The Weight Loss Illusion

DOES THIS CULTURE MAKE ME LOOK FAT?

Let’s face it, some of us put on a little extra weight during the holidays. Granted, that was months ago but those aren’t the only holidays. Maybe I’m just more festive than most people but I cook a turkey and a ham to celebrate Flag Day (see our free color supplement for the recipe for my Star-Spangled Deep-fried Lard Nuggets). And who has time to go to the gym when there are leftovers to eat? Not me. There are two paths to take when dealing with holiday overindulging: either lose weight or cover up. It’s the classic “less ass or more pants” dilemma.

If you’re still reading this instead of…I don’t know, training for a marathon, then you simply want to look thinner. The easiest way to pull this off is to wear dark clothes, and when I say dark I mean pitch black everything, even underwear that people can’t see. You need to find clothes as dark as any intergalactic black hole in which all light is trapped and killed mercilessly. Wearing black clothes obscures the contours of your body. Then you need to stand next to a black background to further extinguish your contrasts. To take this one step further you should only leave home on nights when there is no moon.

Any magician will tell you the importance in misdirection when hiding anything. If David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear I should be able to disguise my little “muffin top,” although an ex-friend recently described it as a “mushroom cloud.”  All you need to do is distract people from noticing your bulges by creating a diversion, and by “diversion” I think you need something a little more powerful that shouting “hey, is that Elvis Presley?” every time you need to move around in public. Check out our free color supplement for how to induce a devastating earthquake using normal household cleaning products.

Or maybe it’s not me? Maybe it’s you, you judgmental body image bully, and by “you” I mean every aspect of our popular culture that screams out for everyone to be young and thin…at least those who dare to appear in public.  If only all of our flaws were apparent to the world like a weight problem. What if every time you left your house people could see that you were among the shameful group of 23% of Americans who haven’t read a book in the past year? Or what if we gave everyone a map of the world, made them try to write the name of each country on the map, and then made them wear it around their neck for the rest of the week? Maybe then we wouldn’t be so hyper-critical of those who are carrying a few extra pounds. Seriously, you can’t find India on a map?