Fat Chance

“So here’s my thought,” he said, pausing just long enough to reach for the salt sticks. “Why not cover it in a regular space? But not the pap weight loss stuff—”

“A counterculture perspective,” I said, finishing Bill’s sentence.

“That’s right, that’s right,” he said, the fork alighting once again, this time precariously freighted with a dollop of creamed spinach. “Your audience is bigger than ever—one out of every four adults is fat—and they’re crying out for compassion.”

“Bill, it’s time for someone in the media to stand up and offer America an alternative vision about their overweight: ‘Live with it and love it.’” I could almost hear the first stirring strains of “America the Beautiful.”

“Exactly! You’ll be their counselor, Maggie, you’re perfect for the job.”

I put down my fork and pressed my hand to my fluttering heart, as if to recite the pledge. “I’m speechless, Bill, it’s brilliant. I’m behind it a hundred percent.”

“We’ll move you into a new office,” he said with mounting excitement, “and you’ll have carte blanche to indulge yourself at the city’s finest restaurants.”

With a fine stroke of the knife, I teased off a sliver of beef. “I can’t wait to get my teeth into it.”

Within a week of my lunch with the managing editor, my column was announced in the paper, and from then on my wit and wisdom sparked nationwide attention, leading not only to an outpouring of calls and letters from desperate readers, but also radio and TV interviews, and speaking engagements. In January, just nine months later, yours truly’s face adorned the cover of People with the headline, The New Face of Fat: Is Maggie O’Leary America’s Anti-Diet Sweetheart?

“Fat Chance” was launched, and I was becoming a rising media star. And readers? Well, they were eating up my words.

one

Five minutes to deadline and adrenaline surges through my gut. Eyes on the screen, I pound the keys with my usual vigor, stopping only to sip my Rhumba Frappuccino Venti—Starbucks’ malted-rich, soda-fountain-sized coffee drink that tamps down a leaning tower of reader mail. A perfect marriage with the cinnamon-dusted apple pie from the Little Pie Company down the street. Mmmm… Nobody could beat their pie crust. And they got the chunky consistency of the apples just right. Texture. That’s what perfect apple pie is all about. I turn back to the computer, dropping a few flakes of crust between the keys. The phone rings.

“I’M FED UP, YOU HEAR ME?”

I jerk the phone arm’s length from my ear, but the voice rockets. “I CAN’T LOOK AT MYSELF ANYMORE. I’M FAT AND—”

“Wait, please I—”

“I’M DESPERATE…NO ONE UNDERSTANDS…”

“I do, but—”

“I’m all alone and unpopular. None of the friggin’ diets—”

“—LISTEN, I’ll call you back,” I insist, wagging my foot. “I’m just on—”

“So what do you suggest, huh? You say live with it and love it, but how am I supposed to love fat dimpled thighs that are like, so repulsive, you know?”

“DEADLINE. I’m on D-E-A-D-L-I-N-E! Eat some comfort food, and call me in the morning.” I slam down the phone, and check the clock. Minutes before deadline I finish, hit the send key and feel the familiar rush of having dodged another bullet.

I lean back, exhale and reach around to close the button on the waistline of my skirt. Time for dinner. I reflexively tap out Tex Ramsey’s extension—1-8-4-5—the year that Texas was admitted to the Union. I know he arranged that, but how? As it rings, my eyes sweep the corkboard wall speckled with bloodred pushpins piercing ads for dubious achievement products: Dr. Fox’s Fat-Blocker System, Appetite Suppressant Brownies and Seaweed Thigh-Slimming Cream. A magazine article, “Ideal Weight is an Ordeal Weight,” takes center field, with a quote from Phyllis Diller: “How do I lose unwanted pounds? I undress.”

Framing the perimeter is eye candy: Brad Pitt on the cover of Vanity Fair, his tanned, sinewy torso sheathed in a sleeveless white undershirt; a Marlboro Man, weathered complexion, cowboy hat tilted provocatively shadowing soulful green eyes; James Dean, the prototype haunted bad boy in Rebel Without a Cause.

