Billy Watson

"Debble Fat Takes A Setback"

( Originally Published 1939 )

Thirty years ago it was all right to be fat. Today, it is not. Although many lipophilics allow themselves to get fat today, the percentage was higher in the 1900's. It took an aroused group of stout womenfolk to lead a large contingent of amazingly overfat Americans toward a saner and safer national average weight. For that, God bless the ladies. Some of the lean Uncle Sam's of tradition had gradually waxed fatter and fatter until they looked more like the proverbial John Bull. Certain Mrs. Uncle Sam's had fared no better. They had been placed on a pedestal and overfed.

Perhaps it was because we had conquered raw country, and hardy pioneers had become complacent merchants, lawyers, doctors, and bankers. Perhaps we remembered the English tradition that obesity spelled prosperity.

Those were the days of good eating. Diamond Jim Brady was a national hero, and "double portions of plenty" were the vogue. Here is an August day's menu taken from a cook book printed in 1905:

Breakfast

peaches and cream

boiled grits

fried eggs

broiled mutton chop

fried potatoes biscuits

Light Luncheon

small assorted sandwiches

corned beef and cabbage

boiled potatoes

bread pudding

Dinner

radishes

salted peanuts

bean soup

filet of halibut

potato croquettes

breast of lamb

chicken livers

saute green corn in cream

green peas

watercress salad

tapioca pudding

What food for August! Imagine my father, with his almost newly painted shingle "H. Lindlahr, M.D." hanging outside the door at 232 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, setting forth to tell overstout "nice people" of that city to eat spinach, salads, and greens.

I remember a fat Caruso of that day singing romantic parts, a hefty Isadora Duncan doing esthetic dancing. It seems to me Teddy Roosevelt was no lightweight, and his cabinet-from William Howard Taft down-did justice to the national standard of well-being.

Significant of the times were the chorus girls. They were hefty to say the least, and Billy Watson's Beef Trust was an aggregation of girls who averaged at least 200 pounds each, or was it more? Buxomness was the "it" of the day.

The vice of overweight was not limited to adults alone.

If you care to take the trouble of looking up the class picture of Vassar '04, 'O5, or '0 anything, you'll get a rough idea of the situation. Even about-to-be-born babies were fat. The ladies in my mother's, circle used to look with scorn upon any mother whose baby weighed less than ten pounds at birth. One obscure lady in our neighborhood produced a sixteen-pound baby, and she rose swiftly to be Madame President of the Tuesday Sewing Circle.

My mother was always rather slim. One year, perhaps it was 1906, she blossomed forth in a directoire gown, but the lifted eyebrows of her amply-cushioned friends soon discouraged her. As a rule, if I remember rightly, Mother was quite busy with bustles, mysterious furbelows, ruftles and puffed sleeves, ingeniously trying to look fatter than she was. Stylemakers tried, sporadically, to cast a pall of shame upon obesity, but were not too successful.

Then, all of a sudden, things began to happen. It would take a better historian than I to record, and assess the relative importance of, the steps that led to a tremendous change in the national attitude toward fat. Dozens of factors entered into it.

Fashion experts were raising their voices in earnest. Women began to bob their hair-they found short hair made them look much younger. They began to realize, too, that slimness lent the appearance of youth.

The World War of 1914 sent fat a-scurrying. After all, girls were replacing men in industry, were driving ambulances in France. Fat women couldn't squeeze into the pert uniforms of the day or appear engaging (or efficient) in the office force or factory set-up.

Even greater forces were at work. Women were striving for equal recognition with men, not alone in the vote, but in the right to work and play at the side of the stronger sex. They were bound and determined to enjoy sports and other such privileges, including perhaps the double standard, that men had long held sacred to themselves. Perhaps throwing off the burden of immense wads of hair, and corresponding wads of fat, was a further expression of freedom and the New Deal for womankind.