Diet Books Make me Crazy

My name is Maggie and I used to be hooked on diet books. I haven’t actually bought one in years, which is good because I would be much poorer than I already am. Have you seen how huge the diet section is in bookstores now? Or maybe they call it “Eating for Wellness” “Healthy Lifestyles” or some such other euphemism except for what it is, the same old thing it was in the 1980's, the first time Atkins went around the dog track: “Promises of Magic Cures for Your Food”. Still, from time to time I lapse and wander through the section, café americano in hand, and scan the shelves.

More and more I get irritated after a few minutes and move on. One of the books that has been ticking me off is French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano. That title is such a load of, well, merde de taureau. I loved the New Yorker cartoon last spring that showed gendarmes in Paris loading fat women into a paddywagon in the predawn hours. I’m not arguing that the rate of obesity among the french may be lower than in the country of the drive-thru, but no fat women? I don’t think so, and neither does the French government, as is evidenced by this poster:









The large print can be roughly translated as “Obesity kills, do you always find this really funny? Obesity is a serious illness that kills 55,000 people each year. It is not a fault or a flaw, much less a joke.”








You may not see many obese women strolling in the 16me arrondissement in Paris, but then I don’t remember seeing many while walking around the chi chi poo poo upper east side of New York, unless I counted myself. On Fulton Street in Brooklyn, it was a different matter. Issues of class and obesity aside, obese people are often very skilled in hiding.