your fat moment for today

...brought to you courtesy a Korean girl who couldn't have been more than 8 or 9, yet was blimpier than any Korean child I've ever seen. I saw her on the subway today. And I was transfixed. I was just like the Koreans who stare at foreigners. As in, Jesus Lord Shiva Beating the Fanged Hordes to Death with Thy Mighty Lingam, what the hell IS that?? And I thought to myself, "This pulsating blob is the future of this country."

I'm pretty tubba-licious myself, so let me put this in perspective. Back in the mid-90s, it was very rare to see fat Koreans of either sex-- but even in those days, it was obvious that girls were getting fatter, faster, than boys. In general, boys may have to take better care of themselves because they know they've got required military service down the line, and it only adds to the misery to go through boot camp lugging more extra weight than just your backpack and weapons. This hasn't stopped some pre-teen boys from ballooning up, true, but my point is that the fat phenomenon was merely a distant adipose-ripple on the cultural skin-horizon about ten years ago. The ripple has advanced since then, and what initially appeared to be no big deal has turned out to be a veritable tsunami of double chins, exploding buttocks, elephantine thighs, and the kind of massive, fleshy underarms once featured so prominently on "Ally McBeal." Fat folks are everywhere now.

Etiology?

Enter the PC-bahng culture, the return of the video game craze, cell phone text messaging, fast food, junk food, and other artifacts of a prosperous South Korean technological powerhouse, and the net result is more sedentary Koreans (said he while he typed away). I'd say the total Korean biomass is no longer increasing at a linear rate: we're creeping into the geometric, and may soon face logarithmic increases if we're not careful. The people aren't just more numerous; they're bigger. And they're fuckin' hungry.

South Korea's sociocultural acceleration sometimes appears to be a steroid-freak version of America's own, and it's easy to imagine that, in a couple decades, South Korea will find itself with an old, obese populace that is kept alive by constantly improving medical technology. The American situation is scary and getting scarier; South Korea is not really that far behind.

Behind. Heh. Sometimes I just walk into my own puns.

Perhaps what we're seeing, in this awful blossoming of byoo-tox, is some perverse South Korean affirmation of the marxist eschaton as embodied in that Ultimate Incarnation of All Korean Fatties, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il-- Antipode Without Corresponding Antipode, Glorious Ass Crack Baby, Fat-Father to us all. With Fatty Kim as the Korean Omega Point (if I may steal a concept from Teilhard de Chardin), I think we can expect an ever-expanding future for the southern half of the peninsula. The only question is whether Kim's seductive fat meme proves to be the undoing of South Korea (as the populace inexorably morphs into humanoid spam and lies-- gasping, bloated, helpless-- before the rampaging People's Army), or whether South Koreans rise up and eat the entire North Korean populace in a paroxysm of unbridled rapacity-- the ultimate expression of consumer capitalism. Given the Korean love of bone and gristle in so many of their meat dishes, starving North Koreans strike me as the next logical menu item, far superior to the limited delights of boshin-t'ang.

My own philosophical stance, as you might have guessed, leans against "fat acceptance"-- not for aesthetic reasons (this blog has played host to far too many complaints about the prevalent flat-assedness [and -chestedness] of the female populace... I have no problems with curves), but for good old health reasons. And yes, this applies as much to my own blubberous mortal coil as it does to the female populace.

And you know what? I think I'd better stop here, otherwise I might convince myself that I need to do more than hit the gym every couple days. Yes... it's-- it's better not to think about that.

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