eyes she is quite overweight, and talks about how she goes often to the gym to try and slim down. When I told her that she’d be considered quite thin by American standards, and that 2/3 of American women would be thrilled to be as thin as she is, she couldn’t really grasp the idea. She could easily buy clothes at any regular store at any mall in America, not in the “big ladies” section, yet she thinks she’s huge.
This will all change, of course. America leads the world in most things, and we were the first country to have the obesity epidemic. Europe and the UK are following close on our heels, and as China becomes more wealthy people will buy cars instead of bicycles. They’ll walk less. They’ll buy X-Boxes and HDTVs and computers and lead the type of sedentary lifestyle that the west has perfected. And their weight will start go up, just like ours has. Not to mention the growing popularity of McDonalds and KFC, both of which can be found all over the city, especially KFC. (There’s one of each within a 10 minute walk of my apartment.)
A few decades from now, the newest western companies to be opening offices in China are going to be NutriSystem, Weight Watchers, and Jenny Craig.
*For those of you who don’t get the reference in the title, it can be found here.
At Sumo Stadium, Homer and Bart are among the spectators. A sumo wrestler sprinkles salt on the ring. Homer eats a soft pretzel.
Homer: Mmm, fifty-dollar pretzel. Hey, what’s Baby Huey doing?
Bart: [reading a folded piece of paper] It says here they throw salt before they wrestle to purify the ring.
Homer: [looks at his pretzel, then walks in the ring to the wrestler] Spare some salt, Tubby?
Wrestler: Tubby? [Japanese, subtitled:] The name “Tubby” is hurtful, as my weight problem is glandular. Are you going to eat that? [takes pretzel from Homer] Yoink!
Homer: Hey, that’s mine!
Always remember, I am the king of obscure pop culture references.
