Fatness Is The New Fitness

Jared Borislow8 years ago

For the last few months, I’ve been watching my weight. Most notably, I’ve been watching it increase, jiggle, and add more folds to my stomach than Ben Folds did to his high school girlfriend (before all that “Brick” stuff, obviously).

Save for a few errant post-Chipotle dumps during which I dropped the load harder, faster, and with more conviction than a cargo plane caught in a downdraft, my weight has been steadily increasing ever since I gave up on my new year’s resolution of losing weight back in February. Luckily I hadn’t joined a gym or anything — as not following through on that resolution was another one of my resolutions — so I didn’t incur any monetary losses due to my lack of drive and love of Chick-fil-A (aside from those involved with both driving to Chick-fil-A and on the Chick-fil-A itself).

But back in April, I began realizing my weight was not sitting on its usual 185 plateau, at which it arrived during my sophomore year of college and had hovered around, but never surpassed, for the past three years. No — I was gaining weight, and fast. I started off “skinny fat,” quickly rolled through “overweight,” and in July, at my then (and current) weight of 195 pounds, landed on a descriptor that’s both used and caused by Taco Bell: “beefy.”

So there I sat (I find the act of “standing” lies just above the threshold of physical activity I’m willing to undergo as an individual experiencing beefiness (I also find the term “beefy” offensive)), wondering what my plan of action should be. Do I just sit around twiddling my chubby thumbs as my stomach inches closer and closer to causing a total eclipse of my dong? They say don’t use a telescope during an eclipse, which would be a problem since girls would need one to catch a glimpse of the impotent, unmitigated disaster that will be my obesity-ravaged undercarriage. Or do I hit the gym and get back to looking like a functional member of society? Back to looking like I give a damn about my appearance? Back to looking… normal?

The answer is, and always will be “keep eating Cosmic Brownies, fatass.” And while yes, that conclusion is arrived at 50% out of laziness, there’s also some legitimate merit to it.

Fitness, at its core, is one of the most primal qualities of attraction a man has at his disposal. Back before the days of spoken word, when our species was either hairy and primitive or completely nonexistent (depending on whether or not you’re a fan of the Scopes Monkey Trial verdict), physical attraction was the name of the game. And back when personality, wealth, celebrity, and having an aquarium in your room were nothing more than untapped concepts, it was your fitness that determined your overall success as a living organism.

Generally speaking, this hasn’t changed. Life is still one big game of “get laid or die a loser,” and fatties always have and will draw the short straw (which, much to their dismay, is an actual straw, not a Pixie Stick). But hope is not lost. Over time, women became more interested in other traits than just attractiveness. The advents of the aforementioned personality, wealth, celebrity, and aquariums in rooms saw big boys like Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (before those 3 manslaughter trials), Henry VIII (before he had two of his wives beheaded), John Belushi (before he was taken from us too soon), and your tank fraternity brother 38-beer Perkins (before you found out he was really into Digimon) earn societal respect respectively. Admittedly, it’s tougher to find successful fat people who don’t come with at least modest amounts of baggage, but who cares? If you’re fat, just compensate for it in some way and you’re in the clear.

It seems like everybody is concerned with their appearance these days, so much so that they’re willing to spend more time working out at the gym per day than they are doing any other single activity. This has always baffled me, as gyms are probably the least fun places in the world in which to hang out besides a room full of Vine stars. Instead of spending that time working on your outward appearance, spend it working on your inward one. Your body will hate you, but your mind will thank you. Who do you think people like more, the loser with no personality who’s at the gym doing curls, or the tub o’ lard on a Jazzy making everyone laugh while popping wheelies and doing double curls (curling cheese curls into his mouth)? The answer is obvious.

Those love handles? She wants nothing more than to grab ’em. That spare tire spilling over the elastic waistband of your athletic shorts? It gets her motor running. So stop hitting up Gold’s, and start hitting up the Golden Arches. Because as long as you compensate for it, fatness beats out fitness every day of the week..