What's up with all the weight talk?
We're not even sure when it started, but Candice Bergen, who was always perfect and who is still perfect, really went there in her current memoir and book tour.
“Let me just come right out and say it: I am fat.”
Mostly, it feels like someone opening the window and letting the fresh air in, right? And it lets us know that everybody eats and some of us eat too much. I mean, it turns out that the FBI -- which is being held to new fitness standards -- is full of stress-eaters.
After 9/11:
The increased demands manifested themselves in different ways. Some agents put on weight, while some suffered from anxiety and depression. “You could see that health and fitness was not the priority it used to be,” said Zachary Lowe Jr., the chief of instruction at the F.B.I.’s academy in Quantico, Va., which created the test.
In 1959, J. Edgar Hoover lost 33 pounds in 90 days. He was freaked out about his health, but after he lost the weight, according to his biographers, he became a fat nazi, "raining down edicts" on his field agents. Alone in his office, he doubtless wondered, does this dress make me look fat?
Wait! There's more. The candidacy of Chris Christie has raised questions about whether the U.S is "fattist," but over injolly (but not fat) old England:
And as its electoral cycle kicked off last week, when Prime Minister David Cameron officially asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament, it was front and center, thanks to an interview Mr. Cameron gave to The Times of London, in which it was revealed that he had lost 13 pounds in three months by renouncing peanuts and cookies and cutting down on carbs This came after an earlier pledge to lose weight made in January on BBC Radio Sussex, in which the prime minister called his efforts to slim down “a great patriotic struggle.”
OK, I'm going to share with you a treat ordinarily only consumed by other Nose panelists: a classically mordant James Hanley email:
I love the enduring class complexities laid bare (for those still listening) for the millionth time in the UK. What better way for Cameron to paint over his oligarch origins than to coyly allow that his wife buys his clothes, amid press releases about his weight loss. He so cares so much for the average brits…. until he’s got their votes and can freely walk all over them, yet again.
[Drops mic.]
And in France, they never did "too fat." They only do "too thin." There's a new initiative that could criminalize hiring super-thin models.
His amendment, approved by the French Parliament Friday, will define a minimum body mass index for models. Employers who hire anyone below that index could face an $80,000 fine and a six-month jail term.
I guess that's all the weight stuff. As a Red Sox fan, I still have a little trouble looking at Kung Fu Panda and thinking "professional athlete" but I don't think the other panelists, James, Irene Papoulis and Taneisha Duggan, really care about that.
What else? We've all been reading the reviews of the new Apple watch, which will either be the downfall of human intimacy or the thing that restores it.
Downfall:
But Apple’s keynote presentation was telling for its open-arms embrace of the idea that avoiding human contact is a marketable feature of new technology. It's also important to note that there's one group who will be disproportionately affected by that erasure: those workers who make your coffee, give you your room key, and drive your cabs. What happens when they disappear from view?
Restoration:
The Apple Watch is supposed to be a filter between you and your attention-suck hellworld smartphone; we will give it permission to intervene because it is slightly easier to look at while reducing our what’s-going-on-over-there-by-which-I-mean-in-my-pocket—by-which-I-mean-everywhere-else anxiety just enough to keep us sane. It provides a slight buzz, hopefully just enough, at a lower social cost. So it’s a little like… methadone?
Indistinguishable from Faulkner.
What else? Some of us are very caught up in the controversy about the wrongly attributed quote on the Angelou stamp. The whole question of where famous quotes come from fascinates me. But I do nothing about it. And, as Yakov Smirnov said, all that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.
GUESTS:
- Taneisha Duggan - Director of Audience Engagement at HartBeat Ensemble
- James Hanley - co-founder of Cinestudio at Trinity College
- Irene Papoulis - lecturer in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric at Trinity College
MUSIC:
“Fatso”by The Story
“Just Quote Me” by Martha Tilton
