To all you fat-phobic yahoos out there, male and female alike, let's get this straight: Julia Roberts, Elle McPherson and Calista Flockhart may be beautiful, wonderful, talented women, tops in their fields, but they're not the ideal women should aspire to, unless of course, it's for the centerfold of Anorexia Illustrated. Real women can't even dream that skinny, much less get that way. Genetics has a nasty habit of getting in the way. But that doesn't stop millions of American women from yearning to be size 3s.

We'll skirt the issue of the patriarchy that encourages sizeism and promotes it through advertising. Instead we'll talk about relative perception of men's and women's sizes.

Men, as we know, are a slow-moving target, and while taking potshots at them over this issue is about as fair as shooting fish in a barrel, they deserve a good portion of the blame. How many of us have seen two good old boys passing judgement over a women's appearance? Picture them, please, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other and an ample mid-body spread pouring over their (straining) belts. "Mah wife would never look like THAT," Bubba No.1 says, wiping the spittle off his chin.

"I'd never let mine get like that,either," says the other, checking out the rug burns on his knuckles. "Mine has to please me and no woman looking like that could do it."

But among themselves, greater than average (whatever "average" is) bulk is looked at as a good and noble thing. Think of prominent males through history and you come up with far more rulers sized like Henry VIII, Winston Churchill and Idi Amin than Richard Simmons or Rudolf Nuryev. Check out almost any state legislature, where bald heads and big bellies are a potent indicator of power and prestige.

The problem ultimately is perception. When women look in the mirror and see fat, they despair, plan diets, schedule workout sessions, arrange for acupuncture, and if all else fails, go to therapy. When men see fat in the mirror, they accept it, embrace it and often see income potential.

Had Ernest Evans, Rudolf Wanderone, Jr., Jiles Perry Richardson, Roscoe Arbuckle and William Perry, Jr. not embraced the wonderfulness of their corpulence, we would have been deprived of Chubby Checker, Minnesota Fats, the Big Bopper, Fatty Arbuckle and Refrigerator Perry. Would Fats Domino been as much a hit had he performed as Antoine Domino instead? Or would Andre Rousimoff have been the same wrestling legend if he were Andre the Skinny instead of Andre the Giant?

Among women in the public eye, some such as (fanfare, please) Camryn Manheim and Rosie O'Donnell, have acknowledged their big, beautiful bodies and rejected size as a substantive issue, although Clarissa Dickson Wright and the late Jennifer Paterson rate special merit. Had they not seen the specialness and wonderfulness of their selves, they might not have achieved the fame they did as the Two Fat Ladies.

So rejoice in whatever size body Mother Nature has seen fit to clothe you in.
Exercise.
Eat well.
Eschew value judgments others try to foist on you.
Stay healthy and love who you are.
Try mightily to become a woman of substance.

SINCE June 3, 2001 YOU ARE UPPITY VISITOR NUMBER 5245