Dan Savage mainly deals with letters from readers wanting advice on their love/sex lives. As a gay man, he gets lots of letters from gays/lesbians struggling with their sexuality and how to “come out”. But that’s not the sad part.

The saddest letter I ever read was from a young man hopelessly attracted to obese women. In a world where just about every variety of attraction is deemed to be acceptable/politically correct (men/men, women/women, threesomes, orgies, S&M….) here is a young man so afraid of what people might think because he DARED to be attracted to overweight women.

I often wondered if the letter writer was brave enough to take Dan’s advice and open up about his attractions.

Here’s how my Monday went:

Up at 6:00AM, take the dog outside.

Since he’s recently had surgery due to a back injury, he’s a lot slower so it’s around 6:40 before I can even begin to get ready for work myself.

Secretly, I think he’s doing it deliberately just to pi$$ me off and make me late.

7:00AM, hit the road.

Marvel yet again that they don’t actually charge admission to hop on the wild ride that is the beltline and interstate.

7:30AM, arrive at office, unclench fists from steering wheel, go inside and make face at general lack of applause and no red carpet at my arrival.

7:30AM to 12:00 noon, sit at desk doing my job.

12:00 noon to 1:30PM, sit in weekly Monday office meeting wherein the boss provides lunch – from a fast food joint.

1:30PM to 5:00PM, sit at desk doing my job.

5:00PM to 5:45PM, drive home.

5:45PM to 6:30PM, take dog out again.

By 6:30PM, the wife has supper on the table so I take 45 minutes or so with the wife and kids.

7:30PM-ish, start working on the dryer that went on the fritz.

11:30PM, test dryer after reassembling parts by wincing and gingerly plugging cord into receptacle.

IT WORKS! IT LIVES!

Do happy dance, take shower, go to bed.

Today, just a variation of yesterday in one way or another. Same $hit, different day.

Who in hell has time to frickin exercise?!?!?

The guy who actually invented the BMI (during the 1800′s) was knowledgeable in astronomy, math, statistics, and sociology – but not medicine.

Indeed. While that lowered BMI index may correlate to lower incidences of certain types of disease, it also contributes to a vastly increased paranoia about self-image at all ages.

Frankly, I’d take the increased incidences of certain types of disease.

Part of this, I’d suggest, ties to the lowered element of child-bearing in the female of our society — a woman with wider hips is generally going to have an easier pregnancy (I believe that’s the case, anyway), so, in a society where 3+ children is the norm, it’s better for women to have wide hips. This is even more true in a pre-industrial culture where overall strength and solidness is a survival trait.

As society has de-emphasized the child-bearing element of femininity, so, too, has the ideal become more slender and less “bulky”.

And while I grant that men do have some say in this, the real drivers are women, not men. If they didn’t buy the clothes, the designers would be making what they DID buy.

There are two factors, and they certainly don’t involve heterosexual men, who innately and predictably love boobs and booty.

Factor number one: as others above mentioned, the homosexual men working in the fashion industry. The ideal of beauty that gets this crowd off, not surprisingly, is the undernourished little boy look. So they recreate women in their own image.

Factor number two: the catty nature of women, who are more attuned to arbitrary status cues, and enjoy judging other people on such a basis. What do women want, after all? What other women want! Perhaps Nietzsche had it right– women aren’t even shallow.

Yes. No. (5’5″, 130-135lbs). This whole “the camera adds 10lbs” thing – where does that come from? I haven’t seen it in pictures I’ve taken nor in pictures of me and my friends. I’m inclined to say it’s some rubbish that’s been repeated and passed along so much that people think it’s so.