The Fat American

   My blood boiled.    It's taken several days for it to lower to 'simmer' so I could even write this.  And I'm not sure if my temporary extreme annoyance is fed by truth or by the gall of one who lives in a glass house.   It certainly speaks to the general image Americans are known for around the world.  Not the white, straightened teeth or the self-confident comportment but the increasing size of the average American's girth.  It seems all of the U.S. can be found in the potato chip aisle of WalMart.  Or it is assumed so. And that is what rubs me the wrong way.  
   What started this distemper?  Watching a repeat of the BBC's "Top Gear", a show hosted by the Prat Pack (as they are referred to in the popular press here)- three guys who like to talk about and drive cars. Gearheads don't miss an installment as automobile manufacturers from the exclusive performance cars on down to family wagons donate their vehicles  to be driven and critiqued by these self-important prats.  Jeremy Clarkson, the eldest and leader of the trio, was asking  audience members where they were from.  He got to one fresh-faced blonde chick who said she was from the U.S. "What?", bellowed the bombastic Brit, " You're not fat enough to be an American."   This got a chuckle from the crowd and a frozen face from the chicky babe that seemed to say "I don't know how to answer this. But look, Jeremy Clarkson is talking to me!"  This seemed a bit rich coming from Clarkson, who cannot hide his own growing paunch. He complains about how his show is seen in every country but the U.S. and doubtless  this is his way of getting even.
    But he is far from the only person who identifies Americans by their waist size.  In OZ, health experts and average citizens all moan about how Australians are one Big Mac away from looking like Americans.  In Asia, where everyone on the planet seems to be bigger than they themselves are, the temptation for the size generalization is greater.
     The first time I personally ran into this identification tendency was in 1992 when my mother and I went on a tall ship cruise in the French & Italian Rivieras. (Yeah, I'm bragging. It was nice.)The tall ship was loaded with Germans -whose growing national prosperity can be witnessed in their growing posteriors. My mother, born and raised in Germany and speaks the language like the native she is, chatted in her mother tongue to many of our shipmates. For awhile anyway, before she got bored with boorish krauts.  Seems one of them was astonished that I was an American ("She's not big enough") yet had no trouble believing Mom was American. I hope I kept a straight face when she told me this. Mom didn't think I looked like a twig, hmmmmph, besides, how could these bozos mistake her absolutely native language ability for something an American could utter?  This was a double annoyance for her. 
    So while movie stars seem to get ever more boney and emaciated, the rest of us had better lay off the Lay's. We've got more than just our health to consider, as if that itself was not enough.