In Lean Times, Fat Is In

According to prim and brazen New York Times Stlye columnist Guy Trebay, this summer’s look is pretty much the same as last summer’s, except for one addition: This summer, the people have spoken and pot bellies are in. “Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut,” Trebay has named this summer’s crop of trendy bellies ‘Ralph Kramdens.’ (I’m still holding my breath for an “On The Street,” by the way.)

Lizzi Miller

Trebay is not alone, however. Glamour‘s September issue won the applause and acclaim of its readers (and even the women’s blog Jezebel) for a stunningly unabashed but not self-congratulatory photograph of model Lizzi Miller, who flaunts a supple roll of fat and a positively beaming smile. “It’s a sign of the time that women are looking for more authenticity, a little bit less artifice in every part of their lives,” said Glamour EIC Cindi Leive to Matt Lauer on Today this week. “Will it change our approach? I think it will.” There you have it: Look for more ‘plus-sized’ models in your copy of Glamour soon.

And then there’s Cintra Wilson, one of Trebay’s colleagues in the NYT Style section. Wilson penned a “Critical Shopper” column earlier this summer that offended readers across the country — overweight readers in particular (if you missed that bit of above-the-fold news, catch up here). That was nearly two weeks ago, but the Times, among others, is still chattering about it (read: getting traffic from it).

Clark Hoyt, the Times‘ public editor, said in his column this weekend that Wilson wrote her mockingly disdainful piece about the arrival of a J.C. Penney’s in downtown Manhattan with “virtual sneer seeming to drip from her keyboard.” Hoyt also relayed the thoughts from his colleagues: Fashion editor Anita Leclerc classified Wilson’s writing style as “stream of consciousness … full of barbs.” Executive editor Bill Keller said the column “would make a fine exhibit for someone making the case that The Times has an arrogant streak.” In his mind it should have never been published. Hoyt even reported that Wilson said her work was “provincial” and that it was “dumb on [her] part not to see this coming.”

Ralph Kramden.

If Glamour learned the lesson that readers will respond positively in spades when they see realistically shaped people validated in print, then the Times has learned quite the same lesson but in the opposite way: Average readers will loudly disapprove when they find the stores that average income, average-sized people shop at lambasted in their newspaper. Along with toned bellies, pretension is very out (Anna Wintour went on David Letterman, for God’s sake).

But what has happened to the fantasy of print? The glamour of Glamour? The elitism and perfection of Vogue? The brave provocation of the Times?

Lewis Grossberger chimed in yesterday on his True/Slant blog to put a an end to the Gray Lady’s pity party, calling Keller a “Louis XVI wannabe” and Clark’s column a “hit job on the witty and readable Wilson.” Why such harsh words? Because, he says, Wilson’s only sin is writing well and being funny — and “Damn few people can do funny!” Instead Wilson has been made to apologize for her craft and a column that Wilson’s fans probably enjoyed.

But Grossberger is excessively harsh on the Times. His writing feels vindictive — when has the Times ever been about flash and pop?

Let me now make this diatribe even more apocalyptic: You, Clark Hoyt and the cluck-clucking, brain-dead editors (starting with the Times’ Louis XVI wannabe, Bill Keller) who agreed with your Babbitt-like op-ed-page hit job on the witty and readable Wilson, are one of the reasons why the Times is having that little problem we all keep hearing about…you know, the sliding-into-oblivion thing?

Because it’s boring. Always has been but now, because there’s actual competition, people notice. And here you are, Clark, proclaiming, “Let’s make it still more boring!”

This might just be the absolute worst time in the history of newspapers to come out for boring.

That’s a stretch, and the nuance of Grossberger’s point is lost in his anger. The Times is not becoming more boring, it’s just going about the business of trying to save face and keep readers happy (ever-important in this climate, right?). Hoyt’s column, after all, was more symbolic than anything else. I don’t see Wilson losing her job or trying to flatten her ‘barbs’ any time soon, otherwise she wouldn’t be the writer she was hired to be. Grossberger hits that nail on the head.

This summer’s newfound media sensitivity to overweight readers probably, like everything else these days, has something to do with the economy. Simple-minded though it may be, attitudes about weight have to shift in lean times. I’m reminded of an article from 2001 about beauty queens in Niger who eat animal feed to plump up for their pageants. But that’s a bit much — America’s fantasy body image isn’t going away any time soon, though we certainly eat less healthy food when money is tight.

The economy — insofar as it has forced magazines and other mainstream print outlets to march down a rocky road, splattered with the red ink of hemorrhaging ad pages — has definitely played a role in pushing the fat question. Rather: the question of how we should talk about and handle fatness in the media. Magazines somehow have to remain a luxury good that fewer people will pay more for (or something like that), while not seeming so detached and frivolous that nobody can stand to pick one up.

Meanwhile, the Internet is constantly reminding everybody in the media business that being opinionated and even offensive is a great way to make cash, get buzz and attract eyeballs online; even if a select slice of readers walk away with a bad taste in their mouths, click numbers are still up and ads are still more valuable. This commerce is trickier for established newspapers like the Times, hence the apology. Even so, think about how many clicks Wilson’s column generated (including the traffic generated by Hoyt’s column) and then consider how many readers the Times lost because of the incident. How many people really canceled their subscription or are boycotting NYTimes.com because of a trivial Style column?

For now everyone has had their cake. Overweight readers have made their voices heard (or at least acknowledged) by editors at a popular and widely read Condé Nast title and the New York Times. But will this just be a recession-era summer love affair with the fat? Will more plus-sized women really make it into the pages of Glamour? Will the Times really be more mindful of offensive ‘barbs’ that might catch the sides of fat readers? And will all the Ralph Kramdens of the world wilt once stock indexes boom again?

Frankly, we have hope the answer to all of those questions is no. Otherwise the things we read will only become more vanilla. And as any fat kid could tell you, vanilla tastes best with the toppings piled on high. Nuts are our favorite.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.