Dreamboats. That’s what girls used to called alpha hunks like that. Taut, archetypical physiques, suggestive gazes that held your eyes promising long steamy nights of…

“Metro.”

“Tex,” I say, coming up short. “Dinner ce soir?”

“Barbecue?”

“Mmmmm. Virgil’s?” I ask, naming a popular joint in the Manhattan Theater District.

“Great, pick me up.”

Dinner plans on short notice. No pretense. No frantic search for something to wear: “Does this skirt make me look like the back of a bus?” Why couldn’t romance be as easy?

I ring Tamara, my assistant and trusted confidant. “What are you doing?”

“Answering your fan mail.”

“Do I have to call the producer from AM with Susie back?”

“You dissed her when she called.”

“I was on deadline—”

“—she’s doing a show on the fat phenomenon.”

“Get her on the horn, I’ll grovel for forgiveness.” I turn back to a talk I’m preparing on the traumas of extreme weight loss, prompted by the story of a surgeon who was not only overweight but also a smoker. Facing the upcoming wedding of his daughter, he went on a crash diet, quickly dropping fifty pounds. The morning of the wedding as he dressed to go to the church, he slumped to the ground suffering a massive heart attack. His death was caused by the drastic diet, doctors ruled, not his excess weight.

The intercom beeps. “Wanna play cover girl for the Lands’ End plus-size catalog?”

“Fat chance.”

Another beep. “Wanna talk to a South Carolina group about leading the next Million Pound March?”

“Not in a million years.”

I search my mail for readers’ stories on the perils of extreme weight loss. It’s one thing to champion fat acceptance, but another to convince readers. Actually, a tiny microcosm of them sits right outside my office.

The cherubic Arts secretary is slightly—but only slightly—over her ideal weight. Still, every bite is contemplated, measured out and then double-checked using both the imperial and metric systems.

“It’s simply a matter of sheer willpower,” she says.

I want to strangle her.

Then there’s fashion reporter Justine Connors, a former model who works in a Fortuny-swathed cubicle down the hall. She isn’t fat, just obsessed with it. Every nugget of food is eyed as a bullet destined to destroy her reed-like shape. The only other thing you have to know about her is that she swears thong panties and stilettos are comfortable, a physiological impossibility, as I see it. When the office was chipping in to buy her a thirtieth-birthday gift, my suggestion:

“Why not a gift certificate for a colonic?”

Tamara is yet another veteran waist-watcher whom someone at the coffee cart once described as a slightly overblown version of sultry model Naomi Campbell. She’s category three: Lost. The New York Lotto slogan is her own. “Hey, you never know.” Tamara’s bookshelves are a Library of Congress for the overweight, holding every weight loss tome ever published. It starts with golden oldies, like the quacko The Last Chance Diet, by Robert Linn, advocating a liquid protein regimen that the U.S. C.D.C. later pronounced could lead to sudden death; Triumph Over Disease by Jack Goldstein (stop eating altogether); The Rice Diet by Walter Kempner (nutritionally unsound, but lowers blood pressure); the U.S. Senate Diet (no promise of a Congressional seat); The Prudent Man’s Diet, by Norman Jolliffe M.D. (became the basis for the Weight Watcher’s diet); Live Longer Now by Nathan Pritikin (tough to follow); The Amazing Diet Secret of a Desperate Housewife (you don’t want to know); The Paul Michael Weight Loss Plan (“If your intake of carbohydrates is low, some of the fat will pass right through your system without being broken down and stored in adipose tissue”—“Pure nonsense,” said Consumer Guide magazine); and on and on, up to and including prestigious tomes of today such as Eat, Cheat, and Melt the Fat Away, and The Zone.

Tamara can leave any diet bigwig on the mat with her grasp of diet lore, but all for naught. None of the regimens work for long, and the proof hangs limply in her closet. Dresses starting at size 12, barreling out to 18. Yo-yo couture.

A copy editor pokes his head into the office, jarring me from my thoughts. “You sure the fat doctor you mentioned is affiliated with Yale?”